Understanding the Early Years - Early Childhood Development in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - November 2002

III. How family background affects children's preparedness for a good start in life

In this section, information about the relationship between family background and children's outcomes is presented, and the family background of the children in Saskatoon is described. The relationship between family background and children's outcomes is not straightforward. An important goal of Understanding the Early Years is to distinguish the effects of family background, and those associated with family processes and community factors on children's outcomes. All three sets of contributing factors were measured. First, information on seven characteristics of family background are presented. In an earlier study of children's development, based on the national sample of children who participated in the first cycle of the NLSCY, these family background characteristics were significantly related to a range of children's developmental outcomes.

The values, calculated for the seven family background characteristics, are:

• Family income (in $10,000 units): considered to be low if less than $25,000.
• Mother's level of education: considered to be low if the mother did not complete high school.
• Father's level of education: considered to be low if the father did not complete high school.
• Mother's employment status: considered not working outside the home if the mother worked fewer than 25 weeks during the past year.
• Father's employment status: considered not working outside the home if the father worked fewer than 25 weeks during the past year.
• Single-parent family: only one parent or guardian living at home.
• Number of brothers and sisters: the number of siblings living at home.

Figures 3.1 and 3.2 show the relative levels of income, education, employment, and single-parenthood for families in the community, as well as provincial, and national levels for 1996/97. About 34.8% of families in Saskatoon were considered low income, compared with about 24.2% in Saskatchewan and 22% in Canada. These figures include single-parent families. The threshold for "low income" of $25,000 was used instead of the Statistics Canada low-income cut-off (i.e., LICO which adjusts for family size), as the former provides a means of assessing the absolute effects of income alongside the other measures used in the regression analyses.

About 86% of the children's mothers and fathers had completed high school. Compared with provincial averages (90.6%), mothers in Saskatoon had relatively low levels of education (85.7%), although this percentage is comparable to the national average. For fathers, the percentage of 86% is above the provincial and national figures (80.6% and 83.5% respectively).

Almost 31% of families were headed by a single parent, much more than the provincial average of 18.2% and almost double the national average of 16.6%.

The prevalence of parents in Saskatoon who were not working outside the home was higher than provincial and national averages for both mothers and fathers. About 60% of mothers were working outside the home, compared with about 67% provincially and 64% nationally.

Similarly, only 90% of men were working outside the home, compared with 95% provincially and 91% nationally.

The most striking demographic differences associated with Saskatoon families with young children are the high percentages of low-income and single-parent families. Over one-third of Saskatoon families had incomes below $25,000. Also, only about 70% of the children in Saskatoon were in two-parent families, while provincial and national figures are above 80%. Also, Saskatoon has a higher percentage of families of Aboriginal origin (18.1%), than either Saskatchewan (12.8%) or Canada overall (4.4%).

The map describing the socioeconomic status of Saskatoon families (Figure 1.1) indicated more affluent families are located on the east side of the city and along the South Saskatchewan River. The maps describing EDI outcomes (Figures 2.3 to 2.7) only weakly reflected these disparities in family background. Therefore, socio-economic and demographic factors alone do not explain why some children are better prepared in their cognitive and behavioural skills when they enter school.

A. The effects of family background factors on children's development

The analysis focussed on the factors contributing to whether or not a child had significantly low scores in one of the three developmental domains, these being the cognitive domain, the behavioural domain, and physical health and well-being. Children with very low scores are at risk of not achieving their full potential during the schooling years.

A child was considered to be at risk in the cognitive domain if he or she had a low score (i.e., below the 10% threshold) on the Receptive Vocabulary Test, the Developmental Assessment (Who Am I ?), or on the two cognitive domains of the Early Development Instrument.

Similarly, a child was considered at risk in the behavioural domain if he or she had a low score on the Positive Behaviour scale or on either of the two domains of the EDI pertaining to behaviour, or had any one of the four behaviour problems.

A child was considered at risk in the physical health domain if he or she scored below the low-score threshold on the Physical Health and Well-being domain of the EDI.

The analysis below focuses on positive outcomes, that is, it asks whether children will have a "good start in life". Children who are not vulnerable in any of the three domains are likely to have a better chance of achieving their full potential during the schooling years. Therefore, for each of the family background factors, the odds-ratio associated with whether a child was not at risk in these three domains was estimated (see Table 3.1) using the sample of children from all seven of the 2001-02 UEY communities. Thus, the results indicated in Table 3.1 apply to all 2001-02 communities, and are not specific to Saskatoon.

The results indicate that family income and the educational level of the mother are important protective factors for cognitive development. For example, the odds of being not at risk in the cognitive domain for a child living in a family with an income of $40,000 is about 7% greater than a child who had similar background characteristics but had a family income of $30,000. Similarly, each additional year of education of a child's mother or father increases the odds of not being at risk in the cognitive domain by about 8% to 11%.

In contrast, children whose parents were not working outside the home were more likely to be at risk in the cognitive domain, as were children living in single-parent families. The effects of these factors were considerable: each was associated with an increase in the odds of being at risk by about 29% to 42%.

The effects of family background for the behavioural domain were consistent with the effects for cognitive development, but they were generally weaker and not statistically significant. The exception was living in a single-parent family. Children from single-parent families were on average about 29% more likely to be at risk.

These effects of family income and mother's education were similar for children's physical health and well-being: a $10,000 increase in family income was associated with a 12% decrease in the odds of being at risk, and each additional year of mother's education was associated with an 12% decrease in the odds of being at risk. The other family background effects were not statistically significant.

These findings pertain to the relationships among developmental outcomes and family background for all families and children who participated in the seven UEY 2001-02 communities. It is important to note that not all children in low income or single-parent families have poor developmental outcomes. Some children from low-income or single-parent families have average or above-average scores on the outcome measures used in the study. Similarly, there are some children from high-income families, and families with two parents, who did not fare well on the developmental measures. Thus, the relationships observed only indicate that a child is more likely to experience difficulties in these developmental domains if he or she is from a poor family or a single parent family.

Given these relationships between children's outcomes in these domains and family income and maternal education, and the relatively high prevalence of families with low income or low levels of education in this particular community, the relatively strong performance of the children on some outcomes is not surprising. These results also indicate that the prevalence of children with behaviour problems is higher among single-parent families. Saskatoon has an especially high percentage of single parent families, which may account to some extent for the relatively high prevalence of children with behaviour problems. However, it is likely that other aspects of family and community life have also influenced children's outcomes. These factors are examined in the next section.