Associations between socioeconomic status and mental health trajectories during early adolescence: Findings from the...

Low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood is associated with higher levels of youth psychopathology. However, limited longitudinal work has examined the role of both household and neighborhood SES in shaping mental health trajectories over time using population-based data. The goal of the present study was to characterize associations between SES and changes in mental health problems during early adolescence.

We investigated independent and joint associations of household income-to-needs ratio, parent educational attainment, material hardship, and neighborhood disadvantage with internalizing, externalizing, and attention symptom trajectories using longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Given sex-based differences in mental health trajectories in the ABCD study, analyses were conducted separately in males and females. SES was assessed at baseline and youth-reported mental health was assessed across six time-points from age 10-13 years (M = 10.4, SD = 0.63 years; first assessed at the 6-month follow-up; N = 9488).

Main effects indicated that, in general, high SES was associated with lower mental health symptoms. However, longitudinally, lower SES was associated with lower increases in mental health problems over time relative to higher SES. In females, while internalizing symptoms increased at all levels of income-to-needs, the association was most positive at higher levels of income-to-needs (B = 0.036, SE = 0.008, p < 0.001). In males, income-to-needs positively predicted externalizing (B = 0.022, SE = 0.007, p = 0.002) and attention (B = 0.023, SE = 0.007, p = 0.001) symptom trajectories, with lower income-to-needs linked to lower increases in externalizing and attention symptoms relative to higher income-to-needs. Two-way interactions between SES indicators predicting changes in symptoms were non-significant.

Our finding that youth from lower-SES backgrounds exhibited lower increases in mental health problems during early adolescence contrasts with findings from prior cross-sectional studies. However, mental health problems are on the rise and the landscape of risk for psychopathology is changing. More research is needed to understand how childhood SES contributes to risk and resilience for psychopathology during the transition to adolescence.