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	Growing Up in Poverty Project: Findings Available

Findings Available

Interim Implementation Findings
Interim Descriptive/Analytical Findings

Findings

01/01/99: Growing Up in Poverty Project: Year 1 Progress Report

Interim Descriptive/Analytical Findings:

“Over one-third of all women did not finish high school. Our sampled families — across California, Connecticut, and Florida — vary in their demographic and economic features.”

“Over half of all women (52%) are using their own income to pay their child care provider.”

“The scarcity of stable, quality child care limits women’s ability to move from welfare to work.”

“Sharp differences appear among states in the share of young children who are placed in preschools and child-care centers. This wide variability may be due to differences in the supply of center-based programs in our participating cities. We also are analyzing how maternal and family level factors are driving these differing child-care decisions.”

“As participating women entered the study, many reported a difficult time in simply paying for food — while their toddlers and preschoolers are moving through crucial years of development.”

“Most participating women live with other adults. Just under a third live alone, with their child or children. About a third live with just one other adult, who can be their own mother, another kin member, or male partner. The remaining third live with two or more adults. Yet many feel quite alone as a parent. One fourth of all women report that they have no one to talk to when they are upset.”

02/01/00: Growing Up in Poverty Project: Child Care Selection Under Welfare Reform: How Mothers Balance Work Requirements and Parenting

Interim Descriptive/Analytical Findings:

Young children are moving into low-quality child care settings as their mothers are moving from welfare to work.

Child care subsidies reach unequal fractions of poor families and encourage the use of unlicensed care.

Young children’s early learning and development is limited by uneven parenting practices and high rates of maternal depression.

A sizable share of women are moving into jobs.

Wages are low and household economies remain impoverished.

Levels of economic and social support gained by women are uneven.

08/01/01: Growing Up in Poverty Project: How to Pay for Child Care? Local Innovations Help Working Families

Interim Descriptive/analytical Findings:

Local strategies to help working families pay for child care include the following:

Creating a state child-care guarantee;

Expanding local child-care organizations;

Creating adequate payment rates and affordable parent fees;

Frequent review of family caseloads;

Co-location of child-care staff at welfare offices;

Effective child-care orientations;

Cross-training of welfare and child-care staff; and

Parent outreach and engagement.

04/01/02: Growing Up in Poverty Project: New Lives for Poor Families? Mothers and Young Children Move through Welfare Reform

Interim Implementation Findings:

Many women have moved into low-wage jobs, and their total income has risen significantly. Yet their income remains at just over $12,000 annually, with most still living below the poverty line.

Related measures of economic well-being show little improvement. For example, almost one fifth of all mothers recently cut the size of meals because they didn’t have enough money to buy more food, three times the rate reported by all adults nationwide. The average mother reported about $400 in savings.

The magnitude of income gains, thus far, is too weak to improve home environments or allow women to move into better neighborhoods. Mothers are spending less time with their preschool-age children as they leave home for jobs. No consistent gains were detected in proliteracy parenting practices, like reading with their children, establishing dinner-time or bedtime routines, sensitivity toward the child, or for 49 other measures of home qualities.

Participating mothers displayed twice the rate of clinical depression, two in every five, compared to the general population. Maternal depression sharply depresses their young children’s development.

Many children moved into new child care centers and preschools. Lower-performing children who entered center-based programs displayed significantly stronger gains in cognitive skills and school readiness—moving about 3 months ahead of the children who remained in home-based settings. This positive relationship was significantly stronger for children who attended higher quality centers.

02/01/04: Growing Up in Poverty Project: Child Care in Poor Communities: Early Learning Effects of Type, Quality, and Stability

Interim Impact Findings

A consistent, positive, and strong relationship between rates of child development in the cognitive domain and participation in center-based programs.
Developmental effects were strongest for measures of school readiness and for children who were in a center at both Waves I and II.
The center effect remained sizable even in models that included other possible determinants of development, such as age, ethnicity , mother's education, mother's work and welfare status, and income.
Children also display stronger cognitive growth when caregivers are more sensitive and responsive, and stronger social development when providers have education beyond high school.
Children in family child care homes show more behavioral problems but no cognitive differences.

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