Building on the weathering hypothesis, we advance health disparities research by assessing racial/ethnic differences in low-grade inflammation, a marker of chronic stress exposure, in young children. Using nationally representative data from NHANES (N=6652) and logistic regression, we find an increased risk of low-grade inflammation among Hispanic and African American children compared to white children. The risk of inflammation appears to be stronger for Hispanic and African American children with foreign-born parents compared to children of the same race/ethnicity with U.S.-born parents. Low parental education and elevated child body mass index (BMI) work as partial mediators of these associations. Our findings suggest the need to understand the social and psychological challenges faced by Hispanic and African American children, particularly those with foreign-born parents, if we are to make further progress in reducing health disparities.
Sleep deprivation among adolescents has received much attention from health researchers and policymakers. Recent research indicates that variation in sleep duration from night to night is associated with multiple health outcomes. While there is evidence that sleep deprivation is socially patterned, we know little about how social contexts are associated with nightly sleep variation during adolescence (a life course stage when nightly sleep variation is particularly high). Given the importance of family environments for influencing adolescents’ sleep patterns, we hypothesized that disadvantaged family contexts would be associated with higher intra-individual variation (IIV) in nightly sleep duration, in addition to lower average nightly sleep duration. We tested these hypotheses in a diverse, population-based sample of 11–17 year-olds (N = 1095) from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context Study. Using survey and ecological momentary assessment data and a novel form of multi-level regression modeling (location-scale mixed modeling), we found that adolescents living in unmarried-parent, low SES, economically insecure, and high caregiver stress families had higher IIV in sleep than adolescents in families with more resources and less caregiver stress. There were fewer family effects on average sleep duration. This suggests family social and economic contexts are associated with an under-researched aspect of adolescent sleep, nightly variation, and may contribute to adolescent sleep problems with implications for their health and health disparities.
Since the inception of urban sociology, the “neighborhood” has served as the dominant context to capture developmentally significant youth experiences beyond the home. Yet no large-scale study has examined patterns of exposure to the most commonly used operationalization of neighborhood—the census tract—among urban youth. Using smartphone GPS data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study ( N = 1,405), we estimate the amount of time youth spend in residential neighborhoods and consider explanations for variation in neighborhood exposure. On average, youth (ages 11 to 17) spend 5.7 percent of their waking-time in their neighborhood but not at home, 60 percent at home, and 34.3 percent outside their neighborhood. Multilevel negative binomial regression models indicate that residence in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods is associated with less time in one’s neighborhood. Higher levels of local violence and the absence of a neighborhood school are negatively associated with time in-neighborhood and mediate the concentrated disadvantage effect. Fractional multinomial logit models indicate that higher violence is linked with increased time at home, and school absence is associated with increased outside-neighborhood time. Theoretical development and empirical research on neighborhood effects should incorporate findings on the extent and nature of neighborhood and broader activity space exposures among urban youth.
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