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The Health Impact of Upward Mobility: Does Socioeconomic Attainment Make Youth More Vulnerable to Stressful Circumstances?

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Abstract

Previous research has documented that adolescent stressful life experiences have a long-term detrimental influence on cardio-metabolic disease risk. While studies have focused on either the moderating or mediating effects of youth socioeconomic competence, drawing from a life course perspective, we estimate these mediating and moderating effects simultaneously within a single analytical framework. The study used a nationally representative sample of 11,271 adolescents (53 % female) over 13 years. The sample included 49 % minority youth (21 % Blacks, 16 % Hispanics, 6 % Asians, 4 % multiracial youth, and 2 % Native Americans). The analyses focused specifically on adolescents’ stressful life experiences, their socioeconomic development (conceptualized as their future orientation in adolescence as well as their educational attainment and income in young adulthood), and cardio-metabolic disease risk in young adulthood (assessed by a measure of allostatic load consisting of nine regulatory bio-markers). The study findings indicated detrimental influences of stressful life experiences on both socioeconomic development and young adult cardio-metabolic disease risk and a beneficial additive influence of positive socioeconomic development on young adult cardio-metabolic health. However, there was also evidence that striving for socioeconomic attainment increased the detrimental influence of stressful life experiences on young adult cardio-metabolic health. These study findings have important implications for our understanding about youth resilience in relation to stressful life contexts and for the formulation of policies and programs for promoting youth health.

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Funding

This study was not funded, although the study used data from a funded project (see the Acknowledgement statement).

Author Contributions

KASW conceived of the study, conducted the preliminary analyses, and drafted the manuscript; CWO participated in the interpretation of the data and manuscript writing and preparation; LTK conducted the final analyses. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 103 Family Science Center I, Department of Human Development and Family Science, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Kandauda A. S. Wickrama & Tae Kyoung Lee

  2. 107 Family Science Center II, Department of Human Development and Family Science, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Catherine Walker O’Neal

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  1. Kandauda A. S. Wickrama
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  2. Catherine Walker O’Neal
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Correspondence to Catherine Walker O’Neal.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wickrama, K.A.S., O’Neal, C.W. & Lee, T.K. The Health Impact of Upward Mobility: Does Socioeconomic Attainment Make Youth More Vulnerable to Stressful Circumstances?. J Youth Adolescence 45, 271–285 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0397-7

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