School of Social Work, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ.
Silver School of Social Work, New York University, New York, NY.
Fam Process. 2020 Dec;59(4):1837-1855. doi: 10.1111/famp.12530. Epub 2020 Feb 25.
The extant literature has attested to the importance of poverty on child well-being generally using a unidimensional approach. Researchers have yet to establish solid evidence on how multiple dimensions of poverty (e.g., depth, volatility, and spells of exposure) might be associated with children's socioemotional well-being during their early school years. Building upon Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems theory, this study used latent class analysis to identify poverty patterns by incorporating multiple dimensions of poverty and investigated the relationship between multidimensional poverty patterns and children's socioemotional trajectories from kindergarten through fifth grade. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), a longitudinal dataset featuring a nationally representative cohort of children in the United States (N ≈ 20,090), the analysis identified seven poverty groups. Each group exhibited a unique poverty or economic pattern that incorporates the three poverty dimensions. Growth-curve results indicate that multidimensional poverty patterns were significantly associated with externalizing and internalizing behaviors both at kindergarten and over time by fifth grade. Children with the acutest form of economic deprivation-extreme poverty, volatile income, and multiple spells of poverty exposure-were reported to have the worst outcomes. The significant variations in children's socioemotional trajectories due to different poverty patterns highlight the importance of poverty reduction and prevention strategies corresponding to those patterns for optimal effect. This study suggests a focus not just on helping families exit poverty temporarily, but on improving their economic security as a way to nurture children's socioemotional well-being.
现有文献证明了贫困对儿童福祉的重要性，通常采用单一维度的方法。研究人员尚未确定多维度贫困（如贫困深度、波动性和贫困暴露期）如何与儿童在早期学校阶段的社会情感福祉相关的确切证据。本研究以布伦芬布伦纳的生物生态系统理论为基础，通过纳入多维度贫困来使用潜在类别分析来确定贫困模式，并调查了多维度贫困模式与儿童从幼儿园到五年级的社会情感轨迹之间的关系。利用幼儿纵向研究，幼儿园 1998-1999 年班（ECLS-K），这是一个具有美国全国代表性儿童队列的纵向数据集（N≈20,090），分析确定了七个贫困群体。每个群体都表现出一种独特的贫困或经济模式，包含三个贫困维度。增长曲线结果表明，多维度贫困模式与幼儿园和五年级时的外化和内化行为显著相关。报告称，经济剥夺最严重的儿童是那些处于极度贫困、收入波动和多次遭受贫困暴露的最严重形式的儿童。由于不同的贫困模式，儿童的社会情感轨迹存在显著差异，这凸显了针对这些模式的减贫和预防策略的重要性，以达到最佳效果。本研究表明，不仅要关注帮助家庭暂时摆脱贫困，还要关注提高他们的经济安全性，以培养儿童的社会情感福祉。
