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Residential Density and Psychological Health among Children in Low-Income Families

Gary W. Evans, Susan Saegert and Rebecca Harris
Environment and Behavior 2001 33: 165
DOI: 10.1177/00139160121972936

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ENVIRONMENT
Evans AND BEHAVIOR
et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL / March
HEALTH 2001 CHILDREN
AMONG
RESIDENTIAL DENSITY AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG
CHILDREN IN LOW-INCOME FAMILIES

GARY W. EVANS is a professor of design and environmental analysis and human

development in the College of Human Ecology, Cornell University. He teaches in the
areas of environmental and developmental psychology. His research is focused on
children and the physical environment, environmental stressors, and poverty.

SUSAN SAEGERT is a professor of environmental psychology at the City University

of New York Graduate Center where she also directs the Center for Human Environ-
ments. Her current research areas include residential environments, health, and so-
cial inequality; the development and consequences of social capital in poor urban
communities; neighborhood change as a function of social capital building initia-
tives; and women and housing.

REBECCA HARRIS is a graduate student in psychology at The Pennsylvania State

University. Her research interests include risk-taking behaviors at the group level of
analysis, and the influence of group and team composition on work group perfor-
mance. Her work in the public safety sector has included modifying current selection
and training techniques to improve organizational hiring processes.

ABSTRACT: The authors provide data on mental health sequelae of residential

crowding among children, demonstrating significant associations between the num-
ber of persons per room and an index of psychological health. These relations are
shown in two independent samples of urban and rural children living in poverty. The
density–mental health link among the rural, low-income sample is qualified by a gen-
der interaction indicating that boys are more vulnerable to negative outcomes. This
interaction was not found among the smaller, inner-city sample. In both samples,
children from higher density homes are less likely to persist in an achievement, prob-
lem-solving context. The authors did not find support for their hypothesis that learned
helplessness would at least partially account for the relation between residential
crowding and mental health among children.

Beginning with findings that rodents showed marked elevations in

psychopathology in response to crowding (Calhoun, 1962), scientists have

ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 33 No. 2, March 2001 165-180

© 2001 Sage Publications, Inc.

165

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166 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / March 2001

wondered whether crowding might have harmful impacts on human beings.

A host of studies have revealed that interior residential density (i.e., people
per room) is positively associated with elevated psychological symptoms
among adults, indicative of mild depression and anxiety (Edwards, Fuller,
Sermsri, & Vorakitphokatorn, 1990; Evans, Palsane, Lepore, & Martin, 1989;
Gabe & Williams, 1987; Gove & Hughes, 1983; Hassen, 1977; Jain, 1987;
Lakey, 1989; Lepore, Evans, & Schneider, 1991; Marsella, Escudero, &
Gordon, 1970), Although some of these studies had good controls for socio-
economic status, to our knowledge, only the Lepore study was prospective.
Two studies (Baldassare, 1979; Booth, 1976) failed to replicate the positive
association between interior residential density and psychological health.
The Baldassare study used a short measure of mental health with dichoto-
mous items, and both studies had truncated ranges of density.
When we turn our attention to crowding and psychological health in chil-
dren, an interesting fact emerges. There is no direct evidence on residential
density and children’s psychological health. Children from more crowded
homes have greater behavioral problems in the classroom (Evans, Lepore,
Shejwal, & Palsane, 1998; Saegert, 1982), and there is greater conflict among
parents and children in more crowded homes (Booth & Edwards, 1976;
Evans et al., 1998; Saegert, 1982). Parents in more crowded homes are also
more critical and less responsive to their children (Bradley & Caldwell, 1984;
Evans, Maxwell, & Hart, 1999; Wachs, 1989). Nearly all of these studies of
children and crowding controlled for social class. An important limitation of
all of these studies, however, is that none employed a standardized instrument
to assess children’s psychological health. Thus, a primary objective of the
present study was to examine the relation between household density and
children’s psychological health using a well-developed standardized instru-
ment, the Rutter Children’s Behavior Questionnaire.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We are grateful to the many families who helped us in this pro-
ject. We thank Raymond Coddington, Jana Cooperman, Kim English, Missy
Globerman, Kira Krenichyn, Amy Schreier, and Grechen Susi for their assistance
with data collection. Partial support for this research came from the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health,
the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Institute at Cornell University, the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development, 1 F33 HD08473-01, the Graduate Center,
City University of New York, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. Request for
reprints and correspondence with regard to this article may be sent to Gary Evans,
Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis and Human Development, Col-
lege of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853-4401; e-mail: gwe1@
cornell.edu.

