Study of poverty impact on child health
Persistent child poverty along with family adversities may significantly impact adolescent health.
According to a journal report in the Lancet Regional Health Europe, persistent child poverty along with family adversities may significantly impact adolescent health.
The authors claimed that their study is the first of its kind to assess how UK-based children are impacted by poverty and multiple indicators of family adversities, such as domestic abuse, parental illness, and alcohol misuse.
The study involved the longitudinal data of the UK Millennium Cohort Study with more than 11,000 children. The young participants were followed until the age of 14.
“We assessed associations of these trajectories with child physical, mental and behavioral outcomes at age 14 years using multivariable logistic regression, adjusting for confounders,” the study says.
The results of the study concluded that childhood socioeconomic conditions must be considered to adequately address childhood adversities, as the children in the persistent adversity trajectory groups purportedly saw the worse outcomes.
“The findings add to the current body of evidence by showing that poor parental mental health and poverty co-occur or cluster and their persistence across the developmental stages is associated with adverse child outcomes, particularly poor child mental health,” said one co-author of the study in a news release.