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Abstract
A small but provocative literature suggests that neighbourhood socioeconomic conditions
experienced by children early in life influence a variety of health and developmental
outcomes later in life. We contribute to this literature by testing the degree to
which neighbourhood socioeconomic conditions that children experience in Kindergarten
influence their later language and cognitive outcomes in early adolescence, over and
above current neighbourhood context and various child-level covariates including scores
on a Kindergarten measure of school readiness. Cross-classified random effects modelling
(CCREM) analyses were performed on a study population of 2648 urban children residing
throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada, who were followed longitudinally
from Kindergarten (age 5/6) to Grade 7 (age 12/13). Findings demonstrate that neighbourhood
concentrated disadvantage experienced during Kindergarten has a durable, negative
effect on children's reading comprehension outcomes seven years later-providing evidence
that early social contextual experiences play a critical role in the lives of children.
Possible explanations and future directions are discussed.
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