How Socioeconomic Disadvantages Get Under the Skin and into the Brain to Influence Health Development Across the Lifespan

Pilyoung Kim; Gary W. Evans; Edith Chen; Gregory Miller; Teresa Seeman

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47143-3_19

How Socioeconomic Disadvantages Get Under the Skin and into the Brain to Influence Health Development Across the Lifespan

Review

In: Handbook of Life Course Health Development [Internet]. Cham (CH): Springer; 2018.

2017 Nov 21.

Authors

Pilyoung Kim¹, Gary W. Evans², Edith Chen³, Gregory Miller³, Teresa Seeman⁴

Book Editors

Neal Halfon¹, Christopher B. Forrest², Richard M. Lerner³, Elaine M. Faustman⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA
² Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
³ Department of Psychology and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
⁴ David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California – Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Book Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
² Applied Clinical Research Center Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
³ Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA
⁴ Institute for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Excerpt

Socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) has adverse impacts on physical (Adler and Rehkopf 2008; Blair and Raver 2012; Braverman and Egerter 2008; Cohen et al. 2010; Poulton et al. 2002) and psychological (Adler and Rehkopf 2008; Bradley and Corwyn 2002; Grant et al. 2003) health development. SED is similar to low socioeconomic status (SES) which is based on occupation, income, and education or a composite of more than one of these indicators (McLoyd 1998). However, we conceptualize SED more broadly than socioeconomic status to also include subjective perception of social position and contextual indicators of disadvantage, such as neighborhood deprivation. One of the most commonly used SED indicators is poverty, which is calculated using income that falls below an annually adjusted federal poverty line. Some studies suggest independent effects of different SED variables, but each variable tends to be highly correlated with the others; thus, it is often nearly impossible to disentangle independent effects. Therefore, in this chapter, we will review findings on different SED variables but discuss the impact of SED inclusively. In adulthood, SED is assessed based on factors in an individual’s own background such as income, occupation, and education level, whereas in childhood, SED is typically assessed based on these factors for the parents.

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