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Asthma and child behavioral skills: does family socioeconomic status matter?
1University of Missouri, Department of Health Sciences, Columbia, MO 65211, United States.
Insights
Childhood asthma negatively impacts behavior and attention, particularly for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These adverse effects diminish significantly for children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, highlighting the role of social stratification.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Developmental Psychology
- Sociology
Background:
- Asthma in children is linked to negative behavioral and psychological outcomes.
- The influence of social stratification on asthma's impact on child development is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how socioeconomic status (SES) shapes the developmental consequences of childhood asthma.
- To examine the role of social stratification in the relationship between asthma and child outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Utilized data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort.
- Analyzed the association between childhood asthma and behavioral/psychological outcomes across different socioeconomic strata.
- Controlled for healthcare resources, family processes, and environmental risks.
Main Results:
- Asthma was associated with poorer attention, social competence, and increased externalizing behaviors in children from low-SES backgrounds (low-educated mothers, poor households).
- These adverse effects of asthma were not observed in children from high-SES backgrounds (high-educated mothers, non-poor households).
- Socioeconomic disparities persisted across mild and severe asthma cases and were not fully explained by healthcare, family, or environmental factors.
Conclusions:
- Socioeconomic status plays a critical role in mediating the developmental impacts of childhood asthma.
- Understanding the developmental consequences of childhood illness requires centering socioeconomic status in research.
- Interventions addressing childhood asthma's impact should consider socioeconomic disparities.
Abstract:
Asthma is associated with poorer behavioral and psychological outcomes in children, yet little is known about whether and how the social stratification process affects the impacts of asthma on children's outcomes. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, this study considered the role of socioeconomic status in shaping the developmental consequences of children's asthma. Results showed that asthma was negatively associated with attention and social competence and positively associated with externalizing problem behaviors for children with low-educated mothers and children who lived in poor households. However, the adverse consequences of asthma disappeared for children with high-educated mothers and children who did not experience poverty. Additionally, the socioeconomic disparities were not fully explained by healthcare resources, family process, and exposure to environment risks and the disparities were found for both mild and severe cases. These findings suggest that, to fully understand the developmental consequences of illness in children, it is important to place socioeconomic status at the center of investigation.
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