Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA; Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA; Department of Health Policy & Management, University of California Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2022 Jan;292:114544. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114544. Epub 2021 Nov 8.
Eviction upends children's lives and exacerbates deprivation; it remains largely unexamined as a determinant of cognitive development. We assess whether children evicted in infancy, early childhood, and middle childhood exhibit lower scores on four cognitive assessments (measuring executive function, mathematical reasoning, written language skills, and vocabulary skills) at age 9. Using linear regression and selection weights, we analyze longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a national, urban birth cohort (N = 1724 for eviction during infancy, 2126 for early childhood, 1979 for middle childhood). These stages of childhood follow the timing of FFCWS' data collection waves, with "infancy" data collected in the first year of life, "early childhood" in the third and fifth years of life, and "middle childhood" in the ninth year. In adjusted models, children evicted in middle childhood exhibited scores 0.20-0.43 SDs below similar children who were not (depending on the assessment; p-values = 0.004-0.055), the equivalent of as much as a full year of schooling. Point estimates of the association between eviction in infancy and 3/4 cognitive skills at age 9 were also large, but imprecisely estimated (between -0.25 and -0.28 SDs; p-values = 0.053-0.101), while point estimates for eviction in early childhood were near zero and statistically insignificant. Our large estimates for middle childhood and infancy, compared to earlier residential mobility studies, indicate downwardly mobile moves may exhibit more severe associations with future cognition. Estimates suggest preventing eviction may be a powerful, cost-effective way to safeguard children's cognitive development.
驱逐打乱了儿童的生活，加剧了贫困；它作为认知发展的一个决定因素，在很大程度上仍未被研究。我们评估婴儿期、幼儿期和儿童中期被驱逐的儿童在 9 岁时是否在四项认知评估（衡量执行功能、数学推理、书面语言技能和词汇技能）中得分较低。我们使用线性回归和选择权重，分析了来自脆弱家庭和儿童福利研究（FFCWS）的纵向数据，这是一项全国性的城市出生队列研究（婴儿期驱逐的 N=1724，幼儿期驱逐的 N=2126，儿童中期驱逐的 N=1979）。这些儿童期阶段符合 FFCWS 数据收集波的时间安排，“婴儿期”数据在生命的第一年收集，“幼儿期”在生命的第三和第五年收集，“儿童中期”在第九年收集。在调整后的模型中，儿童中期被驱逐的儿童的得分比没有被驱逐的类似儿童低 0.20-0.43 个标准差（取决于评估；p 值=0.004-0.055），相当于整整一年的学业。婴儿期驱逐与 9 岁时 3/4 项认知技能之间的关联的点估计值也很大，但估计不准确（在-0.25 和-0.28 个标准差之间；p 值=0.053-0.101），而幼儿期驱逐的点估计值接近零且无统计学意义。与早期居住流动性研究相比，我们对儿童中期和婴儿期的较大估计表明，向下流动的搬迁可能与未来认知能力的关联更严重。估计表明，防止驱逐可能是保护儿童认知发展的一种有力且具有成本效益的方法。
