Family socioeconomic status, financial difficulties, and children’s cognitive outcomes: the role of inflammation

Background: Family socioeconomic status and economic deprivation have been extensively associated with health and cognitive outcomes in children and adolescents. Children living under those conditions are also more likely to be exposed to stressful experiences which can cause significant increases in the inflammatory activity in the body. Several environmental and family mechanisms have previously explained part of those relationships, but no study has yet examined if inflammation is also an important mediator. This PhD thesis, therefore, will investigate the role of inflammation as an important biological pathway linking family SES and financial difficulties with cognitive outcomes in children and adolescents. Methods: This thesis used secondary data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to explore the associations between objective family SES and subjective parental financial difficulties, inflammation, and cognitive outcomes from early in life (0-3 years) and up to age 15 years. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used with a latent SES variable and robust mediation analysis techniques to first estimate the path from objective SES to inflammation through childhood upsetting events and then the paths from objective SES and subjective financial difficulties to cognitive outcomes through inflammation in childhood and adolescence. Results: Findings from the SEM models showed that upsetting childhood events explained part of the relationship between SES and childhood inflammation and that inflammation partly explained the relationship between financial difficulties and working memory, but there was no evidence for the mediating role of inflammation between SES and IQ. Conclusions: Family SES and parents’ financial difficulties were significant predictors of cognitive outcomes in children. Furthermore, it was shown that upsetting childhood events explained part of the relationship between SES and inflammation in childhood and that inflammation explained part of the effect of parental financial difficulties on children’s working memory. Consequently, this project provided evidence indicating that socioeconomic and financial factors can directly and indirectly influence both physical health and cognitive functioning through psychosocial and biological mechanisms