Trajectories of Children's Health: Asthma, Inequalities and the Impact of Parental Resources

Decades of scholarship have demonstrated that social factors are connected to health for adults; emerging research has begun to investigate the early life origins of adult health disparities. This study prospectively demonstrates the the physical health trajectory of children, maternally-rated, in the US as a function of the child's individual characteristics and the relative impact of the financial, human, and social capital resources of parents in order to document child health disparities in a longitudinal manner. It uses growth curve modeling and data from the 1992-2006 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult sample to predict developmental trajectories of children's physical health status. In particular it compares the impact of children's asthma on their health trajectory during childhood. Asthma has a dramatic initial effect on health that appears to lessen as children age perhaps as they are better able to control and manage their symptoms, take their medications or avoid triggers. However, having asthma interacts with other child characteristics in varied ways. For example, Hispanic children with asthma show a steady increase in health over time probably as they control or manage their symptoms better. But black children with asthma don't experience the same result and instead see a greater decline in physical health over age. Family income is the only parental resource measure, I examined, which appears to have a protective influence for children who have asthma.