Canada's society is ethnically and culturally diverse, with a growing percentage of its population of immigrant or refugee backgrounds. The empirical literature on child development outcomes of immigrant and refugee children, however, is scarce – in part due to the lack of representative data sets containing both child development and immigrant background data. This study examined the relationship between immigrant children's cultural background, the socio-economic and cultural composition of children's neighborhoods, and children's developmental outcomes at kindergarten. A hypothesis of concentrated socio-cultural capital as a buffering resource for immigrant children growing up with socioeconomic disadvantage was tested against one that proposed the two factors would conjointly put children's development in double jeopardy. The study drew from a representative population-level database for the ethno-culturally diverse Lower Mainland in British Columbia (BC), Canada, and included administrative education and immigration landing file data. The results of the study corroborate previous research showing that family and neighborhood poverty are highly detrimental to almost all children's developmental outcomes. The association between neighborhood cultural density and developmental outcomes depended on neighborhood contexts (wealthier or poorer) and a child's cultural background; children from the Mandarin-speaking/Chinese cultural group had lower developmental outcomes in neighborhoods with greater cultural density, those from the Punjabi cultural group showed better developmental outcomes with increased cultural density only in poorer neighborhoods, and the English/Canadian children showed better developmental outcomes with increased cultural density only in wealthier neighborhoods. Findings are considered in relation to socio-cultural differences, Bronfenbrenner's person-process-context-time model and educational policy. © 2019

Immigrant children Cultural background Socio-cultural capital Developmental outcomes at kindergarten Neighbourhood effects poverty

immigrant poverty immigration human mandarin nonhuman neighborhood speech kindergarten male case report female clinical article Canadian Article human experiment outcome assessment British Columbia Child