Economic Strain and Children's Behavior in the Aftermath of the Great Recession

Researchers have long been interested in the role that adverse economic conditions and experiences play in family processes and child behavior. Studies dating back to the Depression years of the 1930s have shown positive cor- relations among family economic distress and marital dissolution, family conflict, and child abuse and neglect (Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010; Conger et al., 1990). A key theoretical concept reflected in these studies is that eco- nomic distress can be represented not only by objective measures of economic conditions but also by family members' subjective perceptions of economic experiences.Voydanoff (1990) articulated this perspective by arguing that family economic distress could be represented along four key dimensions: (a) employment instability, (b) employment uncertainty, (c) economic deprivation, and (d) economic strain. Employment instability and economic deprivation, she argued, are rela- tively objective factors indicating patterns of employment and changes in income over time. Economic deprivation, in her model, reflected families' income-to-needs ratio or poverty sta- tus. In contrast, employment uncertainty and economic strain are subjective indicators of an individual's perceived employment and financial situation. According to Voydanoff, economic strain is an evaluation of current financial status; it may reference perceived adequacy, financial concerns and worries, adjustments to changes in one's financial situation, or expectations about one's future financial situation (p. 1104).A widely used formulation of this concep- tual model was offered by Conger et al. (1990; see Figure 1, p. 646) and is referred to as the family stress model (see also Conger et al., 2010; Conger & Donnellan, 2007). The model predicts that adverse economic conditions such as low income, high debt levels, and employment instability generate economic strain or pressure reflecting subjective perceptions that one's cur- rent income is inadequate to meet one's needs. In this model, economic strain or pressure is a construct that reflects the types of frustrating experiences that are thought to increase parents' emotional distress and behavioral disturbances (Conger et al., 2010). Subsequent formulations of the model have proposed that parental emo- tional distress, marital discord, and relationship dissatisfaction spill over into parent-child rela- tionships, thereby increasing the risk for chil- dren's adjustment problems. Numerous studies across different economic periods and local con- texts have found support for this basic model (see Conger et al" 2010, for a review).A central tenet in the family stress model is that economic strain is related only indirectly to children's adjustment through its influence on the behavioral and emotional functioning of parents (Conger et al., 2010). However, other studies have shown that it is not necessary for parents' depressive symptoms or family conflict to rise in order for children to be adversely affected by their parents' experiences of eco- nomic strain. Children's adjustment can be directly affected by their observations of their parents' (or, indeed, their friends' and neigh- bors') economic strain (Ananat, Gassman-Pines, Francis, & Gibson-Davis, 2011; Barling, Dupre, & Hepburn, 1998; Barling, Zacharatos, & Hepburn, 1999; Hamilton, Noh, & Adlaf, 2009; Mistry, Benner, Tan, & Kim, 2009).The economic climate affecting the U.S. economy at the end of the past decade offers a new opportunity to extend and refine this theoretical model. First, as has been widely reported, this period saw record levels of employment instability (Greenstone & Looney, 2010), income losses (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2012), home mortgage foreclosure and delinquency (Mortgage Bankers Association, 2010), and food insecurity (Coleman-Jensen, Nord, Andrews, & Carlson, 2012). Given these stark figures, it is not surprising that large numbers of American families felt high levels of economic strain during the Great Recession (Gauthier & Furstenberg, 2010). …