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 Evans et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG CHILDREN 167

Furthermore, with the exception of the Evans et al. (1998) study, which
was conducted in urban India, none of these developmental crowding studies
had a large range of household density. To increase the potential range of
household density in our sample, we focused our analyses on the segment of
the childhood population most likely to be crowded—the poor. In addition to
providing greater statistical power to test whether residential crowding is
related to psychological health among children, use of a low-income sample
is important because it is precisely these children who are most likely to live
under crowded conditions (Saegert, 1982). Another potentially important
shortcoming in crowding research has been the use of samples restricted to
urban metropolitan areas. To our knowledge, none of the studies of crowding
with either adults or children has used rural samples. Because it is unclear
whether interior density (people per room) might affect children differently
as a function of urbanity, we present two studies of residential crowding and
psychological health, one among low-income inner-city children and one
among low-income rural children.
One explanation for why crowding may be harmful to people is because of
the loss of control over social interactions that frequently accompanies
high-density living (Altman, 1975; Baron & Rodin, 1978; Schmidt &
Keating, 1979). Rodin (1976) reasoned that frequent, uncontrollable social
interactions that occur under crowded living conditions might lead to a loss of
self-efficacy in children and be manifested by elevated susceptibility to
learned helplessness. Thus, she compared well-matched, elementary school-
aged children and young adolescents living under high- or low-density con-
ditions on age-appropriate indices of helplessness. The results in both sam-
ples confirmed her hypotheses. More recently, Evans et al. (1998) found
parallel data among children living under high residential density in India,
although the association between crowding and helplessness held only for
girls. Baum and colleagues, in an extensive program of research on crowding
in college dormitories, demonstrated that residents of more crowded dorms
felt less control over social interaction and exhibited more helpless behaviors
in a group interaction game than their less-crowded counterparts (Baum, Gat-
chel, Aiello, & Thompson, 1981; Baum & Valins, 1977; 1979). High-density
laboratory conditions also produce postcrowding aftereffects among adults on
unsolvable puzzles (Evans, 1979; Nicosia, Hyman, Karlin, Epstein, & Aiello,
1979; Sherrod, 1974) that are indicative of motivational deficits related to
helplessness (Cohen, 1980; Glass & Singer, 1972). Using a similar paradigm,
Fleming, Baum, and Weiss (1987) showed parallel data in a field study of
neighborhood crowding. Thus, in addition to examining the relations
between residential density and psychological health among two samples of
low-income urban and rural children, respectively, we also investigated

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168 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / March 2001

whether residential crowding was linked to learned helplessness in children.

Last, we were curious whether the expected density-psychological distress
link might be caused, in part, by the intervening mechanism of learned help-
lessness. Thus, we also tested in each sample whether helplessness mediated
the relation between residential density and psychological health.

