Clustering of adverse health and educational outcomes in adolescence following early childhood poverty: implications for UK’s ‘levelling up’ agenda

Abstract

Background Early childhood poverty is associated with poorer health and educational outcomes in adolescence. However, there is limited evidence about the clustering of these adverse outcomes by income group. Methods We analysed five outcomes at age 17 known to limit life chances – psychological distress, self–assessed ill health, smoking, obesity, and poor educational achievement – using data from the longitudinal UK Millennium Cohort Study (N=15,245). We compared how single and multiple outcomes were distributed across quintiles of household income in early childhood (0-5 years) and modelled the maximum potential benefit of tackling the income gradient in these outcomes. Findings Children from the poorest households were 12.7(95% CI 6.4-25.1) times more likely than those from the richest to experience four or five adverse adolescent outcomes, with poor educational achievement and smoking showing the largest single risk ratios – 4.6(95% CI: 4.2-5.0) and 3.6(95% CI 3.0-4.2), respectively. We modelled hypothetical absolute and relative poverty elimination scenarios, as well as an income inequality elimination scenario, and found these would yield maximum reductions in multiple adolescent adversity of 5%, 30%, and 80% respectively. Interpretation Early childhood poverty is more strongly correlated with multiple adolescent adversity than any single adverse outcome. Reducing absolute poverty alone is not sufficient to eliminate the life-long burden of multiple adversity, which disproportionately impacts children across the bottom three-fifths of the income distribution. An ambitious levelling up agenda needs co-ordinated multi-agency action to tackle the complex interacting factors generating the steep social gradient in multiple adolescent adversity.