Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement Research Articles

Working memory development from early childhood to adolescence using two nationally representative samples.

We leveraged nationally representative data from the Panel study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (N = 3,562) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal study (N = 18,174), to chart the development of working memory, indexed via verbal forward and backward digit span task performance, from 3 to 19 years of age. Results revealed nonlinear growth patterns for forward and backward digit span tasks, with the most rapid growth occurring during childhood followed by a brief accelerated period of growth during early adolescence. We also found similar developmental trajectories on digit span task performance for males and females across the U.S. population. Together, this study highlights the relative importance of the childhood period for working memory development and provides researchers with a reference against which to compare the developmental changes of working memory in individual studies. From a practical perspective, clinicians and educators can also use this information to understand important periods of working memory growth using national developmental trends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Family Income Level, Variability, and Trend as Predictors of Child Achievement and Behavior.

Recent decades have seen increases in the variability of family income, tepid income growth rates for all but the richest families, and widening income inequality. These trends are concerning for child well-being, given the importance of income to parental investments and parenting practices. Growing evidence suggests that a high level of change is disruptive to family processes and that chronic stress affects physiology as well as psychology. This study used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement to estimate associations between three dimensions of childhood income dynamics-level, variability, and trend-and child achievement and behavior. After income level was controlled for, income variability during childhood was not associated with child achievement or behavior, but an increasing five-year trend in income-to-needs was modestly beneficial to behavior measures. Subgroup analysis suggests some adverse effects of income variability and trend on reading and behavior for non-White children but no clear patterns by child's age or family income or wealth levels.

Bullying patterns and their associations with child maltreatment and adolescent psychosocial problems

IntroductionThis study aimed 1) to identify underlying heterogeneous patterns of bully-victim; 2) to examine whether the different types of child maltreatment predict the patterns of bully-victim; and 3) to investigate the association between patterns of bully-victim and adolescent psychosocial problems (depression, trouble at school, and substance use). MethodsThis study included a sample of 1139 (48.7% girls, 53.4% Black) drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Children’s self-reported bullying victimization at age 9 was used using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement III. Teacher’s reported bullying perpetration at age 9 was used using Social Skills Rating System. Child maltreatment types were assessed at age 5 using the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale Coding. At age 15, adolescent depression was measured using modified Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale; trouble at school was measured using modified Add Health In-School Questionnaire; and self-reported substance use was used. ResultsLatent class analysis produced four classes: bully-victim (19.8%), victim (16.3%), no bully-victim (38.9%), and bully (24.9%). Individuals who have been neglected are more likely to be in the victim class compared to all other classes. Physical abuse to be at heightened risk of involvement in the bully-victim, compared to victim class. Additionally, individuals in the victim group are greater risk for depression, problems at school, and alcohol, as compared to those in the other classes. ConclusionsThis study augments the knowledge base on bully/victim, child maltreatment, and behavioral health outcomes and elucidates several suggestions for research and policy.

Frequent police stops, parental incarceration and mental health: results among US non-Hispanic Black and White adolescent girls and boys

BackgroundNational monitoring of police–public contact does not extend below age 16 and few studies have examined associations with adolescent mental health.MethodsWe describe the distribution of police stops in a nationally...

Family Complexity and Children's Behavior Problems over Two U.S. Cohorts.

We consider the prevalence of family complexity and its association with children's externalizing behavior problems over children's life course and over historical time. A growing literature has demonstrated the prevalence and multidimensional nature of family complexity and its association with child behavior. The nature/strength of this association may have changed in recent cohorts as family complexity has become more common. Data are from the 1997 and 2014 cohorts of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. Samples represent U.S. children ages 0-12 years born since 1985 (N=5,030). Ordinary least squares regression estimated change in the association between family complexity and behavior between cohorts. Difference-in-difference models estimated baseline and longitudinal differences in children's behavior as linked to family complexity. The prevalence of family complexity has stabilized over the last two decades, and the antecedents to parental repartnering and complex sibship organization remain similar. The expectation that increasing family complexity contributes to elevated behavior problem scores was not supported. Instead, children who eventually acquired a step- or half-sibling or who experienced parents' union dissolution had elevated behavior problems prior to those changes. The prevalence of and precursors to complex family organization were stable across recent child cohorts. The observed association between family complexity and child behavior problems may be attributable to selection mechanisms linked to both parents' family formation trajectories and to children's behavior, rather than to family change itself.

