Cost of living can affect student

achievement, study says

Poor children living in higher-cost areas like the urban centers of California
are more likely to struggle academically than their counterparts in lower-
cost areas, according to research published today.
Based on a sample of more than 17,000 first-graders, the study by
researchers from UCLA and the nonprofit Child Trends provides important
empirical evidence that geographic variations in cost of living indeed
matters for childrens well-being, the article states.
Although there is a substantive body of research examining the relationship
between family income and child development and educational outcomes,
this is among the first studies to look at the effects of cost of living on
academic achievement.
The federal poverty threshold doesnt factor in cost of living, and it doesnt
take into account that living in Los Angeles looks very different than rural
Nebraska, said Rashmita S. Mistry, an associate professor at UCLAs
Department of Education and co-author of the report.
The research shows that "it is not enough to simply look at the associations
between family income, family life, and children's academic outcomes; how
income plays out in young children's lives is conditioned by how much it
costs for a family to cover its basic needs and what is left over thereafter,"
Mistry added by email.
These regional and local variations in cost of living are one reason that some
organizations and policymakers support a more comprehensive
calculation of the federal poverty level.
The federal poverty level is an antiquated measure based entirely on the
cost of food, first calculated in the 1960s, and it no longer accurately reflects
the needs of modern families, said Shawn McMahon, acting president and
CEO of Wider Opportunities for Women, which launched a state- and
county-specific economic security database earlier this year. The federal
poverty level is also not specific to place, so we have one federal poverty
level for everyone across the country, no matter where you live, and we
know costs vary greatly.
The 2012 federal poverty guideline is $23,050 for a family of four, a number
calculated by tripling the cost of food for one year.
A 2012 UCLA policy brief [PDF] found that California legislators tend to
rely on the federal poverty level even though it does not measure local
conditions, it is not based on current costs and it does not take into account
all types of expenses faced by low-income families.
This means that the economic downturn coupled with the high cost of
living in California has left many families and individuals economically
vulnerable, but invisible to state policymakers because they do not have
enough income to make ends meet and yet are not poor enough to be
counted as poor, the brief states.
There are some efforts to look at a broader range of measurements to gauge
poverty by region and locality. Last year, the U.S. Census began publishing
a supplemental poverty measure that includes expenses such as housing,
utilities and clothing costs that are adjusted by geography. Additionally, a
team of researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California and Stanford
University are developing a more comprehensive measure of poverty for the
state.
Failing to look at regional differences masks the full impact of a poor
student's economic circumstances on academic achievement, the new UCLA
and Child Trends study says.
This study demonstrates that cost of living influences family and child
well-being in ways not captured by income alone and, if omitted, its
influence would be lost as statistical noise, the study states.
By analyzing cost of living, the study authors said they discovered new
insights about how family resources affect children.
For poor children in particular, living in a higher-cost area is also associated
with lower levels of what researchers called "parental investments" in their
children related to time and money spent on extracurricular activities, school
involvement, and books and a computer for the home. This is likely a result
of having fewer financial resources left after paying for basic expenses, said
study co-author Nina Chien of Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan
research center.
Governmental policies also can affect low-income students ability to attend
high-performing schools, according to research published earlier this year
by Jonathan Rothwell of the Brookings Institution. Zoning laws, in
particular, can limit the development of affordable housing in affluent areas
with high-performing schools, which means low-income children can be
priced out of good schools.
In the countys 100 largest metropolitan areas, it can cost 2.4 times more
or nearly an additional $11,000 to live near a public school where students
receive high standardized test scores than near a low-scoring public school,
the study said.
In Fresno, for example, there was about a 28-point gap between the average
test scores at low-income and more affluent elementary schools and about
an $11,300 difference in housing costs between those school
neighborhoods.
For many families, it would be cheaper to send a child to a parochial or
even more expensive private school than to move into the attendance zone
of a high-scoring school, the Rothwell study says.