A Rutgers-led study compares housing outcomes of people in early adulthood with their experiences as young children
Exposure to housing hardship before the age of 5 may influence "housing insecurity" in early adulthood, according to Rutgers-led research.
"There's something unique about early childhood," said Katherine Marçal, an assistant professor with the School of Social Work and lead author of the study published in the journal Youth & Society. "When kids live with socio-economic adversity at a young age, those effects can persist for a very long time."
While there is no standard definition of housing insecurity, Marçal said it includes the inability to maintain safe, secure and affordable housing. Researchers have long suspected that exposure to housing insecurity in childhood increases the odds of similar challenges as adults, though little research has been conducted to corroborate the assumption, she said.
To close this research gap, Marçal and Nicholas Barr, an associate professor of social work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, examined 1,576 responses from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which followed families with children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large cities in the United States.
Caregivers were asked at five separate intervals during the first 15 years of the study whether they had experienced any one of the following in the past 12 months: missed a rent or mortgage payment; moved in with others; been evicted for nonpayment; or spent at least one night living on the streets, in a vehicle or in a shelter.
Three housing insecurity subgroups were identified from the caregiver responses. These included "low," in which children were stably housed; "chronic," where housing was precarious at each time point; and "early childhood," where housing was unstable for the first five years of the focal child's life but stabilized afterwards.
Next, during the 22nd year of the study, when the study's target subjects were about 22 years old, the same questions were asked of them. Those who reported experiencing at least one housing hardship during the past 12 months were considered to have experienced emerging adulthood housing insecurity.
By comparing the young adults' housing outcomes with their childhood experiences, the researchers were able to predict the risk of housing precarity.
Not surprisingly, adults who belonged to the low housing insecurity class, characterized by a near-absence of housing insecurity during the first 15 years of study, had lower levels of housing insecurity at age 22.
What surprised the researchers was that both the childhood insecurity and the chronic insecurity groups demonstrated similar probabilities of housing insecurity at age 22. Even though housing precarity reduced after year five for the childhood insecurity group, the risk of housing insecurity in early adulthood remained high.
"Even though none of those kids were housing unstable by age 9, they still showed the same vulnerability at age 22 as kids whose childhood housing insecurity never resolved," Marçal said
Although the study didn't explore causes, Marçal said there are several possible explanations for the findings. For starters, certain demographic characteristics, such as being Black or male, are associated with increased risk for housing insecurity at any age. Therefore, it would make sense to see members of these groups experience homelessness or eviction in both childhood and adulthood.
Additionally, "experiences of childhood housing insecurity likely signal limited family resources, such that these children may lack family economic assistance or community connections that can be crucial supports in the transition to adulthood," Marçal wrote.
She said small interventions - child-care subsidies or free school lunches, for instance - can be the difference in making or missing rent.
"People often just need a little help, but if we do nothing, and things fall apart, by the time these kids are on their own we will have a new generation of unstably housed," Marçal said. "The sooner we intervene, the better."
