Abstract

The impacts of childhood stressors are harmful to the emotional and physical well-being of children of all ages. Past research has suggested that children experience increased stress due to change. One subgroup of the United States population that experiences change, is immigrants. Research provides empirical evidence of adolescent immigrant stress but has failed to examine stress experienced by immigrant children at a young age. The present study investigates how immigration status and child immigration generation might impact child stress at a young age using OLS regression. I predict that immigrant children will experience more stress than non-immigrant children and that there will be significant differences in stress between non-immigrant, 1.5 generation immigrant, and 2nd generation immigrant children. Using the 1998 and 2010 cohorts of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K 1998 and ECLS-K 2010), I compare non-immigrant and immigrant children in the Kindergarten Wave. Results provide little support for my immigration hypotheses. However, findings suggest that increases in child stress are associated with parent and child health, family structure transitions, and residential movement. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Degree

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Sociology

Rights

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