METHOD

PARTICIPANTS

Only one child in grades 3 through 5 in each household was sampled. The
urban low-income sample (median monthly income $1,021) were recruited
by word of mouth and flyers in several multiple dwelling, public housing pro-
jects in East Harlem, a predominantly low-income, Black and Hispanic
neighborhood in New York City. The mean density of households in the
urban sample was 0.97 (5.35 persons per 5.52 rooms on average). The ratio of
adults to children was 0.72. The urban sample consisted of 19 girls and 21
boys with a mean age of 9.8 years. Of the sample, 66% were Black and 34%
were Hispanic. Of the sample, 26% did not graduate from high school and
8% were college graduates. Of the mothers, 68% were single parents.
The rural low-income sample (median monthly income $1,030) were
recruited from Headstart programs, public schools, federal Section 8 housing
programs, and New York State Cooperative Extension programs in five
upstate, rural New York counties. The mean density per household was 0.67
(4.68 persons per 7.13 rooms on average). The ratio of adults to children was
0.63. Of the families, 56% resided in single-family homes, 10% in duplexes,
and 25% in multifamily dwellings. The rural sample consisted of 58 girls and
55 boys with a mean age of 9.2 years. Of the sample, 94% were White. Of the
mothers, 18% did not graduate from high school and 4% were college gradu-
ates. Of the mothers, 38% were single parents.

PROCEDURES

Data were collected in two home visits by trained undergraduate and grad-
uate students. The data were collected independently in one-on-one inter-
views with the child and his or her mother either in East Harlem or upstate
New York. The data for each sample were part of larger studies on poverty,
stress, and children’s socioemotional development. Although the two studies
were not designed as a replication, portions of the protocols for the two

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 Evans et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG CHILDREN 169

samples were similar enough that the authors decided to see if parallel analy-
ses of residential density might prove fruitful. Two measures of
socioemotional development in the urban and rural samples were identical
and are included in the present article.
Residential density was determined by dividing the number of people
residing in the home by the number of rooms. Anyone staying overnight 3 or
more nights per week was considered a resident. The room count was verified
by one of the interviewers. All rooms used on a regular basis were counted.
Garages, storage areas, and so on were not counted, nor were hallways.
Both studies included a standardized instrument designed to measure psy-
chological health in nonclinical samples of children, the Rutter Child Behav-
ior Questionnaire. This 26-item scale asks the mother to rate, on a 3-point
continuum (0 = does not apply, 1 = applies somewhat, 2 = certainly applies),
a list of common childhood symptoms indicative of behavioral conduct dis-
orders (e.g., bullies other children) as well as symptoms of anxiety and
depression (e.g., often appears miserable, unhappy, tearful, or depressed).
The Rutter scale has undergone extensive psychometric development,
including measures of test-retest reliability and interrater reliability, and was
found to be internally consistent for each of the present samples (a = .83 for
East Harlem; a = .82 for rural, upstate New York). The Rutter scale discrimi-
nates between normal and psychiatric outpatients and correlates highly with
clinical diagnosis (see Rutter, Tizzard, & Whitmore, 1970, and Boyle &
Jones, 1985, for further details).
An adaptation for children of the Glass and Singer (1972) aftereffects
measure was used to assess learned helplessness. Numerous studies with a
variety of stressors have shown that the Glass and Singer aftereffect task is
significantly altered by uncontrollable stressors, including crowding, noise,
and electric shock (Cohen, 1980; Evans & Cohen, 1987; Glass & Singer,
1972). The measure is believed to index helplessness because it is highly sen-
sitive to manipulations of perceived control over stressors and also tracks
well with differences in control-related beliefs (e.g., locus of control)
(Cohen, 1980; Cohen, Evans, Stokols, & Krantz, 1986; Glass & Singer,
1972). The version used herein has been shown to be sensitive to chronic
noise exposure among elementary school children (Bullinger, Hygge, Evans,
Meis, & von Mackensen, 1999; Evans, Hygge, & Bullinger, 1995). The task
consists of drawings that interconnect various sets of objects (e.g., animals)
with lines. The children’s task is to trace over the lines interconnecting the
objects without lifting their pencil or going over any line twice. After work-
ing with a practice puzzle to insure that the children comprehend the task, the
children are given a pile of identical puzzles and instructed to work on each
puzzle until solved or to take another one if they want to try again. The

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170 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / March 2001

TABLE 1
Descriptive Data and Zero-Order Correlations for Urban Low-Income Sample

M SD 2 3

1. Density 0.97 0.53 .33* –.34*

2. Psychological symptoms 36.92 7.22 –.11
3. Motivation 2.34 1.82
*p < .05.

children are further informed that if they feel unable to solve the puzzle, they
can move on to the next pile of puzzles. The children are also told that once
they move on to the next puzzle, they cannot return to the first one. Unbe-
knownst to the children, the first puzzle is unsolvable. The number of
attempts on the first puzzle is the index of helplessness. All children solve the
second puzzle and are praised for their performance. They are also informed
that most children have a lot of difficulty solving the puzzles.

