Poverty, social capital, and the health and mental health of migrant adolescents

Poverty is a well acknowledged risk factor associated with poor health and mental health of adolescents, especially those with migrant background. Research has found social capital embedded in the family context, as reflected by the time and attention that parents spend interacting with children and monitoring their activities, to be protective against poverty for adolescent health and mental health. However, the mechanism by which family social capital functions as a protective factor remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate how family social capital influenced the health and mental health of Chinese migrant adolescents in the face of economic adversity. Data for the study came from a questionnaire survey with 510 4th to 9th grade migrant students as well as their parents in Shanghai, China. Poverty was measured by a three item poverty index reported by parents about their hardship in affording certain expenses for their children. Family social capital was assessed by parent-child interaction and parental monitoring, using the Parent-Child Relationship Inventory and the Parental Monitoring Scale. Health was measured by the self report of adolescents about their health status on a five point scale. Mental health was measured by the Major Depressive Disorder subscale of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale. Structural equation modeling (via MPlus) was employed to test the compensatory, mediating, and buffering effect of family social capital on the adolescents' health and mental health. The results supported the buffering effect model, and the implications of the findings for intervention program development were discussed.