Stay Informed!

By Kirsten Kainz, Guest Contributor and Carl Rist on 01/17/2012 @ 01:00 PM

Tags: Financial Empowerment, Rural

Last month's announcement of the latest Race to the Top grantees – this time a group of nine states that won awards under the first-ever Early Learning Challenge – points out the critical role that states play in early childhood development. In carrying out this role, state leaders and early childhood advocates should be aware of a new study that investigates the relationships among income, material hardship, assets and child outcomes for children living in rural communities in the U.S.

Using data from the Family Life Project (FLP), a prospective longitudinal study of child development in a rural section of the United States, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sought to explore whether liquid (savings, investments), and non-liquid (home ownership, car ownership) assets would be associated with very young children’s cognitive and social development above and beyond variation in outcomes that could be explained by income poverty and hardship.

The researchers found that material hardship and non-liquid assets explain unique variation in very young children’s social and cognitive development beyond the effects of poverty. Moreover, the researchers concluded that models that estimate the relation between poverty and child outcomes without including measures of hardship and assets could be “underspecified.” In other words, if we want to understand the optimal development of young people, assets must be part of the equation.

The research is in press and will be available in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. Look for the article soon, and then use the Comments below to share your thoughts.

Kirsten Kainz is Deputy Director at the SERP Institute (Strategic Education Research Partnership). Carl Rist is CFED's Vice President for Programs.

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