Changes in Poverty Status and Developmental Behaviours: A Comparison of Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Children in Canada - August 2000

5.1 Summary and discussions

Does moving out of poverty ameliorate young children's developmental behaviours? Does falling into poverty result in increases in children's behavioural problems? How do the behavioural problems of children living in persistently poor families change over time? These questions are the primary interests of this study. The results of our analyses indicated that we should not answer these questions in a simplistic way. Although the overall effects of economic changes in the family were rather weak and had no consistent directions in their influences on children's developmental outcomes, the context in which economic changes manifest or do not manifest their effects deserves detailed discussions.

The finding that children's developmental problems did not deteriorate among persistently poor families seems encouraging. However, among non-immigrant children in the 4- to 9-year-old age group, those living in persistently poor families definitely showed disadvantages in hyperactivity, emotional disorder, conduct disorder, and indirect aggression at cycle 2 of the survey. This is consistent with the findings of our previous cross-sectional analyses of cycle 1 data of the NLSCY (Beiser, Hou, Hyman and Tousignant 1998; 2000). The present results suggest that, although prolonged exposure to poverty may not further escalate children's developmental problems, young children living in persistent poverty experienced disadvantages that sustained over time.

A salient finding of this study was the conditional effect of absolute income change among families exhibiting recent movements out of poverty. Simply moving out of poverty may not be sufficient to improve conduct disorder and indirect aggression for non-immigrant children aged 4- to 9-years. A substantial improvement, approximately doubling the absolute income is needed in order to observe a significant impact on children's behavioural outcomes due to changes in poverty status. This pattern also applies to hyperactivity, emotional disorder, and conduct disorder among children in the group of 10- to 11-year-olds.

A different conditional effect of absolute income was found among persistently poor non-immigrant families. For non-immigrant children in the 4-to-9-year-old age group, increases in absolute income were associated with increases in children's emotional disorder, conduct disorder, and indirect aggression. Detailed analyses suggest a tentative explanation: small economic gains might not compensate poverty-related psychological harm to parents and children. While some families in persistent poverty experienced some economic gains, the increases were typically small, and kept the family within the poverty zone. Furthermore, parents in persistently poor families who showed increases in absolute income were more likely to move into employment and consequently receive less, or even be disqualified for welfare payments.

Thus, while the transition from welfare dependence to employment resulted in small gains in absolute income that were not enough to pull the family out of poverty, parents might experience elevated stress from working at low-paying jobs. In addition, these working parents might spend less time with their children than they did previously. The conditional effect of absolute income change among families in persistent poverty seemed to be in the opposite direction to that observed among families recently moving out of poverty, but both effects may essentially tell the same story: small increases in absolute income are not going to improve children's developmental outcomes.

The scenario for immigrant children is different: immigrant children in persistently poor families seemed to benefit from small absolute income increases. Absolute income increases tended to reduce hyperactivity, conduct disorder, and indirect aggression for immigrant children living in persistently poor families. The difference in this conditional effect between immigrant and non-immigrant children may be related to their differential associations between changes in poverty status and other economic changes. Our descriptive analyses indicated that persistently poor immigrant families were far less likely to depend on welfare than their non-immigrant counterparts. Immigrant families recently falling into poverty were also less likely to persistently depend on welfare or become dependent on welfare than their non-immigrant counterparts. Furthermore, among persistently poor families, immigrant parents were much more likely to be employed during the two-year study period than non-immigrant parents. Thus, gains in absolute income among persistently poor immigrant families were less likely to be associated with the transition from welfare dependence to employment.

Furthermore, immigrant families in persistent poverty tended to have lower average income than their non-immigrant counterparts, probably because they were not protected by the social welfare to the same extent as non-immigrant families were. Thus, it is possible that poor immigrant families fell deeper in poverty and their children suffered a larger degree of material deprivation. Consequently, poor immigrant children could benefit more directly from small increases in absolute income.

The conditional effect of absolute income changes was also observed among immigrant families that recently fell into poverty. Larger decreases in absolute income were associated with higher levels of conduct disorder, indirect aggression, and to a lesser degree, hyperactivity. For newly poor non-immigrant families, this conditional effect presented only for conduct disorder.

Changes in welfare dependence had no significant effect in most cases, in some instances, their significant effects were not in consistent directions. When other economic and parental factors were controlled, persistent dependence on welfare had no significant detrimental impact on children's developmental outcomes.