Children’s Technology Time in Two US Cohorts

Over the last two decades, technologies available to children have accelerated with the advent of wireless internet and increasing portability and affordability of electronic devices. Children’s technology use is a rapidly evolving challenge for families, organizing their everyday lives and potentially resulting in social disparities in technology use and displacement of healthy behaviors. This study examined time spent on technology use, physical activity, play, and sleep by US children across early (ages 2–5) and middle (ages 6–11) childhood in two cohorts using time diary data with a focus on variation by class and race. Data came from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement in 1997 (N = 2193) and 2014–2016 (N = 1009). Multivariate regression models estimated total time spent engaged in technology use, physical activity, unstructured play, and sleep. Total time spent engaged with technology increased 32% since 1997 in early childhood and 23% in middle childhood. Technology use was lowest for children with the most highly educated parents. In the more recent cohort, technology use was associated with displacement of physical activity in middle childhood but with increased play in early childhood and increased sleep in middle childhood. Results suggest that changes over time in technology use have restructured children’s everyday lives in ways that may be consequential for health and development, but co-occurring declines in physical activity and unstructured play cannot be attributed solely to technology time.

Adolescent Technology, Sleep, and Physical Activity Time in Two US Cohorts.

The advent of internet-enabled mobile digital devices has transformed US adolescent technology use over the last decade, yet little is known about how these changes map onto other health-related behaviors. We provide a national profile of how contemporary technology use fits into adolescents' daily health lifestyles compared to the previous generation, with particular attention to whether and for whom technology use displaces time spent in sleep or physical activity. Time diaries were collected from 11-17 year olds in 2002-03 (N=1,139) and 2014-16 (N=527) through the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. Contemporary adolescents spent 40 minutes more per week in technology-focused activities, but their composition was more varied compared to the earlier cohort. Contemporary technology use was predictive of less time in physical activity, and adolescents engaged in frequent video game play spent less time in physical activity compared to peers with other technology use profiles.

Measuring Human-Animal Attachment in a Large U.S. Survey: Two Brief Measures for Children and Their Primary Caregivers.

Researchers in the human-animal interaction (HAI) field face a challenge in generalizing the impact of pet ownership and companion animal interaction from small samples to larger populations. While researchers in Europe and Australia have included measures of pet ownership and attachment in surveys for some time (e.g., the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children), survey researchers in the United States have been slow to incorporate questions related to HAI in population representative studies. One reason for this may be that many of the current HAI-related measures involve long, complex scales. From the survey administration perspective, using complex scales is costly in terms of both time and money. The development and validation of brief measures of HAI will facilitate the inclusion of these measures in larger surveys. This paper describes the psychometric properties of two brief attachment measures used in the first population-representative study of child development in the United States that includes HAI items, the 2014 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Child Development Supplement (CDS). We use two measures derived from the 29 item CENSHARE Pet Attachment Survey, one for children aged 8–17 (6-items) and one for the primary caregiver (3 items). The results suggest that such brief measures of attachment to pets are psychometrically valid and are a practical method of measuring HAI attachment in larger surveys using only a few survey items. We encourage HAI researchers to work with other ongoing surveys to incorporate these and comparable HAI measures.

Intergenerational Association of Maternal Obesity and Child Peer Victimization in the United States.

Drawing on the intergenerational stress proliferation theory, the courtesy stigma thesis, and the buffering ethnic culture thesis, this study examines the association between maternal obesity and child's peer victimization and whether this association varies for white and black children. Based on longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of mother-child pairs in the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement, negative binomial models show that maternal obesity is associated with increased frequency of peer victimization, even after controlling for family socioeconomic status, child weight status, health status, self-esteem, and demographic characteristics. The association was significant only for white children. Given the developmental significance of child peer relations and the social disparities in obesity, future studies need to explicitly test causal mechanisms underlying the association to decide whether obesity may function as a family stressor (versus an individual stressor) that contributes to the intergenerational reproduction of inequality.

