The Effects of Early Childhood Residential Mobility on Korean Children's Cognitive Development

Purpose

This study assesses the consequences of residential mobility during the first 6 years of a child’s life for Korean children’s cognitive development. Residential mobility is defined as the frequency with which families move their residence, and high residential mobility (or frequent moves) has been shown to have a detrimental effect on child development. Despite a burgeoning literature on the consequences of residential mobility for children, most of the previous studies have been conducted in western countries and their findings have been inconsistent. Furthermore, many of the previous studies have relied on cross-sectional data and focused on school-aged children and adolescents. This study is one of the first studies from an Asian country that used a large, nationally representative sample of Korean children to examine the association between early childhood residential mobility and children’s academic skills.  

Methods

The data included 1,022 children from the 2008-2014 Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC). Outcome variables were academic skills for language and literacy (13 items) and mathematical thinking (15 items), which was measured at age 0. This is the Korean version of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) Phase II Data Collection Instruments (54 months–1^stGrade). The focal predictor was the number of moves between baseline and the final wave (i.e., 2008-2014; age 0-6). We conducted Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to examine the association between residential mobility and children’s academic skills, adjusting for a wide range of child, parent, and family characteristics. We employed multiple imputation procedures for the missing data, using the MICE system of chained equations in Stata 14.

Results

Results from bivariate correlation analysis showed that residential mobility was significantly associated with better academic skills in language and literacy and math. After controlling for child and family background characteristics, OLS regression results demonstrated that early childhood residential mobility was significantly associated with better skills in math, but not in language and literacy. Regarding control variables, male children, low birth weight, and parenting stress were negatively associated with academic skills. In contrast, parents’ education level, parenting knowledge, and household income were positively related to children’s academic skills.

Implications

Our results provide suggestive evidence that there is a positive effect of early childhood residential mobility on children’s academic skills in the Korean context. It should be noted that these findings are not consistent with the previous studies from western countries that have shown detrimental effects of high residential mobility on children’s developmental outcomes. These results may suggest that Korean parents are likely to move into a better environment for their children’s well-being and development (“good move”). Given that this is the first study conducted in the Asian context, our study is an important contribution to the existing literature in this field. It also emphasizes the need for further studies in Asian countries and other geographical regions to enhance the generalizability and validity of the findings.