Parental Household Income Research Articles

Examining parental stress and its link to hair cortisol and DHEA levels in kindergartners

Background Parental work-family conflict (WFC) and parental household income have been linked to negative outcomes for children. So far, no study has associated these two stressors with the hair concentration of cortisol (HCC) and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) in kindergarteners as a measurement of their objective stress. Methods and measures 44 children (40.91% female) with a mean age of 5.16 years and their parents participated in this cross-sectional study. Children’s cortisol and DHEA measurements reflected the hormones produced over the past two months. Parents filled out questionnaires concerning their WFC and parenting behavior. Results Higher maternal WFC and a lower parental net household income were negatively associated with the DHEA and positively with HCC/DHEA ratio of their children. No significant associations were found between HCC and any included variables. Paternal WFC had no impact on the stress hormones and negatively affected parenting behavior of both parents. Levels of stress hormones were not correlated with parenting behavior. Conclusion The present results indicated a higher stress exposure in children of mothers with a higher WFC and lower net household income. Conceivably, this may have led to an accumulation of allostatic load. Potential influences of demographic variables on the children’s hormones are discussed.

Parental socio-economic position and the risk of type 1 diabetes in children and young adults in Denmark: A nation-wide register-based study.

Diabetes mellitus type 1 is one of the most common serious chronic diseases in childhood and the incidence is increasing. Insight into risk factors may inform our etiologic understanding of the disease and subsequent prevention. Any socio-economic gradient in disease risk indicates a potential for prevention, since this points towards socially patterned environmental risk factors. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between measures of parental socio-economic position and the onset of type 1 diabetes in offspring based on individual data in the entire Danish population. In a study population of all children born in Denmark between 1 January 1987 and 31 December 2010, we examined the association between parental socio-economic position and the risk of type 1 diabetes up to the age of 25 years. The risk of type 1 diabetes was estimated according to maternal education, paternal education and household income using Cox proportional hazards regression, with adjustments for the a priori selected confounding variables: year of birth, maternal age at birth and parental type 1 diabetes. In the study population of 1,433,584 children, a total of 4610 developed type 1 diabetes. We found no clear pattern in type 1 diabetes risk according to parental educational attainment or parental household income. In this large population covering study of the risk of type 1 diabetes according to individual-level parental socio-economic position, we found no strong indication of a socially patterned disease risk.

Association between disparities in intergenerational economic mobility and cause-specific mortality among Black and White persons in the United States

BackgroundEvidence about the association between structural racism and mortality in the United States is limited. We examined the association between ongoing structural racism, measured as inequalities in adulthood income between White and Black children with similar parental household income (economic mobility gap) in a recent birth cohort, and Black-White disparities in death rates (mortality gap) overall and for major causes. MethodsSex-, race/ethnicity-, and county-specific data were used to examine sex-specific associations between economic mobility and mortality gaps for all causes combined, heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), injury/violence, all malignant cancers, and 14 cancer types. Economic mobility data for 1978–1983 birth cohorts and death rates during 2011–2018 were obtained from the Opportunity Atlas and National Center for Health Statistics, respectively. Data from 471 counties were included in analyses of all-cause mortality at ages 30−39 years during 2011–2018 (corresponding to partially overlapping 1978–1983 birth cohorts); and from 1,572 and 1,248 counties in analyses of all-cause and cause-specific mortality in all ages combined, respectively. ResultsIn ages 30−39 years, a one percentile increase in the economic mobility gap was associated with a 6.8 % (95 % confidence interval 1.8 %–11.8 %) increase in the Black-White mortality gap among males and a 13.5 % (8.9 %–18.1 %) increase among females, based on data from 471 counties. In all ages combined, the corresponding percentages based on data from 1,572 counties were 10.2 % (7.2 %–13.2 %) among males and 14.8 % (11.4 %–18.2 %) among females, equivalent to an increase of 18.4 and 14.0 deaths per 100,000 in the mortality gap, respectively. Similarly, strong associations between economic mobility gap and mortality gap in all ages were found for major causes of death, notably for potentially preventable conditions, including COPD, injury/violence, and cancers of the lung, liver, and cervix. ConclusionsEconomic mobility gap conditional on parental income in a recent birth cohort as a marker of ongoing structural racism is strongly associated with Black-White disparities in all-cause mortality and mortality from several causes.

Association of Parental Socioeconomic Status and Physical Activity with Development of Arterial Stiffness in Prepubertal Children.

The present study examined the prospective association of parental household income, education level, migration background, and physical activity (PA) behavior with the development of pulse wave velocity (PWV) in prepubertal children. A total of 223 children (initial age 6–8 years) were included in this prospective school-based cohort study from 2014 to 2018. Parental socioeconomic status, migration background, and PA behavior were assessed by the use of questionnaires at both times points. PWV was measured by an oscillometric device at follow-up (2018). No significant association of household income, education level, and parental migration background with PWV in children after four years was found. However, a high level of maternal PA was related to a lower childhood PWV at follow-up (mean (95% CI) 4.6 (4.54–4.66) m/s) compared to children of mothers with a low PA behavior (mean (95% CI) 4.7 (4.64–4.77) m/s) (p = 0.049). Children of mothers with a high PA level revealed a beneficial arterial stiffness after four years. Little evidence for an association of socioeconomic status and migration background with childhood arterial stiffness was found. Increased parental PA seems to support the development of childhood vascular health and should be considered in the generation of future primary prevention strategies of childhood cardiovascular health.

