Apr 1 2022

DPA Research and Policy Seminar Series – Alejandra Abufhele

April 1, 2022

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Location

Online

Time: Apr 1, 2022 12:00 PM Central Time 

Alejandra Abufhele (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile)

Title: Community violence and early childhood language development: the moderating role of parental efficacy and satisfaction

This paper estimates the effect of community-level homicides on language development in early childhood. It also explores whether maternal efficacy and satisfaction moderate this relationship. It uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey of Chilean children and their mothers matched to municipal level homicides. The empirical strategy exploits variation in the timing of survey data collection and municipal-level homicides in models with municipality fixed effects. We find that children in municipalities with homicides one month before the language assessment score between 2 and 4 points lower on the PPVT compared to children in the same municipality but for whom homicides happened one month after the assessment. Maternal efficacy and satisfaction both moderate this relationship, but maternal satisfaction plays a more salient role. Language losses are larger for children whose mothers have weaker satisfaction with their role. Among these children, homicides one month before the assessment lower scores by 4 to 7 points. By examining a context in which homicides are growing but still relatively low, this paper provides evidence that community violence does not need to be extreme or very localized to negatively affect child development. It also adds to the body of work that shows the interactions of various social settings are essential to shape child development.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://uic.zoom.us/j/87288947131?pwd=VFV3RWNTaE9GcFZrWU1veHRUZHprUT09

Meeting ID: 872 8894 7131

Passcode: YsU90iin

Contact

Agustina Laurito

Date posted

Jan 24, 2022

Date updated

Mar 11, 2022