Economic Stress & Child Development Across 3 Generations

这项申请寻求5年的支持，以调查家庭经济压力在幼儿发展中的作用。拟议中的项目将扩大之前对500多名早期青少年的研究，该研究始于1989年，至今仍在继续。再资助5年，将有可能检查12岁至32岁的队列成员的生活轨迹。这项研究的参与者在中西部农村地区的经济萧条时期长大。该项目的早期阶段研究了这些艰苦经历如何影响队列成员(G2)及其父母(G1)的生活。下一阶段的研究将把调查范围扩大到成员中最年长的孩子(G3) 原始队列。关于青春期和成年期早期两代人的丰富信息档案(例如，关于个性、精神障碍、教育和工作、信仰、价值观和认知能力的多信息者报告)为评估个人特征和经济状况对儿童发展的综合影响提供了独特的机会。具体地说，这项研究将考察：(1)G2父母的个人特征如何影响G1和G2世代之间经济困难的连续性(代际假设)，(2)家庭压力过程的联系程度 (2)G2经济困难与G3发展(家庭压力假说)；(3)父母对子女的投资是否将G2经济困难与G3发展联系起来(父母投资假说)；以及(4)G2早期特征是否解释了G2经济困难和儿童发展，从而消除了经济压力和儿童发展之间的联系(虚假假说)。研究结果将提供有关经济困难可能造成的健康和发展后果的脆弱性和复原力的重要新信息。由于这项研究的长期、多代、前瞻性的设计，以及广泛使用的多信息措施 为了描述G2和调查中估计的250名G3儿童的发育情况，这项研究具有独特的地位，可以评估几个关于经济压力和儿童生活的相互竞争的假说，这些假说在以前的研究中没有得到充分的解决。

This application seeks 5 years of support to investigate the role of family economic stress in the development of young children. The proposed project will extend previous research on a cohort of over 500 early adolescents that began in 1989 and continues today. Funding for 5 more years will make it possible to examine the life trajectories of cohort members from 12 to 32 years of age. The participants in the study grew up during a time of economic depression in the rural Midwest. Earlier phases of the project have examined how those hardship experiences influenced the lives of cohort members (G2) and their parents (G1). The next phase of the research will extend the investigation to the oldest child (G3) of members of the original cohort. The rich archive of information on the G2 generation during adolescence and early adulthood (e.g., multi-informant reports on personality, psychiatric disorders, education and work, beliefs, values, and cognitive abilities) provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the combined influence of personal characteristics and economic circumstances on child development. Specifically, the study will examine: (1) how personal characteristics of G2 parents influence continuity in economic hardship between the G1 and G2 generations (the intergenerational hypothesis), (2) the degree to which family stress processes connect G2 economic hardship to G3 development (the family stress hypothesis), (3) whether parental investments in children link G2 economic hardship to G3 development (the parental investments hypothesis), and (4) whether earlier G2 characteristics explain both G2 hardship and child development, thus eliminating the connection between economic stress and child development (the spuriousness hypothesis). Results of the study will provide important new information regarding vulnerability and resilience to the possible health and developmental consequences of economic hardship. Because of the long-term, multi-generational, prospective design of the study, and because of the broad spectrum of multi-informant measures used to describe the development of G2 and the estimated 250 G3 children in the investigation, this research is uniquely positioned to evaluate several competing hypotheses regarding economic stress and children's lives that have not been adequately addressed in previous studies.