Role of Parental Income and its Implications for Unemployed Educated Youth: A Case Study of Turbatkech, Balouchistan

Parental household income plays an essential role in the personality development and well-being of its members. The study aims to discover the perception of unemployed educated youth towards the tradition of cousin marriages. The study was conducted TurbatKech, southern part of Balochistan, by employing qualitative research design. Data for this purpose was collected through qualitative techniques from 30 unemployed educated young adults who were selected through purposive sampling. Economic dependency and financial constraints are considered the key driving forces among unemployed educated youth that persuade them to prefer consanguinity. Furthermore, caste system within the society induces individual to prefer their own blood while making spouse selection. The present study illustrates lack of economic independence among educated youth. In order to bring positive behavioral change among youth what matters the most is to give them socio-economic independence and alternatives other than marrying them off

Postsecondary Education Impact on Intergenerational Income Mobility: Differences by Completion Status, Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Type of Major

ABSTRACTThis study examined intergenerational mobility among former students of The University of Texas System (n = 98,199) by comparing parental household income while the students were in college to students’ income five years after exiting the system. The proportion of students who experienced upward mobility relative to their parents were estimated, using a combination of rank-rank slopes, transition matrices, and logistic regression. The results indicated that parental income and college completion are the most important of the studied factors in determining upward mobility. The majority of completers from the bottom two parental income quintiles displayed upward mobility within a few years of graduation, and among students from the bottom quintile, over half of noncompleters also had higher incomes relative to their parents. Differences in mobility rates on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, type of major, institution type, and financial aid type were also explored.

Financial Assistance Patterns from Midlife Parents to Adult Children: A Test of the Cumulative Advantage Hypothesis

Young adults may receive financial assistance from midlife parents as they experience life course transitions often associated with establishing independent status, such as schooling, marriage or gaining full-time work. We used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (1992–2002) and hypothesized that adult children in the United States who received repeated financial transfers from midlife parents experienced cumulative advantages across time. We also examined the data using parental household characteristics to reinforce the importance of previous transfer behaviors. We found that the receipt of prior transfers, family structure and parental household income were the strongest determinants of the odds that parents gave financial assistance to adult children as both generations aged. The findings also supported the cumulative advantage theory due to the larger likelihood of continued transfers.

Low socioeconomic status may increase the risk of central obesity in incoming university students in Taiwan

Obesity is related to social disparity. The objective of the study was to evaluate different indicators of parental SES with the association of central obesity in young adult Taiwanese students. This study was cross-sectionally designed and a total of 4552 subjects were recruited. Each subject completed a self-administrated questionnaire and received anthropometric and laboratory measurements. The indicators of SES in study subjects included parental education, occupation, household incomes, childhood and current index of social position (ISP), measured according to the modified Hollingshead's ISP. Central obesity was defined as waist circumference ≥90 cm in men and ≥80 cm in women. The prevalence of central obesity was 10.7% in this study. When compared to subjects with normal waist circumferences, subjects with central obesity were older, had a higher BMI, both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, a higher proportion of male gender, family history of diabetes and hypertension, alcohol consumption habit, and a higher proportion of low current household income, current parental blue collar occupational level, and lower current and childhood parental ISP level. Multivariate analysis showed the current parental household income and ISP were significantly higher indicators of risk of central obesity after adjustment for possible confounding factors. The odds ratios were 1.26 and 1.30, respectively. Our results showed that low household income and current ISP were independently associated with the risk of central obesity. Therefore, young adults with low SES should be an important target group for prevention and management of central obesity in school health promotion programs.

Parental Income, Lifetime Income, and Mortality

This article studies the relation between parental economic resources and mortality later in life. We use a data set on a cohort of individuals born in 1928 in the county of Malmo in southern Sweden, which contains exceptionally detailed measures of parental household income from five years during the individuals’ childhood between 1929 and 1942. The data also contain very rich information on individual earnings throughout these individuals’ entire life cycle that allows us to construct a measure of lifetime earnings. Date and cause of death are obtained from national registers. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we find an inverse relationship between parental income and mortality, also when controlling for individual lifetime income and when studying those with high education separately. A competing risk analysis shows the relation between parental income and mortality to apply to cancer as the cause of death. (JEL: D31, I10, I12, J10)

Parent’s Socioeconomic Status, Adolescents’ Disposable Income, and Adolescents’ Smoking Status in Massachusetts

This study examined the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and adolescent smoking. We conducted telephone interviews with a probability sample of 1308 Massachusetts adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. We used multiple-variable-adjusted logistic regression models. The risk of adolescent smoking increased by 28% with each step down in parental education and increased by 30% for each step down in parental household income. These associations persisted after adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and adolescent disposable income. Parental smoking status was a mediator of these associations. Parental SES is inversely associated with adolescent smoking. Parental smoking is a mediator but does not fully explain the association.