
October 30, 2018
12:30 pm
-
1:30 pm
038 Townshend Hall
Rising Household Debt and Children’s Socioemotional Well-Being Trajectories
Debt is now a substantial aspect of family finances. Yet, there has been limited research on how household debt is linked with child development. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort and Hierarchical Linear Models to estimate associations of amounts and types (home, education, auto, unsecured) of parental debt with child socioemotional well-being. We find that unsecured debt is associated with growth in child behavior problems over time, whereas increased education debt is associated with decreases over time in child behavior problems. Moreover, these associations vary by socioeconomic status with less advantaged groups experiencing larger negative influences of unsecured debt.