Consistency and continuity in childhood adversity: the nature and history of multiple disadvantage in families with young children

The main aims are to investigate associations between different types of family adversity at the same point in time and the persistence of adversity over time, using the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Past research has highlighted particular aspects of adversity (e.g. poverty) by adjusting or controlling for other factors, whereas this proposal considers the experience of multiple disadvantage to be of central importance. An integrated view of childhood adversity will be developed by (1) quantifying the co-occurrence of specific adversities in the population, (2) measuring the persistence of adversities over time, and (3) establishing how measures of multiple disadvantage help explain continuity over time.