- The effects of poverty were strong and robust to adjustment for child and parent background characteristics, as well as school intake characteristics.
- Neither the academic nor the socio-economic composition of the school moderated the effect of family poverty on children’s behavior in primary school. However, children attending schools with more disadvantaged socio-economic intakes had more internalizing and externalizing problems than their counterparts.
- The cumulative effect of family poverty was significantly related to all three outcomes, and was robust to family and child controls and the MCS design variables.
- The effects of chronic poverty and intermittent poverty relative to never being poor were significant on all three outcomes.
- School Key Stage 1 scores did not interact with the number of sweeps in poverty to affect any child outcomes.
- When measuring poverty in terms of timing, poverty at any age was associated with more externalizing and internalizing problems and less prosocial behavior.
- Relative to white children, Indian, black, Pakistani/Bangladeshi and ‘other ethnic’ children had fewer externalizing problems. Black and ‘other ethnic’ children had higher prosocial behavior scores than white children. General intelligence was related to all three outcomes.
- Cumulative poverty was related to an increase in internalizing and externalizing problems, and a decrease in prosocial behavior. Chronic or intermittent poverty was related to an increase in externalizing and internalizing problems and to a decrease in prosocial behavior. Poverty experienced at any of the three ages (9 months, 3 or 5 years) was associated with an increase in
externalizing and internalizing problems.