RESULTS

URBAN LOW-INCOME SAMPLE

Descriptive data and zero-order correlations between the major variables

from the urban low-income sample are shown in Table 1. As can be seen in
the table, residential density is related both to the Rutter scale and to the
learned helplessness measure. The latter two variables are not correlated.
Figure 1 depicts the regression line for the Rutter scale, showing that as the
number of people per room rises, psychological symptoms increase, b = 4.49,
t(38) = 2.17, p < .05. Data are depicted at the mean and one standard deviation
above and below the mean for residential density. This approach is used
throughout the article.
As shown in Figure 2, as density increases, the number of attempts on the
unsolvable puzzle decreases, b = –1.13, t(36) = 2.16, p < .05. Degrees of free-
dom vary throughout because of missing data.
There was no interaction between gender and density on either measure so
the data are collapsed across gender. Because psychological distress and
motivation are uncorrelated (see Table 1), learned helplessness cannot medi-
ate the density–psychological health relation in the urban, low-income
sample.

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 Evans et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG CHILDREN 171

Figure 1: Residential Density and Psychological Distress Among Urban

Low-Income Children

RURAL LOW-INCOME SAMPLE

Descriptive data and zero-order correlations between the major variables

from the rural sample are shown in Table 2. As can be seen, residential den-
sity is related to both the Rutter scale and to the learned helplessness measure
in the rural poverty sample. Again, the latter two measures are uncorrelated.
For the rural sample, there was a significant interaction of gender and den-
sity on the Rutter index of psychological symptoms, F(1, 108) = 7.42, p < .01;
thus, regression lines are plotted separately in Figure 3 for boys and girls. As
suggested by the figure, the relation between density and the Rutter scale is
significant for boys, b = 13.88, t(108) = 3.87, p < .01; whereas for girls, the
simple slope does not differ from zero, b = –1.76, t(108) < 1.0. There is also
an overall main effect of density on the Rutter scale, F(1, 110) = 7.84, p < .01.
The main effect of gender was marginal, F(1, 110) = 2.83, p < .10. As density
increased, psychological symptoms rose. Boys have somewhat higher levels
of psychological symptoms than girls.

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172 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / March 2001

Figure 2: Residential Density and Learned Helplessness Among Urban

Low-Income Children

TABLE 2
Descriptive Data and Zero-Order Correlations for Rural Low-Income Sample

M SD 2 3

1. Density 0.67 0.21 .26** –.19*

2. Psychological symptoms 11.35 6.57 –.13
3. Motivation 7.80 5.91
*p < .05. **p < .01.

The results of the learned helplessness task for the rural sample are
depicted in Figure 4. Because there was no interaction between gender and
density, the data are collapsed across gender. As indicated, the number of
attempts on the unsolvable puzzle was negatively correlated with residential
density, b = –5.39, t(111) = 2.04, p < .05. As in the case of the urban sample,

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 Evans et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG CHILDREN 173

Figure 3: Residential Density and Psychological Distress Among Rural

Low-Income Children

psychological health and the learned helplessness measure were not corre-
lated (see Table 2), and thus no mediational analysis was conducted.

