Parental investment or parenting stress? Examining the links between poverty and child development in Ireland

This study investigates the relationship between multidimensional household poverty and cognitive and behavioural development during the formative years of childhood (from 9 months to 9 years), using nationally representative longitudinal data from Ireland for the cohort of children born in 2007-2008. The results indicate substantial inequalities in Irish children’s cognitive and behavioural outcomes at age 9 by multidimensional poverty duration. Children with at least one spell in poverty (out of four interviews) have worse cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Dynamic structural equation models provide evidence in support of a hybrid family investment/family stress model. Although family investment processes account for some of the cumulative effects of childhood poverty on cognitive outcomes, family stress processes help explain the links between poverty and both cognitive and behaviour outcomes in early childhood. Overall, poverty is strongly related to child outcomes over time via the direct effects of current poverty on child outcomes and path dependency in both poverty and child outcomes over time. There are also indirect effects via the two child outcomes reinforcing each other as children grow older (with the effects of behaviour problems dominating those of cognitive ability), even as the parental investment and maternal stress pathways become less pronounced.