"Just give me some space". The contributions of income, mothers' stress and children's screen use to child behaviour problems.

Parental income is positively associated with nearly every measure of child wellbeing. However, there is little quality evidence, especially in the New Zealand context, on how income affects children via its effects on parenting behaviour.

The first two years of a child’s life are critical and the most effective time to target policy interventions. Therefore, this study draws on the data from 6,852 children in the Growing Up in New Zealand Study that covers the first two years of life and highlights those intervention pathways with potential to reduce gaps between children of high- and low-income families.

Results show that adequate household income has a small direct protective effect against child behaviour problems. However, lower maternal stress has a much greater effect and maternal stress is negatively associated with adequate household income. Child screen use is also an important, and currently unaddressed, pathway linking income, stress and child behaviour. The associations between the relevant pathways are explored in a series of regression models: Gelbach’s decomposition is employed to show the mediation relationships between key variables and control variables, an instrumental variable approach is adopted to isolate causality, and a Heckman correction is used to address selection effects following multiple imputation of item non-response.