Changes in parents' employment status also had no significant effects on children's developmental outcomes among non-immigrant families. Of the five selected outcomes, there was only one significant relationship among non-immigrant children in the 4- to 9-year-old age group.

By comparison, parents' employment did not seem beneficial to immigrant children's developmental outcomes. For instance, when parents found new employment, immigrant children's hyperactivity and indirect aggression elevated. In contrast, when parents became unemployed, immigrant children's emotional disorder and conduct disorder reduced. If both parents were without jobs at both cycles of the survey, children tended to have lower levels of emotional disorder and indirect aggression. It is possible that parental attention is much more indispensable for immigrant children since new immigrant relative to non-immigrant families tended to have smaller social networks to support the care of their children, and a smaller economic capacity to access other child care services.

For non-immigrant children in the 4- to 9-year-old age group, a consistent finding across the five selected outcomes indicated that the transition from single-parent family status to a two-parent family was just as detrimental to children's developmental behaviours as invariable single-parent family status. Moreover, children living in newly formed two-parent families or persistently single-parent families had worse outcomes than children who always lived in two-parent families. It is possible that any form of family transition may constitute an environment that impacts negatively on children. On the other hand, our results also showed that breakdown from a two-parent to a single-parent family reduced children's conduct disorder. And, in most cases, children in newly broken-up families had similar levels of developmental outcomes as those always living with both parents. A potential explanation might be that only those troubled marriages or partnerships were going to break up, and that children might be better off living with a single parent than staying with two parents with a dysfunctional relationship (Anderson et al. 1999; Hetherington and Stanley-Hagan 1999). These patterns were rather similar for children in the 10- to 11-year-old age group, most of whom were from non-immigrant families. For immigrant children, family breakdown was associated with increased levels of hyperactivity, emotional disorder, and indirect aggression.

Among non-immigrant families, economic changes were not as important as changes in parental characteristics in influencing children's developmental outcomes, although the differences were often not substantial. Among immigrant families, however, changes in the economic situation were often more important than changes in parental characteristics. This result is consistent with our hypothesis that changes in family economic situation have a stronger impact on immigrant children than non-immigrant children.

Furthermore, we found rather weak correlations between changes in poverty status and changes in parental characteristics. In particular, persistently poor or newly poor families were more likely to experience improvements rather than deteriorations in parenting, family function, and the mental health of parents. Thus, although poverty was generally associated with poor parenting, family dysfunction, and parental depression, the strength of this association may not increase over time.

Without significant and strong correlations between changes in poverty status and changes in parental characteristics, and without strong relations between changes in poverty status and developmental outcomes, the role of parental characteristics in mediating the effects of economic change was not evident. This finding seems inconsistent with the results of previous cross-sectional analyses. Studies using cycle 1 data of the NLSCY suggested that the effects of poverty on child development were mostly through parenting, family function, and parental mental health (Beiser, Hou, Hyman and Tousignant 1998). In interpreting this seeming inconsistency, we have to keep in mind that our longitudinal analyses were about changes. In our conditional change panel models, we controlled for the previous level of the developmental outcome, thus previously-existing connections among developmental outcome, poverty, and parental characteristics were taken into account.

5.2 Policy implications

For most low-income families, the primary way to improve their economic situation is for parents to move into gainful and stable employment from welfare dependence, unemployment, or low-paying jobs. This up-moving process may take many years, and the income increments may be small and gradual for low-income families that are typically headed by parents without adequate educational level, job skills and work experiences. To promote this process, government programs for job training and placement should incorporate support for long-term education and skills upgrading. Currently, many training programs for welfare recipients and the unemployed are oriented toward the shortest possible route to employment. Many provincial and territorial welfare-to-work program reforms in the 1990s tended to move welfare recipients off assistance and into low-wage and unstable employment (Canadian Council on Social Development 1999). However, when reduced benefits are replaced with low wages and payroll taxes, families may get less take-home pay, and consequently, loss of the incentives to work (AIMS 2000).

Sustained and substantial improvement in family income is important to the benefits of children in low-income families. Our analyses indicated that transition out of poverty doesn't immediately improve children's developmental outcomes. A significant beneficial effect of moving out of poverty is conditioned on a substantial improvement in living condition. This finding supports the argument that reducing child poverty simply through increasing total cash payments to poor welfare families is a shortsighted approach (AIMS 2000). Programs designed to reduce child poverty should not be expected to result in clear and quick effects on child developmental outcomes.

