Abstract

    Tables and charts profile children aged 6 to11 according to their household income in 1995. The profiles include a wide range of indicators relating to the quality of the child and teen and his or her parents, home, neighbourhood and school.

    Many teen behaviours, community involvements, and indicators of well-being of teen and family are explored in greater detail by regression analyses that examine the influence of the 1995 home situation, plus close friendships with teens who use drugs.

    How important is household income for the development of the child? May low income detract from the caring and educating role as well as add to it in perhaps unexpected ways? How many girls and boys are affected? These are some of the questions addressed in this study.

    A measure of relative income is used, the actual income divided by the low-income cut-off, or LICO. The LICO is a measure of basic income adequacy, given the size of the family: below it, income is considered to be inadequate to meet basic needs.

    Using the ratio, children are divided into three groups, called low, medium and high household income. Children in each group a profiled. In Canada, 15% of children aged 6 to 11 in 1995 lived in low income families, and this ranged from 11% in Ontario to 22% in Newfoundland.

    Summary tables order most of the indicators according to the strength of the relationship of the income class with key characteristics of the child, teen, parent, family, and neighbourhood and school.

    The relationships are explored in greater depth by a model in which household income and several other factors measured for the child and parent in 1995 are used to predict teen behaviours and indicators of family well-being in 2003. An additional variable included in this model is the teen's close friendship with others who use illicit drugs other than marijuana.

    Of the 58 analyses conducted for both girls and boys, two examples concern marijuana smoking and intoxication. Marijuana smoking is found to be deterred by the effect of the parent's worship frequency eight years earlier, among both girls and boys, along with their being married rather than divorced or separated. Household income encourages marijuana smoking among boys, contrary to our expectations. The overwhelming negative influence of having drug-using friends is found and is common in the results for many high-health risk activities. Somewhat similar results appear for the frequency of being intoxicated in the previous year. The parent's worship frequency deters drunkenness among both teen girls and boys, while the household income encourages it. The strongest variable is having close friends who use drugs. Teen worship frequency is negatively associated with having close friends who use drugs. Worship frequency is strongly stimulated by the worship frequency of the main parent eight years earlier, and depressed by residence in Quebec compared with Ontario and British Columbia, and for girls only, the Prairie provinces as well.