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associations between income and youth mental and behavioral health by delineating economic risks derived from family, neighborhood, and school contexts within a nationally representative sample of high school students (N = 13,179, average age 16). Attending schools with more affluent schoolmates was associated with heightened likelihoods of intoxication, drug use, and property crime, but youth at poorer schools reported greater depressive and anxiety symptoms, engagement in violence, and for male adolescents, more frequent violence and intoxication. Neighborhood and family income were far less predictive. Results suggest that adolescent health risks derive from both ends of the economic spectrum, and may be largely driven by school contexts. 

Growing economic disparities and the increased sorting of families into economically segregated communities have heightened the need to clearly delineate pathways through which family income promotes children’s development. Combining hypotheses from investment and stress theories, we developed and tested a multi-context and cross-domain conceptual model assessing how community and family contexts mediate links between family income and children’s cognitive and behavioral skills at kindergarten entry. We drew data on family income, parenting processes, and child functioning from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study– Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; N ≈ 10,650), following children from infancy through age 5. We used Geographic Information Systems technology to create and validate community measures using administrative data from the Economic Census, Decennial Census, National Center of Education Statistics, Federal Bureau of Investigations, and Environmental Protection Agency, which were then linked to each child in the ECLS-B. Using structural equation modeling, our analyses revealed three primary lessons. First, lower-income children have limited access to community educational and cultural resources and heightened exposure to community stressors including concentrated disadvantage and violent crime. Second, these community features are associated with parenting processes, such that parent-child interactions tend to be less stimulating and supportive and more punitive in communities with fewer resources and heightened stressors. And third, community and family contexts together mediate connections between family income and children’s cognitive and behavioral functioning. Results, albeit showing small effect sizes, provide a more complex, multi-contextual view than prior research, delineating the role of both resources and stressors at community and family levels in explaining income disparities in young children’s developmental success. 

Racial/ethnic disparities in socioeconomic status (SES) persist in the United States. These disparities perpetuate the intergenerational transmission of inequality. Although families of color vary significantly in socioeconomic standing and evidence suggests the links between SES and child development may differ by race/ethnicity, we know relatively little about how race and SES interact to shape children's social contexts and developmental outcomes. This chapter draws theoretical insights from sociocultural perspectives on development and intersectionality theory to understand how and why family life and child development may play out in complex ways at the nexus of race and SES.