WITHDRAWN: Childhood Poverty and Other Adversities: Their Clustering and Long-Term Impact

Introduction: Childhood poverty and other childhood adversities impact the risk for negative adult outcomes.  The cumulative dis/advantage theory is derived from a life course perspective and suggests that early resources and achievements accumulate and set a trajectory to later dis/advantages and resources.  While the theory is a life course one, most tests have been applied over a relatively short portion of the life course.  In this paper, we begin with first grade children and prospectively examine how familial adversities experienced in childhood interact with school adaptation in first grade to influence adult outcomes in young and mid adulthood (ages 32 and 42). 

Methods: This is a longitudinal, community cohort study of urban African Americans (Woodlawn community in Chicago) followed from 1^st grade (N=1242) to age 42.  All 1st grade children were assessed by teachers and mothers.  During adolescence, children and mothers were re-interviewed.  Adult outcomes came from follow-ups at age 32 (N-952) and age 42 (N=833).  

In order to examine adversity, we use the person-centered technique of cluster analysis to identify groups who were similar on early family characteristics: family structure, poverty, mother’s education, mother’s mental health, number of children, residential mobility, teenage motherhood, and household physical orderliness. Early school behavior and achievement were indicated by teacher ratings and standardized test performance.  Adult outcomes include educational achievement, marriage, employment, poverty, social relationships, substance use, and crime (self and official reports).  We examine how the early clusters and early school achievement and behavior related to the later adult outcomes directly and how they interacted with one another using log linear regression.

Results:  We identified 3 clusters of familial adversity in first grade. Children living in the cluster with the most adversity did not perform as well in first grade, and their behavior was less adaptive.  Further, these children were more likely to drop out of school, less likely to be married (age 32 and 42), more likely to be poor (age 32), and more likely to be depressed (age 32) and have an alcohol use disorder (age 32).  There were no differences for drug use disorder or crime.  We stratified the clusters by 1^st grade aggressive behavior and found that regardless of the cluster, early aggressive behavior was related to later school drop out, crime, poverty (age 32 and 42), and alcohol disorder.    

Conclusions: This study provides evidence that both early family adversity and early school behavior perpetuate long-term disadvantage for at-risk populations.  Further early family adversity contributes to early maladaptation in school thus offering two points of intervention to improve long-term outcomes for at-risk populations – through family support as well as preventive intervention targeting aggressive behavior at school entry.