Childhood Poverty and Young Adults’ Allostatic Load
Authors:
- 23 July 2012
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Psychological Science
- Vol. 23 (9) , 979-983
Abstract
Childhood poverty is linked to a host of physical and psychological disorders during childhood and later in life. In the study reported here, we showed that the proportion of childhood spent in poverty from birth to age 9 was linked to elevated allostatic load, a marker of chronic physiological stress, in 17-year-olds. Furthermore, this prospective longitudinal relationship was mediated by cumulative risk exposure at age 13. The greater the duration of early life spent in poverty, the greater the exposure to cumulative risk. This, in turn, leads to elevated allostatic load. Multiple psychological, biological, and neurological pathways likely account for the social patterning of psychological and physical disease.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- Childhood socioeconomic status and adult healthAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2010
- U.S. Disparities in Health: Descriptions, Causes, and MechanismsAnnual Review of Public Health, 2008
- An Interactionist Perspective on the Socioeconomic Context of Human DevelopmentAnnual Review of Psychology, 2007
- The Environment of Childhood Poverty.American Psychologist, 2004
- A multimethodological analysis of cumulative risk and allostatic load among rural children.Developmental Psychology, 2003
- The Environment of Poverty: Multiple Stressor Exposure, Psychophysiological Stress, and Socioemotional AdjustmentChild Development, 2002
- Socioeconomic differences in children's health: How and why do these relationships change with age?Psychological Bulletin, 2002
- Socioeconomic Status and Child DevelopmentAnnual Review of Psychology, 2002
- Coping with stress during childhood and adolescence: Problems, progress, and potential in theory and research.Psychological Bulletin, 2001
- Urinary Cortisol in the Assessment of Pituitary-Adrenal Function: Utility of 24-Hour and Spot DeterminationsThe Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 1986