Adolescents’ perceptions of family social status correlate with health and life chances: A twin difference longitudinal cohort study

Abstract

Children from lower-income households are at increased risk for poor health, educational failure, and behavioral problems. This social gradient is one of the most reproduced findings in health and social science. How people view their position in social hierarchies also signals poor health. However, when adolescents’ views of their social position begin to independently relate to well-being is currently unknown. A cotwin design was leveraged to test whether adolescents with identical family backgrounds, but who viewed their family’s social status as higher than their same-aged and sex sibling, experienced better well-being in early and late adolescence. Participants were members of the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a representative cohort of British twins (n = 2,232) followed across the first 2 decades of life. By late adolescence, perceptions of subjective family social status (SFSS) robustly correlated with multiple indicators of health and well-being, including depression; anxiety; conduct problems; marijuana use; optimism; not in education, employment, or training (NEET) status; and crime. Findings held controlling for objective socioeconomic status both statistically and by cotwin design after accounting for measures of childhood intelligence (IQ), negative affect, and prior mental health risk and when self-report, informant report, and administrative data were used. Little support was found for the biological embedding of adolescents’ perceptions of familial social status as indexed by inflammatory biomarkers or cognitive tests in late adolescence or for SFSS in early adolescence as a robust correlate of well-being or predictor of future problems. Future experimental studies are required to test whether altering adolescents’ subjective social status will lead to improved well-being and social mobility.

Perceived family and individual social status and its association with depression and suicidality in an adolescent clinical sample

“…Older age was also associated with lower levels of both SSS when comparing one's family with the rest of society and when comparing oneself with the rest of the school. This finding is in line with the results of a longitudinal epidemiological study with a British cohort that showed robust correlations between subjective family status and indicators of health such as depression and substance abuse controlling for SES appearing in late adolescence (Rivenbark et al, 2020). Similar findings of decreased SSS with age were found in American adolescents (Amir, Valeggia, Srinivasan, Sugiyama, & Dunham, 2019;Goodman et al, 2007).…”

Genes and environments, development and time

“…Rivenbark et al (76) demonstrate, in a British birth cohort of mono-and dizygotic twins, how the passage of developmental time can alter associations with mental and physical health endpoints. They find evidence for a "status syndrome" at 18 y of age, in which subjective estimates of family social position in the community are significantly predictive of multiple indicators of mental health and developmental well-being, even with controls for objective socioeconomic status and family environment.…”

How perceptions of autonomy relate to beliefs about inequality and fairness

“…Most economists argue that it has risen since the 1960s [ 1 , 2 ]. As a result, researchers have sought to understand the implications of increased income inequality as it affects economic growth [ 3 ], attitudes toward redistributive policies [ 4 – 6 ], and well-being [ 7 – 9 ].…”