The family and residential environments are critical to children’s wellbeing and, hence, residential change can affect children’s developmental outcomes. In this research, we study the associations between residential relocations and academic performance in the Australian context using panel regression methods on longitudinal data of a representative sample of 3,481 children born in the late 1990s from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). We examine the impact of residential relocations from infancy to middle childhood and pay special attention to the distance, frequency and developmental age-stage of relocations on academic test scores from the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) of third, fifth and seventh graders. Consistent with previous research, we find that the associations between childhood relocations and school performance are generally small. Frequent relocations during childhood relate to poor academic performance, but the association vanishes after controlling for family and home circumstances. In contrast, moderate levels of residential mobility, particularly relocations towards a different local area, are associated with improvements in academic performance. Relocations around the time of school entry are associated with poorer academic performance in grade 3, but are not associated with performance in grades 5 and 7. Our findings suggest that while moving home is not per se a major determinant of academic performance, the contexts and environments where children are embedded matter. We conclude that further research is needed on what and how intersections between relocation biographies and contexts matter for children’s development.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚儿童的住宅搬迁和学习成绩：纵向分析

家庭和居住环境对儿童的福祉至关重要，因此，居住环境的改变会影响儿童的发展成果。在这项研究中，我们使用面板回归方法，根据澳大利亚儿童纵向研究（LSAC）中1990年后期出生的3,481名儿童的代表性样本的纵向数据，使用面板回归方法研究了居住环境的迁移与学业成绩之间的关联。我们研究了从婴儿期到中期儿童的住宅搬迁的影响，并特别注意了搬迁的距离，频率和发展年龄阶段对来自国家评估计划第三，第五和第七项的国家评估计划–识字和算术（NAPLAN）的学术测试成绩的影响年级学生。与先前的研究一致，我们发现，儿童搬迁与学校表现之间的关联通常很小。童年时期经常搬迁与学习成绩不佳有关，但在控制家庭和家庭环境后，这种联系消失了。相反，适度的居住流动性，特别是向其他地方的迁徙与学习成绩的提高有关。入学时的搬迁与3年级的学习成绩较差有关，但与5年级和7年级的成绩无关。我们的研究结果表明，搬家本身并不是学习成绩的主要决定因素，其背景和儿童嵌入的环境。