The Development of Low Income Children in the Context of Welfare and Food Stamps

说明(由申请人提供)：拟议研究的首要目标是审查家庭使用公共援助福利、家庭背景和低收入儿童和青少年发展之间的联系。使用来自幼儿纵向研究-幼儿园队列的具有全国代表性的数据，这项工作将解决三个具体目标：1)检查父母使用公共援助计划，包括收入支持(例如，TANF)和实物支持(例如，食品券)与儿童的身体健康、心理健康和认知发展之间的独特关系；2)检查这些关系是否随着计划使用的时间和持续时间而变化；以及3)调查家庭层面的公共援助福利和儿童发展成果之间的关系的调停者和调节者。将使用各种分析技术来解决这些目标，包括倾向得分分析、潜在曲线建模、有限混合建模和结构方程建模。这项研究的结果将扩大关于低收入家庭获得的公共援助福利如何与儿童发展有关的现有信息，提供对福利使用的时间和持续时间如何改变这些关系的细微差别检查，并阐明宏观政策可以通过哪些发展进程影响儿童的发展。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overarching goal of the proposed research is to examine associations between family use of public assistance benefits, family contexts, and the development of low-income children and adolescents. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, this work will address three specific aims: 1) to examine unique relations between parents' use of public assistance programs, including income support (i.e., TANF) and in-kind support (i.e., food stamps), and children's physical health, mental health, and cognitive development, 2) to examine whether these relations vary according to the timing and duration of program use, and 3) to investigate family-level mediators and moderators of relations between public assistance benefits and children's developmental outcomes. A variety of analytic techniques will be employed to address these goals, including propensity score analysis, latent curve modeling, finite mixture modeling, and structural equation modeling. Results of this research will expand existing information concerning how public assistance benefits received by low-income families relate to children's development, provide a nuanced examination of how timing and duration of benefit use alter these relationships, and illuminate developmental processes through which macro-level policies can affect children's development.