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Title: Why Do Unhealthy Children Do Worse in School? Understanding Links among Children's Health, Education and Race
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Jackson, Margot I. |
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Why Do Unhealthy Children Do Worse in School? Understanding Links among Children's Health, Education and Race Presented: Los Angeles, CA, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, March-April 2006. Also: http://paa2006.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=60390 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY97 Publisher: Population Association of America Keyword(s): Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Child Health; Children, Illness; Children, Poverty; Educational Attainment; Family Resources; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Poverty; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Racial Differences; School Completion Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This paper has two goals. First, I evaluate the role of several mechanisms that may mediate the connection between children's health and their educational attainment. Researchers have begun to pay more attention to the possibility that the relationship between health and socioeconomic status is bidirectional. While poor health has often been studied as a consequence of childhood and/or family socioeconomic conditions, it is also clear that illness and poor health during childhood have lasting socioeconomic effects. What is less clear is why poor health during childhood may influence educational outcomes in late childhood/young adulthood. Do children with a health disadvantage graduate from high school at lower rates, for example, because they are less school-ready than other children, or because they develop less productive social relationships and reduced expectations for their future? Secondly, I consider the extent to which health disparities among children account for racial disparities in children's educational achievement. While childhood health disparities may contribute to socioeconomic disparities among the general population, they may also play a role in creating and maintaining the racial achievement gap that is so persistent in American society. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 97 and Child and Young Adult files, I examine these questions. Understanding the role of childhood health in creating and maintaining educational disparities among older children and young adults, as well as the role of race in this process, will facilitate the development of effectively intervention strategies. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 and Child/Young Adults (CYA) files provide the basis for this examination of the relationship between health, race and educational attainment/achievement in young adulthood. I use the NLSY97 to examine both the pathways from health to educational attainment, as well as to examine the contribution of health to racial differences in educational achievement. The NLSY79-CYA is used to complement the NLSY97 in the last part of the analysis, where I look at racial differences in educational achievement. The NLSY-CYA contains measures of infant and maternal health, allowing me to consider the contribution of earlier-life health to racial differences in achievement. |
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Bibliography Citation
Jackson, Margot I. "Why Do Unhealthy Children Do Worse in School? Understanding Links among Children's Health, Education and Race." Presented: Los Angeles, CA, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, March-April 2006. |