Identifying the 'active ingredients' of socioeconomic disadvantage for youth outcomes in middle childhood.

Background: Youth experiencing socioeconomic deprivation may be exposed to disadvantage in multiple contexts (e.g., neighborhood, family, and school). To date, however, we know little about the underlying structure of socioeconomic disadvantage, including whether the 'active ingredients' driving its robust effects are specific to one context (e.g., neighborhood) or whether the various contexts increment one another as predictors of youth outcomes.

Methods: The present study addressed this gap by examining the underlying structure of socioeconomic disadvantage across neighborhoods, families, and schools, as well as whether the various forms of disadvantage jointly predicted youth psychopathology and cognitive performance. Participants were 1,030 school-aged twin pairs from a subsample of the Michigan State University Twin Registry enriched for neighborhood disadvantage.

Results: Two correlated factors underlay the indicators of disadvantage. Proximal disadvantage comprised familial indicators, whereas contextual disadvantage represented deprivation in the broader school and neighborhood contexts. Results from exhaustive modeling analyses indicated that proximal and contextual disadvantage incremented one another as predictors of childhood externalizing problems, disordered eating, and reading difficulties, but not internalizing symptoms.

Conclusions: Disadvantage within the family and disadvantage in the broader context, respectively, appear to represent distinct constructs with additive influence, carrying unique implications for multiple behavioral outcomes during middle childhood.