Parental Education and Children’s Sleep Problems: Minorities’ Diminished Returns

Shervin Assari

doi:10.34172/ijer.2021.06

Abstract

Background and aims: While increased parental education reduces children’s sleep problems, less is known about racial variation in such protection. According to Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) theory, economic resources such as parental education show weaker health effects for minority groups such as Blacks and Latinos than non-Latino Whites, which is due to racism and social stratification. In this study, we investigated the association between parental education and children’s sleep problems, as a proxy of sleep problems, by race. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 11718 American children aged 9-10. All participants were recruited to the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was parental education, a five-level nominal variable. The dependent variable – sleep problems, was a continuous variable. Race/ethnicity was the effect modifier. Age, sex, and marital status were the covariates. Mixed-effects regression models were used for data analysis. Results: Parental education was associated with children’s sleep problems. However, there was a weaker inverse association seen in non-Latino Black and Latino families compared to non-Latino White families. This was documented by a significant statistical interaction between race and ethnicity and parental education on children’s sleep problems. Conclusion: Diminished protective effect of parental education on children’s sleep problems for non-Latino Black and Latino families compared to non-Latino White families is similar to the MDRs in other domains. Worse than expected sleep may contribute to higher-than-expected health risks of middle-class Black and Latino children.

Highlights

Black participants had the highest rate of worst sleep problems, and non-Latino White and Asian American children had the lowest rate of sleep problems
Asian and nonLatino White children were most likely to be from married families, and non-Latino Black children were most likely to be from unmarried families
This study showed that the association between parental education and children’s sleep problems is diminished for Black and Latino than non-Latino White children

Summary

Introduction

Race/ethnicity[1] and socioeconomic status (SES)[2,3,4] have inter-dependent rather than independent effects on health and health behaviors.[5,6,7] As race and SES have a major overlap,[8] with racial/ethnic minorities commonly having lower SES,[8] some of the racial gap in health and health behaviors of minorities (e.g., Blacks and Latinos) compared to non-Latino Whites is attributed to low SES.[9,10] As a result, the traditional assumption has been that to reduce or remove racial/ethnic inequalities in health, we need to remove the existing SES gap across racial and ethnic groups.[11]. According to Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) theory, economic resources such as parental education show weaker health effects for minority groups such as Blacks and Latinos than non-Latino Whites, which is due to racism and social stratification. There was a weaker inverse association seen in non-Latino Black and Latino families compared to non-Latino White families This was documented by a significant statistical interaction between race and ethnicity and parental education on children’s sleep problems. Conclusion: Diminished protective effect of parental education on children’s sleep problems for nonLatino Black and Latino families compared to non-Latino White families is similar to the MDRs in other domains.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion