Housing Hardship and Adolescent Academic Outcomes: Examining the Role of School Mobility

Background and Purpose

Housing hardships such as eviction, doubling up with other families, and literal homelessness are associated with health and developmental concerns for children that subsequently affect academic performance. Families that are residentially unstable may also move between school jurisdictions, and changing schools is a known risk factor for academic difficulties. This study investigates the potential mediating role of school mobility in the relationship between housing hardship and adolescent academic outcomes.

Methods

The data for this analysis comes from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. This longitudinal study recruited 4,898 new parents at the time of their child’s birth from 75 hospitals in 20 large cities in the United States (U.S.) and followed them for approximately 15 years. We performed ordinary least squares to test the associations between our independent variable (housing hardship) and our mediator (number of schools the child had attended) while controlling for the parents’ races, education levels, whether they were born in the U.S, their relationship status at the child’s birth, the mother’s poverty category, whether she was working, her depression status, the number of children in her household, the child’s age and the child’s sex assigned at birth. We then assessed, using the same controls, the role of the number of schools attended as a mediator between housing hardship and the child’s academic outcomes recorded at age 15 by doing a mediation analysis using parametric regression models. The four measures of academic performance included grade point average (GPA), a “trouble at school” score, whether the youth had ever failed a class and whether they had been suspended or expelled in the two years prior to the survey.

Results

Controlling for demographic variables, children who experienced any kind of housing hardship had attended, on average, 0.45 more schools by age 15 than those who hadn’t experienced any housing hardship (95% CI [0.314 0.587], P<0.001). Moreover, housing hardship was both directly associated with the odds of having ever failed a class (OR=1.28, 95% CI [1.047 1.565], P=0.016), but also indirectly associated through the number of schools attended (OR =1.03, 95% CI [1.002 1.061], P=0.039). There was also a statistically significant indirect effect of housing hardship on the trouble at school score through the number of schools attended (ß=0.01, 95% CI [0.002 0.015], P=0.014).

Conclusion

Despite the provisions of the McKinney-Act to minimize school disruptions among students experiencing housing hardship, we find evidence that school mobility was higher among adolescents who had experienced any kind of housing hardship and that this partially mediates the relationship between housing hardship and some academic outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of school stability and supportive services in the wake of housing challenges for children and emphasize the need to ensure adequate implementation of relevant provisions of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.