Disparate Effects of Disruptive Events on Children

The consequences of disruptive events vary across different groups of children. The literature suggests that the same disruptive event can have profound negative consequences for some groups, minor or no impact for others, and even present a generative or positive turning point for other groups. Aggregate effects can therefore mask substantial heterogeneity and miss dissimilar, and even opposite, effects across different subpopulations. The two broad theoretical approaches we consider as to how the effects of disruptive events on children vary across groups, are disparities in socioeconomic resources of those affected by disruption, and the variation in the normativity and predictability of shocks for different groups. Even within these sources of variation, however, structural conditions governed by socioeconomic resources or social normativity account for substantial variation in the effects of disruption on children’s lives

Individuals and families with limited economic resources are often less equipped to reduce the risk of exposure and compensate for the negative consequences of disruptive events than their more advantaged peers. The limited resources of disadvantaged households, including lower levels of education, income, wealth, and other resources that could support a family safety net, render them less able to buffer negative shocks than more advantaged households. Research suggests that families with more resources can better compensate for the impact of early- life shocks than disadvantaged families. The consequences of disruptive exposures when resources to cope are limited might be especially persistent if they occur in early childhood because early- life shocks can shape individual socioemotional and cognitive trajectories in ways that are increasingly difficult to modify over the life course, resulting in long- lasting effects.

Constraints disadvantaged families face emerge not just from having fewer resources in a single domain but also from various forms of disadvantage that might interact with each other and compound over the life course and across generations. Disruptive events such as divorce, job loss, and health shocks are more likely to be experienced jointly by disadvantaged families and can precipitate a period of economic insecurity and impact children’s developmental and socioeconomic trajectories. Low- income families may be less vulnerable to the economic loss from disruptive events simply because they have less to lose in terms of economic well- being.

The impact of disruptive events on individuals and families may also depend on the social context, particularly on how prevalent and normative a disruptive event is in a particular social setting. These diverse findings suggest a powerful contextual mechanism: as a negatively assessed event becomes more prevalent and normative in society, the stigma associated with it becomes less severe because the event represents a smaller deviation from the social norm. Declining stigmatization will reduce negative social responses such as labeling, isolation, status loss and discrimination and will ease the harm these responses cause to individual identity and self- worth. Individuals with a low likelihood of disruption may experience disruptive events as an unexpected and unpredictable shock when they occur and may lack resources to cope with them. By contrast, people who are likely to experience adverse circumstances may be forced to develop protective mechanisms—a process variedly termed habituation, adaptation, and resilience—which could reduce their vulnerability to novel shocks.

As youth grow accustomed to disruptive events, these exposures become less remarkable and impactful on their life outcomes. Instead, it is to say that groups with a high likelihood of disruption might develop coping mechanisms that reduce their reactivity to novel stressors.

A related contextual factor likely to shape the effect of disruption on individual outcomes are institutions and policies intended to protect individuals from risks. Put simply, policies and institutions reflect normative agreements and those agreements in turn shape policy arrangements.

The normativity- predictability approach and the resource disparities approach yield opposing predictions about the socioeconomic stratification of the impact of disruption. Most likely, both mechanisms will be at play in shaping heterogeneity in the impact of micro- level disruptive events such as job loss or divorce. That is, effect heterogeneity will be a net result of forces that might operate in different directions and might even offset each other. The articles in this issue reflect both patterns.

We discuss disruptions in the following domains: economic (job loss, recession), household and family (divorce, incarceration), education (school closures), health (illness, death), and environmental (floods, earthquakes). These domains were selected for multiple reasons. First, they identify exposures with a large, documented impact on children’s life chances. Second, a robust body of evidence examining patterns and sources of heterogeneity exists in each of them. Third, in all these cases, we can distinguish micro- level events (for example, parental job loss) from macro- level events (for example, recessions), gaining theoretical insight on the plausibility of the two theoretical frameworks we have outlined.