In many ways, children in poor families certainly will benefit from improvement in family economic situation. However, increases in income are not the only, and not even the primary, factor influencing children's developmental behaviours. Moreover, as our study results suggest, small income increases in the transition from welfare dependence to low-paying labour market may have detrimental consequences, probably due to elevated stress of the parents and reduced time that parents can interact with the child (Zaslow et al. 1998). Therefore, measures to help poor families reduce welfare dependence and move into employment must be supplemented by comprehensive child-focussed supports. Most recent provincial and territorial welfare-to-work programs have not adequately addressed the needs of families with young children. Furthermore, these programs are generally evaluated on the basis of cost saving, but not on the outcomes of recipients and their family members, especially their children (Canadian Council on Social Development 1999).

Research in the United States has indicated the importance of non-economic strategies in achieving the adult-focussed goals of welfare reform (Cauthen and Knitzer, 1999; Gomby and Larner 1995). In addition to programs promoting employment and increased family income, comprehensive policies must be in place to provide high-quality child care, early childhood development programs, family support activities, and to address other specialized child and family needs.

Government policies should incorporate the special needs of different segments of the population. Our results found that immigrant families were more likely to experience poverty but poor immigrant families were less likely to access, and derive benefits from the social welfare system than non-immigrant families. Probably because poor immigrant children suffered a higher extent of material deprivation, they responded to increases in family income more directly and positively than poor non-immigrant children in terms of the improvement in developmental behaviours. This finding highlights the urgent needs to reduce the depth of poverty among new immigrant families with young children. Although many new immigrant parents may not meet current regulations to receive social welfare, their children should not suffer as a consequence. Immigrant children are the fastest growing component of Canada's child population. Their successful adjustment and development will have profound impacts on Canadian society.

Our study results also indicated that between 1994/95 and 1996/97, immigrant families did not enjoy the same degree of economic improvement, and faced a more volatile job market, even though they were more likely to participate in the labour force than non-immigrant families. This finding may be not applicable to all immigrant families since the survey only covered those with young children, and thus were likely to be new immigrant families. Therefore, the finding may reflect the initial resettlement difficulties that often confront new immigrants, and again calls for more comprehensive resettlement policies to help new immigrants fully realize their potentials.

Poor immigrant families may face different obstacles in improving their economic situation than poor non-immigrant families. For many poor non-immigrants families, the challenge is more likely to be the transition from welfare dependence or unemployment to employment. For many poor immigrant families, by comparison, the challenges are more likely to be language barriers, Canadian working experience, underemployment, and care for children when parents are working. Our finding that immigrant children's developmental behaviours tended to improve when they parents were unemployed, and deteriorate when their parents were employed suggests that immigrant children would greatly benefit from better child care supports.

5.3 Further studies

More detailed studies are needed in order to fully understand the impact of poverty and changes in poverty status, as well as their policy implications. For example, our current analyses were limited by a rather short period of follow-up. To understand the effects of prolonged exposure to poverty, or frequently moving into or out of poverty, we need to analyse future cycles of NLSCY data. Effects of exposure to poverty in early childhood may not unfold until a later developmental stage.

Another limitation of our comparison between immigrant and non-immigrant children was the restricted size of the NLSCY immigrant child sample. First, the small longitudinal component of immigrant child sample prevented a separate analysis of foreign born children and Canadian-born children of immigrant parents. Second, the small sample size precluded finer-grained analyses to investigate whether the mental health advantages applied to immigrant children from different immigrant classes (such as refugees vs independent immigrants) and from various cultural or ethnic backgrounds. Sample constraints also obviated the investigation of protective factors which might further have explained the apparent resilience of immigrant children.

The current study found weak associations between changes in family poverty status and changes in parental characteristics such as parenting styles, parental depression, and family functions. This finding seems at odds with the common proposition that parental characteristics mediate the impact of poverty on child development. Further analyses need to examine whether the association is conditioned by the amount of income changes.

Finally, further studies need to examine social contextual determinants of children's responses to poverty. Some U.S. studies have examined the modifying effects of neighbourhood characteristics, such as rate of family poverty and the proportion of same-race residents, and urbanicity (Wilson 1991). For instance, poor Hispanic and American Indian children living in impoverished communities are disadvantaged relative to their peers living in affluent neighbourhoods (McLoed and Edwards 1995). One US study revealed that poor minority children experienced a higher risk of mental disorders in urban than in rural areas, while white children demonstrated the opposite pattern (Amato and Zuo 1992).