This project investigates the degree to which higher rates of health problems among race/ethnic minority children of all economic strata and among poor children from all race/ethnic populations prior to the start of elementary school put them at an academic disadvantage once elementary school has begun. Because health is a policy amenable developmental factor and the transition to elementary school is a critical intervention point in the educational career, such research provides leverage in attempts to address the persistent, overlapping race/ethnic and economic gaps in educational attainment in the early life course that forecast increasing inequalities in social mobility, morbidity, and mortality in adulthood. Drawing on a classic theoretical perspective that targets the development processes surrounding the transition into elementary school as fundamental to demographic disparities in educational attainment, this project puts forward and tests a conceptual model positing that the poorer physical and mental health of African-American and Latino/a children (controlling for economic status) and of economically disadvantaged children (controlling for race/ethnicity) in the pre-school years contribute to their lower rates of academic achievement in school. Importantly, this project will also explore the mechanisms underlying the academic risks of early health problems and identify aspects of family organization, pre-school programs, elementary school classrooms, and home-school partnerships that protect against these academic risks in general and in traditionally disadvantaged populations in particular. A team of population scientists working with senior consultants from medicine, developmental psychology, and social work will conduct this research. Specifically, this team will apply multi-level, growth curve, and propensity score techniques to two NIH-funded data sets the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, which oversamples the disadvantaged side of the socioeconomic spectrum of American families, and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which oversamples the more advantaged side and then supplement this quantitative investigation with analysis of qualitative data to be collected from teachers and parents in a low-income, racially diverse elementary school. This interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed-methods investigation is specifically designed to elucidate the role of child health in the reproduction of overlapping systems of race/ethnic and economic stratification in ways that directly inform social policy.This project delves into a timely and significant public health issue: the contribution of the connection between health problems and academic struggles in early childhood to the race/ethnic and economic stratification of American society. The main goals are to determine a means by which demographic inequalities are transmitted across generations in ways that affect population rates of morbidity and mortality and then to identify potential policy-amenable remedies to this process. ? ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01HD055359-01A1
Application #
7380243
Study Section
Psychosocial Development, Risk and Prevention Study Section (PDRP)
Program Officer
King, Rosalind B
Project Start
2008-08-01
Project End
2011-07-31
Budget Start
2008-08-01
Budget End
2009-07-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$242,597
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Texas Austin
Department
Social Sciences
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
170230239
City
Austin
State
TX
Country
United States
Zip Code
78712
Benner, Aprile D; Thornton, Anna; Crosnoe, Robert (2017) Children's exposure to sustainability practices during the transition from preschool into school and their learning and socioemotional development. Appl Dev Sci 21:121-134
Crosnoe, Robert; Purtell, Kelly M; Davis-Kean, Pamela et al. (2016) The selection of children from low-income families into preschool. Dev Psychol 52:599-612
Crosnoe, Robert; Ansari, Arya; Purtell, Kelly M et al. (2016) Latin American Immigration, Maternal Education, and Approaches to Managing Children's Schooling in the United States. J Marriage Fam 78:60-74
Ansari, Arya; Crosnoe, Robert (2016) Children's Hyperactivity, Television Viewing, and The Potential for Child Effects. Child Youth Serv Rev 61:135-140
Crosnoe, Robert; Benner, Aprile D; Davis-Kean, Pamela (2016) Preschool Enrollment, Classroom Instruction, Elementary School Context, and the Reading Achievement of Children from Low-Income Families. Res Sociol Educ 19:19-47
Hill, Terrence D; Burdette, Amy M; Taylor, John et al. (2016) Religious Attendance and the Mobility Trajectories of Older Mexican Americans: An Application of the Growth Mixture Model. J Health Soc Behav 57:118-34
Ansari, Arya; Purtell, Kelly; Gershoff, Elizabeth (2016) Classroom Age Composition and the School Readiness of 3- and 4-Year-Olds in the Head Start Program. Psychol Sci 27:53-63
Martin-Storey, Alexa; Prickett, Kate C; Crosnoe, Robert (2015) Family process correlates of firearm ownership and firearm storage among families with young children. Matern Child Health J 19:17-24
Crosnoe, Robert; Ansari, Arya (2015) Latin American immigrant parents and their children's teachers in U.S. early childhood education programmes. Int J Psychol 50:431-9
Augustine, Jennifer; Prickett, Kate Chambers; Kendig, Sarah et al. (2015) Maternal Education and the Link between Birth Timing and Children's School Readiness. Soc Sci Q 96:970-984

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