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The Disparity between Parental Education and Urban Resident through Residential Mobility in Child Development: Taiwan Birth Cohort Study

For-Wey Lung, Tung-Liang Chiang, Shio-Jean Lin and Bih-Ching Shu*

Background: Children’s development is associated with the quality of the environment in which they live in, including neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and parental level of education, which may reflect resource availability.

Aim: Using a national birth cohort database, this study investigated the influence of residential mobility, parental education and urban resident on children’s developmental trajectory from six months to five years using pathway analysis and latent growth modeling (LGM). In addition, the interaction of these variables of interest was also investigated.

Methods: The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study dataset includes randomized community data on 21,663 children at six, 18, 36 and 66 months of age. The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study-Developmental Instrument was used to measure children’s development.

Results: The LGM of the children’s developmental trajectory from six months to five years old showed that children of more educated parents were associated with better initial level of development. Children who lived in the city were associated with better development than those who lived outside the city and children that relocated between the ages of three and five were associated with slower developmental growth than those who had not. Regression results showed mothers who were more educated were more likely to move, but fathers who were more educated were less likely to move.

Discussions: Parental level of education was associated with the rate of relocation, with an inverse effect between fathers and mothers. In addition, an interactive effect was found between residential mobility and father’s level of education, with fathers living in rural areas associating with having a higher level of education being more likely to move. Follow-up on the influence of residential mobility in children’s development is needed to investigate how pervasively and persistently the changes in the children’s environment associates with their development