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Socioeconomic Influences on Health and Health Behavior in Adolescents

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Handbook of Adolescent Health Psychology

Abstract

Adolescence is a time of profound neurological, hormonal, and psychosocial changes, making it also a time of higher vulnerabilities to risk factors such as poverty and low SES. However, compared to literature investigating adults and children, research on SES disparities in health among adolescents is relatively scarce. Amongst this age-group, the effects of low SES have been traced to poor cardiovascular health, obesity, asthma, depression, externalizing problems, and substance abuse. A wide range of psychosocial (e.g., access to resources and stress exposure), behavioral (e.g., substance use and physical inactivity), and biological (e.g., inflammatory processes and exposure to pollution) mechanisms appear to mediate the SES–health association. However, future research is needed to establish outcome-specificity of these mediating pathways, differentiate the effects of chronic versus episodic poverty, examine the role of age of onset of low-SES conditions, and identify moderators of the SES–health link.

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Dmitrieva, J. (2013). Socioeconomic Influences on Health and Health Behavior in Adolescents. In: O'Donohue, W., Benuto, L., Woodward Tolle, L. (eds) Handbook of Adolescent Health Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6633-8_4

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