Child Behavior and the Home Environment: Are Crowding and Doubling-up Bad for Kids?

Purpose: Prior research suggests that crowded living arrangements may be harmful to child wellbeing. There is evidence that symptoms of crowding, such as lack of privacy, excessive stimuli or social demands, and competition for resources or attention from parents may have negative consequences for young children. Conversely, some prior work suggests that there may be positive benefits of living with extended family members if the arrangement provides support for parents and reduces parental stress. We examine the extent to which crowding and living doubled-up influences child behavior, and investigate whether each type of living arrangement may be differentially associated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

Methods: Using data at ages three and five from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, an urban birth cohort comprising a nationally representative sample of at-risk families, we employ three analytic strategies to test the association between living arrangements (crowding or doubling-up) and child behavior problems. Our sample includes mothers who had primary custody of their child at both waves (N=4,755). We define crowding as the number of persons in a home exceeding the number of rooms, a definition from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and doubled-up as living with at least one adult who is not a spouse, partner, or child. We categorize child behaviors as either internalizing (anxious, withdrawn) or externalizing (aggressive), measured using subscales from the Child Behavior Checklist. Our analytic strategies include ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, residualized change models, and fixed-effects models. Covariates for family structure, maternal stress, and family income are included in all models.

Results: Our findings suggest that doubling-up and crowding are differentially associated with internalizing behaviors: in pooled OLS and residualized change models, withdrawn and anxious behaviors are negatively associated with crowding. In fixed effects models, we find that moving to crowding is associated with a 15% of a standard deviation increase in anxious behaviors, but 8% of a standard deviation decrease in withdrawn behaviors. Doubling-up is associated with modest but significant increases in both internalizing behaviors in both the pooled and fixed effects models. Increased aggressive behaviors are consistently associated with crowding in all three analytic models. Conversely, aggressive behavior decreases by a 15% of a standard deviation with doubling-up in the fixed effects model, but has no relationship in pooled and residual OLS. Pooled OLS models show no difference between male and female children, while fixed effects models suggest differences, with males showing modestly weaker changes in withdrawn and anxious behavior.

Implications: Given the increase in housing affordability problems among low-income families, doubled-up and crowded conditions are also likely to increase, particularly in expensive housing markets. While greater attention is often given to homelessness and frequent moving by schools, child welfare systems, and child mental health workers, our results suggest that both crowding and doubling-up are potentially problematic housing environments for children. Thus, family living arrangements should be considered more carefully as a source of stress by practitioners interested in targeting interventions for children living in inadequate home environments.