Longitudinal insights into the social and economic circumstances of families with children

Abstract

The social and economic circumstances of childhood play an important role in shaping children’s development. Examining the age children encounter these circumstances, the duration of exposure, and the patterning across childhood can provide insights into these experiences that cannot be ascertained from single-point-in-time data. Existing longitudinal research has investigated social and economic factors across time however, there are remaining gaps in understanding how these circumstances progress over childhood and how varied patterns of exposure differentially affect children’s development. The aim of this thesis is to address these gaps by focusing on the timing, duration, and sequencing of social and economic circumstances across childhood. Drawing on ecological and life course perspectives, and situated within the critical research paradigm, four studies within this thesis address this aim. The initial study is a systematic review that synthesises existing research to identify how the temporality of social and economic factors influences developmental outcomes. The subsequent three quantitative studies are situated within the Aotearoa New Zealand context. These studies draw on longitudinal data from families in the Growing Up in New Zealand study to focus on the economic construct of material hardship. As a measure of poverty, material hardship provides direct insight into the absence of basic necessities. Longitudinal research on material hardship is a growing field and the three quantitative studies in this thesis contribute to this scholarship by focusing on the key areas of: measurement, correlates, and actions aimed at mitigating material hardship. These studies track material hardship across four points in time, between infancy and early adolescence, to examine how material hardship is experienced by families with children. The findings from this thesis demonstrate the distinct understanding that can be gained from tracking social and economic circumstances over time. For the field of material hardship, this research offers important methodological and empirical contributions, as well as context-specific findings for Aotearoa New Zealand where prior longitudinal research is limited. This thesis also offers reflections on why some families face material hardship while others do not, highlighting material hardship as a structural issue of inequity linked to broader systems in society, beyond individual families.