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Parental Education-related Gaps in Externalising Behaviour at age 3–4 Years: Evidence from a Harmonised Framework from the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands

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Abstract

Background

Research on factors underlying socioeconomic status (SES)-related inequalities in child development mainly focuses on single countries and specific influential factors. Only few studies scrutinize to what extent differences in children’s early behavioural outcomes vary across countries and whether the processes that account for them are common or context-specific.

Objective

The aim of this study was to explore SES-related inequalities and explanatory factors in 3- to 4-year-old children’s externalising behaviour as well as their generalisability across outcome variables (hyperactivity, conduct problems) and countries.

Methods

The study uses harmonised data from three longitudinal large-scale studies conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), and the Netherlands and a decomposition method to comparatively analyse early SES-related gaps and explanatory factors.

Results

Results show that the extent of parental education-related gaps varied across countries. The included explanatory factors accounted for significant amounts of gaps in hyperactivity and conduct problems. Yet, while family income and maternal depressive feelings significantly explained gaps in each facet of externalising behaviour across all three countries, other factors were country-specific. In the US and the UK, health-related factors were additionally relevant for explaining early gaps in both child outcomes; in the UK, also structural aspects of the family significantly explained gaps in conduct problems; no other factors contributed to the explanation of gaps in the Netherlands.

Conclusions

Mechanisms that might reduce SES-related inequalities in child behaviour and that may be helpful when constructing appropriate interventions are partially similar, yet also significantly different between countries and child outcomes.

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Data Availability

The data used are available for research at the UK Data Archive in Essex, United Kingdom (https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-5795-5), and at the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington, United States.

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Funding

This research was undertaken as part of the Development of Inequalities in Child Educational Achievement: A Six Country Study (DICE) project, funded under the Open Research Area (ORA) Round 5 Funding Scheme. We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC Grant ES/S015191/1, United Kingdom), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany, WE 1478/12 − 1) and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, The Netherlands, grant number 464.18.102). Jane Waldfogel also gratefully acknowledges support from the Columbia Population Research Center which is funded by NICHD 2P2CHD058486. We also acknowledge the following data sources:

United States: The United States results are based on restricted-use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). The ECLS-B data is primarily sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and U.S. Department of Education. United Kingdom: The United Kingdom results are based on data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) conducted by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. We would like to thank the MCS families for their time and cooperation as well as the MCS team at the Institute of Education, University College London. Netherlands: The Generation R Study is conducted by the Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam in close collaboration with the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the city of Rotterdam. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of children and parents. The general design of Generation R Study is made possible by long-term financial support from Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Anna Volodina & Sabine Weinert

  2. Institute for Educational Quality Improvement, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin, 10099, Germany

    Anna Volodina

  3. Chair of Psychology I – Developmental Psychology, University of Bamberg, Markusplatz 3, 96047, Bamberg, Germany

    Anna Volodina

  4. University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Elizabeth Washbrook & Valentina Perinetti Casoni

  5. Columbia University, Columbia, USA

    Jane Waldfogel

  6. Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

    Renske Keizer & Sanneke de la Rie

  7. University of Chicago, Chicago, USA

    Sarah Jiyoon Kwon

Authors
  1. Anna Volodina
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  2. Sabine Weinert
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  3. Elizabeth Washbrook
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  4. Jane Waldfogel
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  5. Renske Keizer
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  6. Valentina Perinetti Casoni
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  7. Sanneke de la Rie
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  8. Sarah Jiyoon Kwon
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Contributions

Anna Volodina: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data Curation, Writing – Original draft; Sabine Weinert: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing; Elizabeth Washbrook: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data Curation, Writing – Review & Editing; Jane Waldfogel: Conceptualization, Writing – Review & Editing; Renske Keizer: Writing – Review & Editing; Valentina Perinetti Casoni: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing; Sanneke de la Rie: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing; Sarah Jiyoon Kwon: Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anna Volodina.

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Volodina, A., Weinert, S., Washbrook, E. et al. Parental Education-related Gaps in Externalising Behaviour at age 3–4 Years: Evidence from a Harmonised Framework from the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands. Child Youth Care Forum 53, 459–483 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-023-09759-4

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