Instability versus quality: residential mobility, neighborhood poverty, and children's self-regulation.
Prior research has found that higher residential mobility is associated with increased risk for children's academic and behavioral difficulty. In contrast, evaluations of experimental housing mobility interventions have shown moving from high poverty to low poverty neighborhoods to be beneficial for children's outcomes. This study merges these disparate bodies of work by considering how poverty levels in origin and destination neighborhoods moderate the influence of residential mobility on 5th graders' self-regulation. Using inverse probability weighting with propensity scores to minimize observable selection bias, this work found that experiencing a move during early or middle childhood was related to negative child outcomes (as indicated by increased behavioral and cognitive dysregulation measured via direct assessment and teacher-report) in 5th grade. However, these relationships were moderated by neighborhood poverty; moves out of low poverty and moves into high poverty neighborhoods were detrimental, while moves out of high poverty and moves into low poverty neighborhoods were beneficial.
Department of Applied Psychology, Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, & Human Development, New York University.
Amanda L
AL
Roy
Center on the Developing Child, Schools of Education and Public Health, Harvard University.
Dana Charles
DC
McCoy
Department of Applied Psychology, Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, & Human Development, New York University.
C Cybele
CC
Raver
D000328:Adult; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011203:Poverty / Q000523:psychology*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012927:Social Control, Informal; D055815:Young Adult