Poverty, Anxiety, and Child Achievement: A secondary data analysis of the NICHD study of early child care

Eric Dearing

Using secondary data analyses of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), child anxiety will be examined as an intervening link between family income and children’s cognitive, language, and achievement outcomes. It is hypothesized that child anxiety will statistically mediate (i.e., help explain) associations between family economic resources and child outcomes. In cross-sectional analyses, poverty has been linked with a heightened risk of developing anxiety problems, and child anxiety has been associated with academic performance, above and beyond measures of intelligence and cognitive functioning. It remains unclear, however, whether changes in family income lead to changes in child anxiety and, in turn, changes in child performance. The present study is designed to answer this question by examining changes in family income and anxiety over a five-year period in early childhood (i.e., 24 months to first grade). It is expected that increases in family economic resources will be associated with decreases in child anxiety that, in turn, will be associated with higher levels of child achievement. These pathways of association are expected to be stronger for children living in poverty than other children. In addition, it is predicted that neighborhood financial resources will interact with family financial resources such that relatively high levels of economic resources within neighborhoods are expected to increase the positive impact of family income gains and decrease the negative impact of family income losses on child anxiety and, in turn, cognitive, language, and achievement outcomes. In other words, high levels of neighborhood economic resources are expected to enhance the protective function of income gains and buffer the risk associated with income losses.

About Eric Dearing

Dr. Eric Dearing’s research is focused on child development in the context of family and neighborhood poverty. He is particularly interested in modeling stability and change in economic risk and their effects on children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development. Dr. Dearing received his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. After two years working with families enrolled in early childhood intervention programs, Dr. Dearing attended graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, where he completed his doctoral degree in psychology. Presently, he is a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry at Judge Baker Children’s Center, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Dearing will begin his appointment as Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming in the fall of 2003.