The Extent and Impact of Multidimensional Child Poverty in the Postindustrial Post-Recession City

Background & Purpose: Despite the fact that poverty is typically measured using an income indicator, scholars have long recognized that living in poverty is multidimensional. Complex disadvantage includes low income, low assets, unstable housing, poor health (e.g. lack of access to health care or health insurance), social exclusion (e.g. unemployment), and lack of access to opportunity (e.g. low educational attainment). Decades of study have documented that various dimensions of poverty impact child development, but few studies have examined the multidimensionality of poverty and child outcomes attending to racial differences. This study explores two main questions: (1) How do dimensions of poverty cluster among families with children in the Detroit metro area, and how do these combinations of poverty dimensions differ by race? (2) How are these poverty dimensions related to parental stress and problem child behavior?

Methods: The Michigan Recession and Recovery Study (MRRS) is a 3-wave survey gathered from a stratified random representative sample of adults ages 19 to 64 living in the Detroit metropolitan Area during 2009. Respondents completed hour-long in-person interviews in 2009-2010 (Wave 1, N = 914), in 2011 (Wave 2, N = 847), and 2013 (Wave 3, N = 751). We conducted univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses of the MRRS to examine the prevalence and impact of dimensions of poverty on child outcomes by race. Dependent variables of interest included measures of parenting stress (PSI-SF) and child behavior problems (BPI). Independent variables of interest were the five dimensions of poverty among households with children: (1) low income, (2) low parental educational attainment, (3) lack of health insurance, (4) living in a high poverty neighborhood, (5) unemployment greater than 10 months of the past 12 months.

Results: In bivariate analyses we found that black households with children experienced each of the dimensions of poverty in far higher proportions compared to nonblack households with children. Black households with children also experienced higher proportions of poverty dimension clusters than nonblack households with children. Racial disparities in the experience of multiple dimensions of poverty was pronounced. Notably, 4.7% of Black households with children experienced four dimensions of poverty simultaneously (low education, neighborhood disadvantage, low income, and unemployment), compared to 0.7% of non-Black households. Multivariate analyses controlling for multiple hardships and stratified by race, found that unemployment was significantly related to parental stress and poverty was significantly related to externalizing and internalizing child behavior for Black households. For non-Black households, the cluster of income poverty and living in a high poverty neighborhood was significantly related to problem child behavior.

Conclusions & Implications: While income poverty affects child outcomes in prior research,  our work suggests that indicators of disadvantage, recast as multiple dimensions of poverty, help shed light on the stark racial disparities in compounding disadvantage. For children, the effect of multiple dimensions of poverty are likely greater than any single dimension alone. To move beyond the silver bullet mentality, we suggest targeting comprehensive approaches that address the multiple domains in which hardships diminish the life chances of children.