With changing family structure and employment opportunities in the United States, young children are highly likely to experience residential mobility and neighborhood change. However, the effects of residential instability on young children are not well understood because research on this age group is limited. The proposed investigation fills this gap in the literature by investigating the precursors and consequences of residential mobility for young children's well-being. Building on the literature on family stress and neighborhood attainment, we propose and test a dynamic model of neighborhood change from infancy to age 5, with data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Using various analytic techniques, including growth curve modeling and survival analysis, we propose that the impact of residential mobility on child well-being varies with the quality of family events that precede mobility and the neighborhood conditions that follow it. Specifically, we examine determinants of residential mobility, including characteristics of parents, as well as changes in employment, marriage/cohabitation and economic circumstances. Subsequently, we investigate the consequences of residential mobility on neighborhood quality. Third, we examine the contribution of residential mobility and neighborhood conditions to child verbal ability and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems at age 5. In testing these predictions, we propose to geocode the five-year old Fragile Family dataset (wave 4). This application responds to RFA-OD-09-007, Academic Research Enhancement Award (R15), and is consistent with the purpose of this funding mechanism: to strengthen the NIH portfolio at the Graduate Center and to involve students in health research.
The proposed research addresses effects of residential mobility and neighborhood change on young children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Effects in early childhood are amenable to early intervention efforts to prevent long-term negative consequences of events that occur to very young children. Thus, public health interventions are likely to be more effective if delivered at early signs of problems than later when academic and behavioral problems may have accumulated.
