Family wealth and adolescent physical health.

Abstract

Inequalities in the distribution of wealth among families with children may have deleterious health consequences, especially for adolescent children. Marked by significant psychosocial and physiological changes, adolescence is a period when socioeconomic differences in chronic disease risk factors are observed. Unfortunately, research on socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent health has overlooked wealth, focusing instead on differences in health based on household income and parental educational attainment. Expanding our knowledge of wealth's role in shaping adolescents' current and long-term health is of critical public health concern, especially as wealth is more unequally distributed than income. This review discusses what is known about wealth-related inequalities in adolescent physical health and proposes four psychosocial mechanisms that may explain how wealth shapes adolescent physical health including (1) serving as a stress-buffer; (2) enabling parents to invest in opportunities to support adolescent healthy development; (3) increasing families' access to social and cultural capital resources that may promote salutary health behaviours while mitigating experiences of social-class discrimination; (4) and supporting adolescents' future expectations. We end with a discussion of existing questions and suggestions for future research to add to our understanding of wealth-related inequalities in adolescent physical health, which could be used to inform health equity interventions.