What question did this study set out to answer?

To integrate psychological and public policy research into a unifying multilevel framework that explains how redistributive policies promote resilience in children and families facing adversity.

November 1, 2024American Psychologist12 citationsOpen Access

The social determinants of resilience: A conceptual framework to integrate psychological and policy research.

BLBriana S. LastStony Brook University NTNoah S. TriplettUniversity of Maryland, College Park EMEmma E. McGintyNewYork–Presbyterian Hospital

Key Points

To integrate psychological and public policy research into a unifying multilevel framework that explains how redistributive policies promote resilience in children and families facing adversity.
Conducted a conceptual synthesis and scoping review focusing on four major U.S. redistributive safety-net programs: Medicaid expansion, the Earned Income Tax Credit, childcare subsidies, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Mapped policy-level economic interventions to family-level psychological, relational, and cognitive developmental mechanisms.
Formulated the Social Determinants of Resilience framework, proposing three core mechanisms: expanding access to material and healthcare resources, alleviating toxic family stress, and strengthening adaptive cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning.
Identified evidence showing that downward wealth and resource reallocation mitigates the harmful psychological impacts of severe socio-economic adversity, reducing risk for psychopathology and promoting positive youth development.

Abstract

The psychological study of resilience has increasingly underscored the need for children and families to access material and psychological resources to positively adapt to significant stress. Redistributive policies-policies that downwardly reallocate society's social and economic resources-can offer economically disadvantaged families sustained access to these resources and mitigate the harmful impacts of adversity. This conceptual article builds upon and integrates insights from psychological and policy research to develop a unifying multilevel resilience framework, which we call the Social Determinants of Resilience. We examine four U.S. redistributive policies that have been extensively studied for their effects on child and family outcomes as case studies: (1) Medicaid expansion; (2) the Earned Income Tax Credit; (3) childcare subsidies; and (4) Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Informed by a scoping review of each policy, we propose that redistributive policies promote children's resilience through three mechanisms by (1) increasing families' resource and service access; (2) reducing family stress; and (3) enhancing adaptive cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal processes that protect against the development of psychopathology and promote positive mental health outcomes. Highlighting current evidence for these resilience mechanisms as well as gaps in knowledge, we conclude by setting a multidisciplinary research agenda that can leverage this conceptual framework to advance the science on how redistributive policies enable children and families to thrive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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