CAREER: Sibling, Cousin and Neighbor Differences in Child Development

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES-9983636 Dalton Conley This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant funds a four year education and research program that investigates the dynamic impact of family background on child development using kinship models. Traditional sociological approaches to assessing the impact of social forces on child health and development rely on a number of measured variables such as race, parental education, parental occupation and income as proxies for family background. The projects will examine an alternate approach--investigating the impact of "background" through comparing the similarity in health and development outcomes among children from the same family, extended family, and community origin (i.e., siblings, cousins and neighbors, respectively). Intra-family differences in developmental outcomes provide the counter-factual to processes of social stratification, so by understand the patterns that governs such differences, we can potentially better understand the process by which health and developmental inequality is transmitted across generations. The study seeks to explore a number of related questions: (1) what specific developmental risks tend to cluster within families and which are more individually specific?, (2) why are the developmental outcomes of some sets of siblings, cousins or childhood neighbors relatively similar, while others demonstrate great health and developmental disparities?, (3) given such intra-family differences, how do family transitions lead to different outcomes for children reared in the same household?, (4) how do siblings affect each other's development?, (5) how well do our current measures of social economic status explain between family differences in child outcomes?, (6) does extended family and neighborhoods have an influence?, and (7) at what age is the family environment the most important for child development? Data on developmental outcomes (i.e., physical health status, mental health, cognitive development and behavioral problems will be analyzed from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Supplement, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Mother-Child linked data file, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The educational component of this CAREER award includes developing two new courses, one graduate and one undergraduate. The graduate course will merge the research being conducted in the teaching of quantitative methods to make advanced statistics less abstract and more accessible to student. The undergraduate course will draw its material from the ongoing research funded by this grant. That is, the course will present theories and data on the impact of family background on child development, educational success and adult socio-economic status.