摘要：Objectives. To examine the effect of maltreatment during childhood on subsequent financial strain during adulthood and the extent to which this effect is mediated by adolescent depressive symptoms, adolescent substance abuse, attenuated educational achievement, and timing of first birth. Methods. We specified a multilevel path model to examine the developmental cascade of child maltreatment. We used data from a longitudinal panel study of 496 parents participating in the Rochester Intergenerational Study, in Rochester, New York. Data were collected between 1988 and 2016. Results. Child maltreatment had both a direct and indirect (via the mediators) effect on greater financial strain during adulthood. Conclusions. Maltreatment has the capacity to disrupt healthy development during adolescence and early adulthood and puts the affected individual at risk for economic difficulties later in life. Maltreatment is a key social determinant for health and prosperity, and initiatives to prevent maltreatment and provide mental health and social services to victims are critical. The ecology of an individual’s childhood has the capacity to foster or hinder adaptive development over the life course. This notion is a primary premise of the American Academy of Sciences’ ecobiodevelopmental model, 1 a framework designed to elucidate the interplay of childhood ecology (i.e., the environmental and social contexts that the child navigates), biology (including genetics and neurodevelopment), and long-term prosperity in terms of mental, physical, social, and economic well-being. Recently, the ecobiodevelopmental framework has been used to explain the consequences of child maltreatment, a trauma that can lead to toxic stress and ensuing health risk behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, poor eating and exercise habits, risky sexual behaviors), and ultimately poor mental and physical health (e.g., depression and cardiovascular disease). 1–3 Indeed, child maltreatment’s ill effect on health outcomes can be far reaching, long lasting, and profound. While a great deal of work has documented the harmful impacts of maltreatment on health, far less has examined the socioeconomic consequences of child maltreatment. To fill this gap, Metzler et al. 4 recently demonstrated that victims of child maltreatment experience worse socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood, including fewer years of education, poorer employment prospects, and lower wages. In this article, our goals were to extend this work in 3 ways: (1) to determine if the harmful effect of maltreatment found by Metzler et al. can be replicated in a prospective, longitudinal study, (2) to control for a broader array of potential confounders, and (3) to identify potential mediators that link childhood maltreatment to financial strain in adulthood. In doing so, we sought to examine the developmental cascade set in motion by child maltreatment. Masten and Cicchetti defined a developmental cascade as “the cumulative consequences for development of the many interactions and transactions occurring in developing systems that result in spreading effects across levels, among domains at the same level, and across different systems or generations.” 5 (p491) The developmental cascade model that undergirds our longitudinal exploration is presented in Figure 1 . Specifically, we examined the extent to which child maltreatment was associated with the following ill outcomes for the victim: depressive symptoms in adolescence, substance abuse in adolescence, poorer educational attainment, earlier entry into parenthood, and, ultimately, financial strain during parenthood. Open in a separate window FIGURE 1— A Developmental Cascade of the Consequences of Child Maltreatment on Adult Socioeconomic Outcomes: Rochester Youth Development Study and Rochester Intergenerational Study, Rochester, NY, 1988–2016 Note. G2 = generation 2; G3 = generation 3. The first phase of our conceptual model is the proximal effect of child maltreatment on adolescent depressive symptoms and substance abuse, as there is evidence that maltreatment can have a negative impact on both outcomes. 6,7 In general, early childhood exposure to toxic environments is related to changes in the brain that may make it more difficult to regulate stress and navigate social and emotional experiences, 1 and the ensuing toxic environment produced by a context of maltreatment has the capacity to produce psychopathology among victims. The second phase of our conceptual model pertains to the role that maltreatment, and ensuing psychopathology in the form of mental health and substance abuse, play in hampering the achievement of the developmental tasks of adolescence and early adulthood. 8 We hypothesized that the confluence of these risks would decrease the likelihood that a victim of child maltreatment would accumulate adequate education and increase the likelihood that a victim would become a parent at an earlier age. There is some evidence in the literature that maltreatment, depression, and substance abuse are each predictive of poorer educational attainment, 4,9,10 as well as earlier entry into parenthood. 11,12 The final phase of our conceptual model describes the transition to adulthood. In the United States, one of the most important markers of a successful transition to adulthood is financial security. Financial security means being free from the severe strain of worrying about having enough food to survive, maintaining a roof overhead, and being able to access basic life necessities. 13–15 Unfortunately, there is evidence that such financial security can be compromised when an individual is maltreated as a child. Victims of child maltreatment are more likely to experience poorer socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood, 4,16–18 even after control for preexisting socioeconomic differences. 17 Moreover, the confluence of compromised development during adolescence marked by depression, substance abuse, and precocious transitions to adulthood is likely to have negative implications for financial security as well. 8 The degree to which this type of compromised development might explain the relationship between maltreatment and subsequent socioeconomic circumstances is largely unknown, and longitudinal studies that can model change across time in these critical processes and elucidate important intermediate variables in the cascade are needed. We tested our developmental cascade model by using data from a longitudinal and intergenerational panel study of 496 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse parents who were initially recruited to participate in a study of adolescent development in 1988 when they were in junior high school, and subsequently recruited to participate in an intergenerational study of families once they became parents. We adjusted for a broad array of variables that may cause an individual to be maltreated and also to suffer from the proposed consequences of maltreatment. These included the socioeconomic situation of the individual during his or her childhood and adolescence, as well as characteristics of the individual’s primary caregiver.