Parents Who Left College and Children's Postsecondary Educational Attainment.

More than one in five US adolescents resides in a household where neither parent holds a postsecondary degree but at least one parent spent some time in college. We consider how a distinctive combination of cultural and economic resources in college leaver families enables or constrains young adults' educational pathways. Greater resources in college leaver families explains about half of the advantage in any college enrollment and four-year college enrollment for young adults in these families compared to those from families where neither parent attended college. But this resource advantage is relatively small compared to families where either parent holds at least a Bachelor's degree, and given any enrollment, children from college leaver families are no more likely to finish college than are their peers whose parents never attended. Results are robust to various specifications of parents' college leaver status. Data are from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement and Transition into Adulthood Supplement (N=2,334).

The Effects of Active and Passive Leisure on Cognition in Children: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Weather.

Leisure time activity is often positioned as a key factor in child development, yet we know relatively little about the causal significance of various specific activities or the magnitude of their effects. Here, we couple individual fixed effects and instrumental variable approaches in trying to determine whether specific forms of leisure contribute to gains in test performance over time. We merge a restricted access version of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Child Development Supplement (CDS), longitudinally collected from 1997 to 2007, with a database of over three million county-day observations of sunlight. We use this proxy for weather to instrument for the variation in physical, outdoor, sedentary, and screen time behaviors based on CDS time diaries. We find evidence that physical and outdoor activity positively influence math performance, while sedentary behavior and screen time exhibit the opposite effect. Moreover, the effect sizes range from a quarter to three quarters of a standard deviation per additional daily hour of activity, rendering them meaningful in a real world sense. Our stratified results indicate that children from less educated mothers and girls seem to be most sensitive to the effects of active and passive forms of leisure. We conclude with a descriptive examination of the trend lines between our data and the new 2014 CDS cohort, providing relevant contemporary context for our findings.

Self-Concept Predicts Academic Achievement Across Levels of the Achievement Distribution: Domain Specificity for Math and Reading.

This study examines whether self-concept of ability in math and reading predicts later math and reading attainment across different levels of achievement. Data from three large-scale longitudinal data sets, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, and PanelStudy of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement, were used to answer this question by employing quantile regression analyses. After controlling for demographic variables, child characteristics, and early ability, the findings indicate that self-concept of ability in math and reading predicts later achievement in each respective domain across all quantile levels of achievement. These results were replicated across the three data sets representing different populations and provide robust evidence for the role of self-concept of ability in understanding achievement from early childhood to adolescence across the spectrum of performance (low to high).

Mothers' Time, the Parenting Package, and Links to Healthy Child Development.

Studies consistently show that mothers' time in particular activities with children is positively associated with child well-being, but results are mixed regarding associations between child outcomes and the sheer amount of time that mothers spend with children. Using time diary and survey data from three waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement (N = 2,622), we assess whether gains from mothers' total time with children vary by the quality of mothers' other investments in children, or the "parenting package." Mother-child shared time was associated with children's broad reading scores and adolescents' externalizing behavior, but mothers' other parenting investments did not moderate these associations. Results were robust to alternative measures of mothers' time and to the incorporation of earlier assessments of child academic and behavior problems. Parenting investments may be indicative of the quality of children's home environments but do not magnify gains from mother-child shared time.

A New Measurement of Adverse Childhood Experiences Drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement

A majority of children in the USA experience adversity in childhood that can negatively impact behavioral and health outcomes in adulthood and adolescence. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework is a conceptualization of adversity commonly used in health and social sciences research to measure adversity. ACEs researchers frequently employ cumulative risk measurement models, wherein risk factors are dichotomized and summed, yielding a value suitable for further regression analysis. This study describes the construction of an ACEs measurement utilizing a latent variable approach that allows for differential relationships between the indicators and the ACEs measurement, retention of variance within the indicators, and categorization of ACEs indicators along theoretical lines. The resulting two-factor model demonstrates an excellent fit for the data. Comparative tests indicate a significant increase in misfit when data is modeled as a single construct and when all indicators are constrained to being equally related to the measurement. Results from this study indicate the suitability of a latent factor approach to ACEs measurement to bypass difficulties presented by commonly used cumulative risk approaches to ACEs measurement. Additionally, tests of group invariance indicate the suitability of this two-factor model across gendered groups. This study adds to the emerging body of research using latent factor approaches to ACEs measurement. The ACEs measurement model in this study can be used in further research investigating the effects of ACEs utilizing the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics data set.

