FAMILY STRUCTURE, NEIGHBORHOODS AND CHILD WELL BEING

强有力的研究已经证明了童年生活安排对儿童和青少年的各种社会、经济和人口风险因素的强烈影响。然而，这项研究提供的关于这些影响的作用机制的信息有限。与这项研究平行但单独发展的是，越来越多的研究记录了社区社会和经济状况对同样的青少年结果的影响。然而，尽管儿童时期的居住安排及其变化是决定住房流动性和位置的重要因素，但这些因素的联合影响尚未得到充分探讨。这项拟议的项目提供了对这些动态的重新审视，重点关注童年生活安排、居住流动性和社区环境对两种青春期结果的风险的联合影响，这两种结果与以后的生活中的家庭形成和经济稳定密切相关：婚前生育和高中辍学。这项研究旨在解决四个主要问题：1)童年生活安排和社区环境在多大程度上对高中辍学和经历婚前生育的可能性产生独立影响？2)居住流动性和社区特征是否缓和了童年生活安排的影响？3)社区特征和居住流动性是否中介了童年生活安排的影响？以及4)在多大程度上，种族差异可以用家庭构成变化后居住结果的种族差异来解释儿童生活安排的影响？为了解决这些问题，该项目将利用收入动态小组研究中的数据，这些数据与描述人口普查地区和其他地理单位的社会经济和人口状况的普查数据相联系。Logistic回归技术和离散时间事件历史分析将被用来检验经历婚前分娩的年度风险、高中辍学的年度风险以及在20岁之前完成高中学业的可能性。在预测这些结果时，童年的生活安排、流动性和邻里条件被视为青春期期间的时变协变量，也被总结到所有童年时期，从而避免了使用从单个时间点采取的措施给先前的研究带来的潜在偏差。

Strong research has documented strong effects of childhood living arrangements on a variety of social, economic, and demographic risk factors for children and adolescents. However, this research provides limited information about the mechanisms through which these effects operate. Paralleling this research, but developing separately, is a growing body of research documenting the impacts of neighborhood social and economic conditions on the same adolescent outcomes. Yet despite the fact that childhood living arrangements, and changes therein, are important determinants of residential mobility and location, the joint impact of these factors has yet to be fully explored. The proposed project offers a reexamination of these dynamics, focusing on the joint effects of childhood living arrangements, residential mobility, and neighborhood context on the risk of two adolescent outcomes closely linked to family formation and economic stability later in life: premarital childbearing and dropping out of high school. The research is designed to address four main questions: 1) To what extent do childhood living arrangements and neighborhood context exert independent effects on the likelihood of dropping out of high school and of experiencing a premarital birth?; 2) Do residential mobility and neighborhood characteristics moderate the effects of childhood living arrangements?; 3) Do neighborhood characteristics and residential mobility mediate the effects of childhood living arrangements?; and 4) To what extent can racial differences in the effects of childhood living arrangements be explained by racial differences in residential outcomes following a change in family composition? To address these questions, the project will utilize data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked with census data describing the socioeconomic and demographic conditions of census tracts and other geographic units. Logistic regression techniques and discrete-time event history analysis will be used to examine the annual risk of experiencing a premarital childbirth, the annual hazard of dropping out of high school, and the likelihood of completing high school prior to age 20. In predicting these outcomes, childhood living arrangements, mobility, and neighborhood conditions are treated as time-varying covariates during adolescence and are also summarized across all childhood years, thereby avoiding the potential bias introduced to previous research by the use of measures taken from a single point in time.