The impact of childhood mobility on exposure to neighborhood socioeconomic context over time.

Abstract

We used the 1998-1999 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, with data collected in kindergarten, first, third, fifth, and eighth grades, in a descriptive analysis of associations between early childhood residential mobility frequency and neighborhood context changes. We found that children who move frequently appear initially to move into higher-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods but eventually move back to lower-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods, exposing frequent movers to diverse neighborhood contexts. These findings have implications for policy and research that seeks to link neighborhood context to health.