Work

Family economic stress and academic well-being among Chinese-American youth: The influence of adolescents’ perceptions of economic strain.

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: This study examined the pathways by which family economic stress influenced youth's educational outcomes in a sample of 444 Chinese American adolescents (M ages = 13.0, 17.1 years at waves 1 and 2, respectively). Using latent variable structural equation modeling, results across two waves of data, spanning early to late adolescence, demonstrated that the influence of parent report of economic stress on youth academic achievement (i.e., GPA), school engagement, and positive attitudes about education was mediated through youth's perceptions of family economic strain and self-reports of depressive symptoms. These relationships were observed to remain significant after accounting for selection bias using individual fixed-effects models. Finally, youth's perceptions of family economic strain were found to more strongly predict depressive symptoms during later, as compared to earlier, adolescence; all other modeled relationships were equivalent across the two time periods. Implications for expanding theoretical tenets of the Family Economic Stress Model are discussed.

Source: Journal of Family Psychology

DOI: 10.1037/a0015403

Authors: Rashmita S. Mistry, Aprile D. Benner, Connie S. Tan, Su Yeong Kim

Institutions: University of California, Los Angeles, The University of Texas at Austin

Language: English

Topic: Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development

Subfield: Clinical Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funders: University of Texas at Austin, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development