Wednesday 23rd November 2022, 14:20–14:35 (Australia/Melbourne), Zoom Breakout Room 3
Family socioeconomic position (SEP) has a marked influence on the characteristics of children’s lives and is a key concept for understanding child health and educational outcomes. Diversity of family forms has increased both internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand, including a growth in the prevalence of single-parent and stepparent families. Despite this, there has been little research examining the best approaches to measuring family-level SEP to model child outcomes, particularly for diverse families and in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This presentation will describe research conducted to address this shortfall by examining a range of approaches to measuring family SEP for children of different ages and living in a range of family types. Data were accessed using the Integrated Data Infrastructure, a collection of deidentified administrative data sets for the full New Zealand population linked at the individual level. Family structure and SEP data (education, occupation, and income) were sourced from the 2013 Census, while data on health and educational outcomes were sourced from birth records, b4 school check data, and secondary schools data. The risk of low birth weight and preterm birth (perinatal period), dental caries and obesity (preschoolers) and educational achievement (teenagers) were modelled.
Analyses revealed inconsistent results regarding the best approaches to incorporating the SEP of biological parents for modelling birth outcomes. Analyses were more consistent for modelling outcomes for preschoolers and teenagers. For these groups, the socioeconomic resources of both resident and non-resident biological parents, as well as resident stepparents, appeared to influence child outcomes for children living with two-resident parents, children living in single-parent families with an identifiable non-resident parent, and children living in stepparent families with an identifiable non-resident parent (this family type was only examined for teenagers). Overall, this research demonstrated that it was important to incorporate the socioeconomic information from all identifiable resident biological parents, resident stepparents, and non-resident biological parents to adequately characterise the SEP of families when modelling child outcomes.
Natalia Boven is in the final stages of completing her PhD through COMPASS Research Centre and the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland. Her PhD research examines different approaches to constructing family socioeconomic measures using the Integrated Data Infrastructure. She is interested in the connections between measurement, inequities, and public policy.