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• Employing resilience framework to examine the poverty effect under multisystems. • Constructing Multidimensional Poverty Index to measure household poverty. • Identifying promotive factors in mitigating poverty risk posed on child development. By employing the resilience framework, this study investigates how poverty would impact children's educational and behavioral performance in China. Considering the nested structure of the data, we employed multilevel structural equation modeling. The results suggest that, at the household level, personal agency and family resources completely mediate the effect of poverty on educational performance while partially mediating its effect on behavioral performance. At the community level, the two mediators partially mediate both educational and behavioral performance. Taking both mediators into account, poverty has a negative effect on cognitive ability at the community level, but positive impacts on behavioral performance at both the household and community levels. This study offers a new lens for social service practitioners who seek to promote poverty resilience among poor children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Poverty has a direct negative effect on adolescents' psychological well-being but not on their psychological distress. • Relational victimization, not overt victimization, mediates the association between poverty and adolescents' mental health. • Poverty and relational victimization negatively predict self-esteem, which in turn, jeopardizes adolescents' mental health. Poverty is negatively linked to adolescents' mental health. However, little is known about the underlying process that mediates this relationship. This study aims to examine the association among poverty, peer victimization, self-esteem, and mental health of adolescents. Data are collected through a multistage cluster random sampling in Hebei, China (N = 1280; mean age = 15.68; 47.4% male). Structural equation modeling is adopted to examine the hypothetical model using AMOS 24.0. Results reveal that the mechanisms linking poverty to adolescent mental health differ in terms of victimization types (overt or relational). Relational victimization and self-esteem partially mediate the relationship between poverty and psychological well-being and fully mediate the relationship between poverty and psychological distress after gender, age, hukou status, and family socioeconomic status are controlled. However, the mediating effect of overt victimization is not significant. The overall model accounts for 27% and 24.8% of the variance in psychological well-being and distress, respectively. This study contributes to an improved understanding of the mediating mechanisms underlying poverty and mental health. The implications of the present findings for social work interventions and social policies are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]