Informal Supports, Housing Insecurity, and Adolescent Outcomes: Implications for Promoting Resilience

Background and Purposes: Adolescents in low-income, marginalized families are vulnerable to emotional and behavioral problems that impede healthy functioning and threaten long-term well-being. Informal supports may fill an important gap for these households as they navigate financial and social stressors, offering an important untapped source of resilience. Families who have greater levels of instrumental supports are likely to have individuals to help out with economic stressors that may place youth at risk. Neighborhoods with high levels of trust and support risk less exposure to community violence and disorganization that threaten family and youth stability. Furthermore, families with higher levels of these informal supports may be less vulnerable to housing problems that threaten individual, family, and community well-being in a vicious cycle. Housing insecurity has been tied to a variety of negative outcomes for families, including higher rates of mental health and behavioral problems in adolescents. The current study investigates whether which instrumental and neighborhood supports relate to adolescent behavioral problems, and whether these relationships are mediated by housing insecurity.

Methods: The present study utilized data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, a large longitudinal survey of at-risk families with children. The analytic sample for the present study was limited to families in which the biological mother maintained at least partial custody of the study focal child at the Years 5 and 9 interviews (N = 2,425). Missing data were handled using multiple imputation by chained equations (MICE) with predictive mean matching.

Confirmatory factor analysis fit indicators for five latent constructs, while a structural model estimated direct and indirect pathways linking instrumental support and neighborhood cohesion with adolescent outcomes via housing insecurity. The model was fit using the weighted least square mean and variance adjusted (WLSMV) estimator with bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals for coefficient estimates.

Results: Instrumental support was directly associated with lower anxious/depressed behavior (β = 0.-09, p < 0.05) whereas neighborhood cohesion was directly associated with lower aggressive behavior (β = -0.11, p < 0.01). Housing insecurity emerged as a mediator in the links from both independent variables to adolescent aggressive behavior. Instrumental support was indirectly associated with adolescent aggression (β = -0.02, p < 0.05), as was neighborhood cohesion (β = -0.01, p < 0.05).

Conclusions and Implications: Findings suggest informal supports are an important source of resilience for low-income families who may be excluded from or are reluctant to engage with formal social systems. Informal supports are in fact a key component to low-income families meeting basic needs and providing safe, stable living arrangements for children. In the absence of widely available affordable housing for low-income families, efforts to bolster informal support networks may contribute to keeping vulnerable families housed. Safe, stable housing may also contribute to social cohesion in a virtuous cycle, maintaining stable communities and strong social networks. Programs that foster neighborhood cohesion and connectedness thus offer promise for both short- and long-term benefits to family stability and healthy youth functioning.