Children & Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty

While parents are judged constantly, by fellow parents and by wider society, the consequences of judging parents may extend beyond community reputation and social status: one of the harshest potential consequences of parental judgement is the state’s termination of parental rights. In these cases, impoverished parents who live in rural places suffer harsher judgements as they do not have ready access to state supported parenting programs. This project calls attention to the plight of poor rural families in gaining access to state funded programs that would improve their parenting outcomes.

Health outcomes for children and adults vary dramatically across neighborhoods, even after statistically controlling for various individual- or family-level risk and protective factors. These patterns have generated concern among both policymakers and scientists that health outcomes may be causally affected by neighborhood attributes. In this paper, researchers estimate the causal effects on child mortality from moving into less distressed neighborhood environments.

Considerable evidence shows that low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with poorer physical health, emotional well-being, and cognitive functioning for both children and adults. SES also appears to be an important predictor of problem behaviors in childhood and adolescence, such as delinquency, aggression, conduct problems at school, and other externalizing behaviors. Furthermore, research has linked child and adolescent problem behavior to adverse outcomes later in life, including school drop-out, forgoing post-secondary education, longterm unemployment in adulthood, and time spent in correctional facilities. In this study, researchers examine how SES in one generation affects the next generation in order to aid prevention research by better identifying the best points at which to interrupt negative cascades.