Search Results
Title: Becoming a Good Citizen? The Long-Term Consequences of Poverty and Family Instability During Childhood
Resulting in 1 citation.
| 1. |
Lichter, Daniel T. Shanahan, Michael J. Gardner, Erica L. |
|
Becoming a Good Citizen? The Long-Term Consequences of Poverty and Family Instability During Childhood Working Paper, Russell Sage Foundation, December 1999. Also: http://www.russellsage.org/publications/working_papers/lichter-citizen.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation Keyword(s): Behavior, Prosocial; Family Structure; Modeling, Mixed Effects; Poverty; Volunteer Work This paper was also presented at the Population Association of America Annual Meetings, March 1999. Our main objective is to evaluate whether a disadvantaged childhood inevitably leads to a politically disaffected and socially disengaged late adolescence. We examine the relationship between social and economic disadvantages during early childhood and "good citizenship" during late adolescence. Measures of formal activities are now available from the 1996 young adult supplements of the National Longitudunal Survey of Youth (NLSY); these data are linked to mother and family records from the 1979-96 main NLSY sample to create life-history records spanning childhood and adolescence. Children -- especially males -- from single parent families are less likely than children growing up in married couple households to be involved in volunteer work. Volunteer behavior is more strongly related to time spent in poverty among females than males. More generally, our results provide support for a mediational model, one in which long-term negative effects of childhood social and economic disadvantages on later pro-social behavior occur indirectly through effects on socioemotional development and life experiences during adolescence (e.g., attendance at religious services and school success). These results address current concerns about putative declines in a civil society in America and about the elevation of individualism over communalism among today's young people. (Copyright Russell Sage Foundation.) |
|
|
Bibliography Citation
Lichter, Daniel T., Michael J. Shanahan and Erica L. Gardner. "Becoming a Good Citizen? The Long-Term Consequences of Poverty and Family Instability During Childhood." Working Paper, Russell Sage Foundation, December 1999. |