Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

Studies of intergenerational mobility have long since established that household income is related to child outcomes. Less is known about the specifics of how and why these variables are related, but it is likely that a large part of this association is due to parenting characteristics.

Using recent, nationally representative longitudinal data sets (the Panel Study for Income Dynamics Child Development Survey and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study), my dissertation will provide a thorough and up-to-date examination of these variables’ interrelationships in three studies of how household income and parenting practices—degree of cognitive stimulation and emotional warmth in parent-child interactions, degree of parental involvement in school activities, and use of high-quality childcare—are related to each other and to child cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

Study 1 will examine cross-time associations among long-term income, parenting resources, and child cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Study 2 will use fixed-effects analyses to examine how cross-time changes in within-child family income, parenting resources, and child outcomes are associated. Finally, Study 3 will examine how type and characteristics of non-parental early childcare type—that is, preschool and kindergarten, Head Start, or non-program care versus only parental care—are associated with later child outcomes.

Funding Source: Marshall Weinberg Research Fellowship