Income Gradient in Children’s Physical Activity: Diminished Returns in Black Families

Abstract

Background: Children are exposed to a wide range of stressful life events (SLEs) in the family and the community. Exposure to stress in the community as well as the family may depend on socioeconomic status (SES) and race/ ethnicity. Currently, there is limited data that explores different types of SLEs experienced by racial and ethnic groups of children. Aim: To compare the different types of SLEs experienced by a racially and ethnically diverse group of children, with a major emphasis on family and community context. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 5066 adolescents 9-10 years of age from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Race and ethnicity were the independent variables. The main outcomes were exposure to eight types of SLEs measured during an interview with the parent. Age and gender were the confounders. Parental marital status, parental education, parental employment, financial difficulties, and neighborhood income were the mediators. Logistic regression was used to analyze the data. Results: In the absence of SES in the model, Black but not Latino children experienced higher levels of SLEs in some but not all domains. SES explained some of the effects of race on SLEs, however, race remained significant in some domains, when the effects of SES indicators were controlled. While we found the same pattern for family and neighborhood SLEs, the observations showed some degrees of heterogeneities based on the specific type of SLE. There were also domains of SLEs that did not correlate with race. However, all types of SLEs were associated with SES. Conclusions: Our study showed that Black race, but not Latino ethnicity, is associated with disproportionately higher levels of experiencing family and neighborhood SLEs. The effects of race on some but not all types of SLEs are due to the racial gap in SES. Racial health quality requires the elimination of racial inequalities in exposure to stressful life events.