DISCUSSION

Data from both the urban and rural low-income samples indicate a posi-
tive relation between household density and psychological symptoms. We
believe these two independent studies represent the first findings on crowd-
ing and a standardized psychological health index for children. The trends
we have uncovered are consistent with studies that have found positive rela-
tions between household density and poorer psychological health among
adults (Edwards et al., 1990; Evans, 1979; Gabe & Williams, 1987; Gove &
Hughes, 1983; Hassen, 1977; Jain, 1987; Lakey, 1989; Lepore, Evans, &
Schneider, 1991; Marsella et al., 1970). We also build on and extend earlier

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174 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / March 2001

Figure 4: Residential Density and Learned Helplessness Among Rural

Low-Income Children

developmental work that has shown greater parent-child conflict in more

crowded homes (Booth & Edwards, 1976; Evans et al., 1998; Saegert, 1982)
as well as less-responsive parenting (Bradley & Caldwell, 1984; Evans et al.,
1999; Wachs, 1989). An important topic for further research is the analysis of
the possible mediating role of parent-child interaction in accounting for the
residential crowding and psychological health findings shown herein.
Recently, Evans et al. (1998) were able to show that parent-child conflict
mediated the positive association between residential crowding and teacher
ratings of behavioral disruption in the classroom.
For the rural but not the urban sample, we also uncovered a gender by den-
sity interaction on psychological health. As indicated in Figure 3, boys, but
not girls, appear to suffer greater psychological distress in relation to residen-
tial crowding. This gender effect is consistent with earlier work by Wachs
(1989), showing that male but not female infants and toddlers reacted nega-
tively to crowding in the home, although his research was focused on cogni-
tive development. Two studies have also shown that male elementary school

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 Evans et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG CHILDREN 175

children (Evans et al., 1998) and adolescent boys (Aiello, Nicosia, & Thomp-
son, 1979), relative to girls, evidenced elevated psychophysiological stress in
response to crowding. The absence of a gender by density interaction in the
urban sample could reflect insufficient sample size. It could also be related to
the overall higher levels of psychological distress manifested in the urban
versus rural sample. We say more about this issue further on.
Motivation is also related to residential density in both samples (see Fig-
ures 2 and 4). Our findings conceptually replicate both Rodin (1976) and
Evans et al. (1998) who found that children from high- versus low-density
homes were more vulnerable to the induction of learned helplessness follow-
ing exposure to unsolvable puzzles. We demonstrate that these findings are
robust, extending to an alternative paradigm for assessing helplessness, the
Glass and Singer (1972) aftereffects task. When confronted with a set of chal-
lenging puzzles, children from high-density homes are less likely to persist in
working on the puzzles than their low-density counterparts. The motivational
data are also important from a methodological standpoint because they pro-
vide multimethodological evidence for negative socioemotional outcomes
associated with crowding.
Originally, we had planned to explore whether some of the expected asso-
ciation between crowding and mental health might be due to reduced per-
sonal control, as indicated by the helplessness measure. To our surprise,
psychological symptoms on the Rutter scale were not correlated, in either
sample, with the motivational index (see Tables 1 and 2). For a variable to
function as a mediator, a minimum requirement is that it be correlated with
both the presumed predictor variable and the hypothesized outcome variable.
Given abundant evidence among adults that crowding is related to personal
control (Altman, 1975; Baron & Rodin, 1978; Schmidt & Keating, 1979) and
well-documented links between diminished personal control and mental
health (Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993), we are uncertain why the hypo-
thetical mediational pathway did not occur. Given our findings at this time, it
seems most appropriate to simply state that children have poorer psychologi-
cal health and manifest elevated helplessness in relation to higher levels of
residential density. It is worth brief mention that neither family size nor the
ratio of adults to children predict either index of psychological well-being.
Several other crowding studies have found the same thing (Evans, 2000). The
inability of individuals to regulate social interaction appears to be a critical
aspect of crowding, and people per room seems most salient to this social
process.
As in any cross-sectional study, caution is warranted in drawing any defin-
itive conclusions about the etiological role of an environmental stressor such
as crowding in children’s psychological health. On the other hand, the

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176 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / March 2001

evidence herein is stronger than in most cross-sectional designs of crowding.

