Poverty, Residential Mobility, and Persistence across Urban and Rural Family Literacy Programs in Pennsylvania. Research Brief #1.

Ulis study investigates how poverty and residential mobility afiect adult persistence and partidparion in family literacy (FL) programs. Combining data from interviews with directors and participants from a sample ot FL sites in Pennsylvania, this scudy examines (a) the perceptions of practitioners and adult learners regarding the role of residential instability in shaping FL program persistence for low-income adults, and (b) how determinants of persistence may vary across urban and rural contexts. We argue that poverty mobility coupled with particular structural features of community is often more salient to program persistence than are features oí individual programs and/or participant "motivation. " INTRODUCTION Residential mobility is generally assumed to be economically rational behavior, undertaken principally as a means of improving individualot household-level social and/or economic status (Cadwallader, 1992; Cushing, 1999; Lichter and Costanzo, 1987). However, the frequent, often short-distance residential movement among resourcelimited families within, into, and across already distressed communities and neighborhoods is often unplanned and unpredictable, the consequence of a precipitating crisis such as family breakup, inability to pay rent, or movement away from unsafe, unafFordable, or otherwise unacceptable living conditions (Fitchen, 1994; Schafft, 2006). Recent research indicates that about 14% of all U.S. households spend over 50% of income on housing costs. Severe housing-cost burdens affect nearly half of low-income households, a percentage that appears to be increasing. Nonetheless, federal housing assistance supports only about a quarter of eligible lowincome renters and virtually no homeowners (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2007, 2008). These trends only underscore the structural forces deepening housing insecurity for poor families in the United States. Therefore, rather than improving life circumstances, residential movement for economically stressed families may actually increase social and academic dislocation, causing profoundly negative effects on learning and academic achievement and attainment (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, 2004; Hartman, 2002). Hence, this movement may not be economically rational in that it typically does not result in increased economic opportunity. It is, however, socially rational insofar as it reflects the reactive survival strategies of families confronted with an array of social and economic stress factors (Sherman, 2006). Despite the increasing recognition of poverty-related residential mobility and its role in both household and community disadvantage (Colton, 2004; Fitchen, 1994; Foulkes and Newbold, 2005; Schafft, 2006), several issues are less well understood. First, while residential instability and the academic disruption that results have been shown Kai A. Schafft is an assistant professor in the College of Education and is director of the Peiin State Center on Rural Education and Communities ar Pennsylvania State University's Department of Education Policy Studies. Esther S. Prins is an assistant professor in the Aduit Education Program and is codirector of the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy and the Insritute for the Study of Aiiult Literacy at Pennsylvania State University. Aduit Basic Education and Literacy Journal • Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2009