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Developing Health Lifestyle Pathways and Social Inequalities Across Early Childhood

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Abstract

Lifestyles are a long-theorized aspect of social inequalities that root individual behaviors in social group differences. Although the health lifestyle construct is an important advance for understanding social inequalities and health behaviors, research has not theorized or investigated the longitudinal development of health lifestyles from infancy through the transition to school. This study documented children’s longitudinal health lifestyle pathways, articulated and tested a theoretical framework of health lifestyle development in early life, and assessed associations with kindergarten cognition, socioemotional behavior, and health. Latent class analyses identified health lifestyle pathways using the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; N ≈ 6550). Children’s health lifestyle pathways were complex, combining healthier and unhealthier behaviors and changing with age. Social background prior to birth was associated with health lifestyle pathways, as were parents’ resources, health behaviors, and nonhealth-focused parenting. Developing health lifestyle pathways were related to kindergarten cognition, behavior, and health net of social background and other parent influences. Thus, family context is important for the development of complex health lifestyle pathways across early childhood, which have implications for school preparedness and thus for social inequalities and well-being throughout life. Developing health lifestyles both reflect and reproduce social inequalities across generations.

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Notes

  1. The term “discordant” may seem to suggest that health lifestyles should be “concordant” along a single dimension of healthfulness. Yet health lifestyles research is largely in agreement that health lifestyles are usually discordant because of reasons outlined in this paragraph. We use the terms “discordant” and “concordant” to conform to extant literature but do not wish to imply that “discordant” health lifestyles are aberrant.

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Acknowledgements

This research is based on work supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES 1423524) and the National Institutes of Health under a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F32HD085599). Research funds were also provided by the NIH/NICHD funded CU Population Center (P2CHD066613). We are grateful to the NICHD-funded Carolina Population Center (P2CHD050924) and the Lund University Centre for Economic Demography for general support. We thank Richard Jessor, Fred Pampel, and Jeff Dennis for their contributions to this study.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder, UCB 483, Boulder, CO, 80309-0483, USA

    Stefanie Mollborn

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Las Vegas, USA

    Elizabeth Lawrence

  3. Department of Health & Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, USA

    Patrick M. Krueger

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  1. Stefanie Mollborn
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Correspondence to Stefanie Mollborn.

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Mollborn, S., Lawrence, E. & Krueger, P.M. Developing Health Lifestyle Pathways and Social Inequalities Across Early Childhood. Popul Res Policy Rev 40, 1085–1117 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-020-09615-6

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