We demonstrate multimethodological convergence across two samples.
Moreover, the current data are not confounded by income in either sample.
Self-selection is probably the most viable, plausible alternative explanation
for an association between crowding and psychological health, although
somewhat less applicable to children because they do not choose where they
live. Furthermore, for the urban sample, applicants are offered public hous-
ing by the New York City Housing Authority based on seniority from waiting
lists. Given the lengthy waiting list, most families in public housing experi-
ence no choice over where they live. Short of pure random assignment, a
stronger research design would be to examine children’s psychological
health in a prospective, longitudinal design. This would accomplish two
important objectives. First, such a design could help rule out self-selection by
showing that prior to occupancy, children’s mental health is uncorrelated to
density. Second, a longitudinal design would permit a developmental analy-
sis of crowding. We currently have no data available on the degree of stability
and change in any aspect of children’s behaviors over time as a function of
crowding. Truly developmental studies of stress and children are quite rare
(Gore & Eckenrode, 1996).
Although the focus of this study is on residential density and psychologi-
cal health, the clear differences in absolute levels of psychological distress
between the urban and rural poverty samples warrant brief comment. The
positive association between poverty and psychological distress in young
children is ubiquitous (Mc Loyd, 1998). Although there has been some sug-
gestion that socioemotional distress suffered by inner-city, minority children
is especially egregious (Mc Loyd, 1990), we are unaware of any comparative
data on rural and urban poverty with the same measures. Two aspects of the
results herein are relevant to the urban-rural comparison. First, inspection of
Tables 1 and 2 reveals that the urban children live in more dense housing con-
ditions. Second, as shown in all the figures, at a given level of residential den-
sity, inner-city children suffer greater socioemotional distress. The respective
distributions of socioemotional distress barely overlap. One possible reason
why this happens could be because inner-city children are exposed to more
intense levels of stressors (e.g., more crowding, as in this study) and to a
broader array of multiple stressors (e.g., racism, community violence, con-
centrated neighborhood decay, noise, pollution), than typically found in rural,
low-income families (Taylor, Repetti, & Seeman, 1997; Wandersman & Nation,
1998). Both Lepore, Evans, and Palsane (1991) and Evans and Saegert
(2000) have demonstrated that the effects of density on mental health are
exacerbated by the presence of other family stressors. Another intriguing
possibility is that more readily available open space in rural communities

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 Evans et al. / PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AMONG CHILDREN 177

helps offset some of the harmful effects of crowding (Kaplan, Kaplan, &
Ryan, 1998).
It is important to emphasize that comparisons between the respective
urban and rural samples are fraught with problems. This is why we focus
herein on the two samples as a replication of the main effects of residential
density on psychological distress. Not only do the samples differ in urbanity
and probably in the degree of multiple stressor exposure, the rural sample is
predominantly White, whereas the urban sample consists entirely of children
of color. Furthermore, a larger proportion of children in the urban sample are
living with a single mother, although many of the urban households also
include extended kinship networks (e.g., grandmothers, aunts).
Residential density is positively associated with multimethodological
indicators of psychological distress, and the results are replicated across two
independent samples. In the larger rural sample, the negative relation of resi-
dential density and a standardized index of psychological distress was mod-
erated by gender, indicating that boys but not girls suffered. We did not find
this interaction in the smaller urban sample. Furthermore, crowded girls and
boys in the two samples manifested motivational deficits related to learned
helplessness in comparison to their uncrowded counterparts. Young children
living in more crowded homes are less likely to persist when confronted with
a challenging puzzle. The latter finding has been shown in two prior studies
(Evans et al., 1998; Rodin, 1976).
In addition to demonstrating multimethodological mental health corre-
lates of residential density among children in two different samples, the pres-
ent findings are important because they focus on low-income children. Prior
crowding research has focused predominantly on middle- or upper-income
samples, ignoring the segment of the population most likely to live under the
most crowded conditions given the natural covariation of income and resi-
dential density. Low-income children may be especially vulnerable to the
harmful effects of residential density, given their exposure to a greater num-
ber of multiple stressors than wealthier children. More developmental
research on the interplay between physical and social stressors within the
context of poverty is warranted.

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