Birth order and child cognitive outcomes: an exploration of the parental time mechanism

ABSTRACTHigher birth order positions are associated with poorer outcomes due to smaller shares of resources received within the household. Using a sample of Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement children, we investigate if the negative birth order effect we find in cognitive outcomes is due to unequal allocation of mother and father time investments. Exploiting the presence of siblings in the sample, we show that birth order differences in parental time are mostly driven by between-families variation rather than within-family variation. This finding suggests that birth order effects are unlikely to be driven by differences in quality time spent with either parent.

Differences in Bank Account Ownership Among White, Black, and Latino Children and Young Adults

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Child Development Supplement and Transition into Adulthood, this study compared Whites, Blacks, and Latinos to identify racial and ethnic differences in bank account ownership. Having a bank account as a child was significantly associated with bank account ownership in young adulthood. Black children and young adults lagged in bank account ownership. Parental bank account ownership and family wealth increased the odds of bank account ownership for White children significantly more than for Black children. Financial independence, employment status, and educational attainment of young adults showed greater associations with bank account ownership than family background. Findings call for educational programs and policies to increase opportunities for the bank account ownership of minority youths.

Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend With Children or Adolescents Matter?

Although intensive mothering ideology underscores the irreplaceable nature of mothers' time for children's optimal development, empirical testing of this assumption is scant. Using time diary and survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement, the authors examined how the amount of time mothers spent with children ages 3–11 (N =1,605) and adolescents 12–18 (N =778) related to offspring behavioral, emotional, and academic outcomes and adolescent risky behavior. Both time mothers spent engaged with and accessible to offspring were assessed. In childhood and adolescence, the amount of maternal time did not matter for offspring behaviors, emotions, or academics, whereas social status factors were important. For adolescents, more engaged maternal time was related to fewer delinquent behaviors, and engaged time with parents together was related to better outcomes. Overall, the amount of mothers' time mattered in nuanced ways, and, unexpectedly, only in adolescence.

Children's Media Use and Homework Time

Homework is an important part of the academic production function, but often students are studying while doing another activity. Using the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement time diaries, this chapter explores changes over the period 1997–2008 in homework time for U.S. children in 1st through 12th grade when homework is done as a sole activity versus simultaneously with another activity. It documents with which technologies and media homework is done simultaneously and how the share of multitasking time differs by gender. This chapter also examines the correlation between childhood attention difficulties and multitasking while studying.

Family structure and child food insecurity.

We examined whether food insecurity was different for children in cohabiting or repartnered families versus those in single-mother or married-parent (biological) families. We compared probabilities of child food insecurity (CFI) across different family structures in 4 national data sets: the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (PSID-CDS). Unadjusted probabilities of CFI in cohabiting or repartnered families were generally higher than in married-biological-parent families and often statistically indistinguishable from those of single-mother families. However, after adjustment for sociodemographic factors, most differences between family types were attenuated and most were no longer statistically significant. Although children whose biological parents are cohabiting or whose biological mothers have repartnered have risks for food insecurity comparable to those in single-mother families, the probability of CFI does not differ by family structure when household income, family size, and maternal race, ethnicity, education, and age were held at mean levels.

Erratum: Single Mothers’ Time Preference, Smoking, and Enriching Childcare: Evidence from Time Diaries

Previous research has shown that time preference affects individuals’ market time allocation and own human capital investments. This paper uses data from the Current Population Survey-Tobacco Use Supplements, the American Time Use Survey, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement to examine how time preference, as measured by smoking behavior, affects mothers’ time investments in their children under age 13 and children's future test scores. The results indicate that single mothers who smoke spend significantly less time with their children in educational activities, such as reading and homework, and sharing meals with their children than non-smokers. Their children also have lower reading test scores.