Session: Understanding the Complexity of Instability Experienced By Children of Low-Income Families (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Evidence shows that economic stress and instability that children experience can have deep and lasting impacts on children's physical, emotional, and cognitive development over time. Moreover, economic instability can lead to other types of instability, such as changes in family structure, frequent residential moves, or changes in school or child care arrangements, which jointly can have more detrimental effects on children and families, especially when these changes are negative and unpredicted. Children of low-income families are particularly vulnerable to economic instability and tend to experience multiple forms of instability in their lives. This symposium focuses on understanding the interrelated nature of multiple dimensions of instability that low-income families experience by providing conceptual frameworks to understand such complex instabilities. Further, the symposium discusses empirical studies that examine the prevalence and relevant predictors and consequences of different types of instability experienced by low-income families. Together these studies provide implications for understanding multiple aspects of instability in the lives of low-income children and for improving public policies that can contribute to improving stability in those children's lives. The symposium includes four papers, and detailed abstracts follow below.

Adams's paper presents findings from an extensive literature review and interviews with leading experts on issues of instability among low-income families. The findings from this study serve to provide conceptual frameworks to understand the complex nature of instability that occurs across many different dimensions of a child's life. Considering the knowledge gap in this area, the paper also discusses the current status of the scholarship in this area and future areas for research to deepen our understanding of instability among low-income families.

Ha et al.'s paper uses the 2008 panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and examines multiple instabilities that low-income families experience, focusing on three major types of instability. Using sequence analysis and cluster analysis, the study identifies distinctive patterns of income, family, and residential instability among low-income families, both independently and simultaneously, and compares sociodemographic and other background characteristics of low-income families with different patterns of instability.

Curtis and Warren's paper uses Wisconsin administrative data and examines the relationship between the regularity of child support payments and school mobility (i.e., non-promotional school moves), holding annual child support received, residential moves, housing environment, school, and child-specific characteristics constant. This paper provides much needed findings with implications for policies that impact school mobility. This policy area has been minimally explored but is potentially consequential for schools and policymakers to consider.

Joshi et al.'s paper presents findings from a mixed methods study that investigated factors associated with stability in child care subsidy receipt. Focusing particularly on the findings from interviews with state administrative staff, child care providers, and families, the paper discusses the complexity of administrative- and family-level factors that affect stability in child care subsidy receipt and provides implications for increasing stability in child care arrangements.