Tag Archives: Ethnicity

Better start for children

Giving children the best possible start in life is the topic of a keynote talk today by our editor Yvonne Kelly.

Yvonne will be presenting a range of new evidence from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies  to politicians, business leaders, and other professionals and key decision makers at an event discussing how Gothenburg can be made an equal and socially sustainable city.

Yvonne will talk about the factors which are most closely linked with a child’s health and well-being and present findings on children’s verbal skills, behaviour, bedtimes, reading and obesity. She will make the case that signs of social inequalities are evident early in a child’s life and that it is important to intervene early to tackle those inequalities.

BMI development and early adolescent psychosocial well-being

Research looking at how and when children become overweight is helping to shed new light on ongoing efforts by the Government and others to tackle the childhood obesity epidemic.

A team of researchers at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL has also been asking whether children who are overweight are more likely to go on to smoke and drink alcohol and if their mental health suffers as they become adolescents.

The research, published in Pediatrics, shows clearly that when it comes to the likelihood of a child becoming overweight or obese in the first decade of their life, there are many more influences than just sugar (a main plank in the Government’s Childhood Obesity Strategy).

The research also shows that  influences are at play in families even before children are born and indicates that helping pregnant women to stop smoking and maintain a healthy weight, making sure all young children have healthy eating and sleeping routines may be key, together with targeted support for ethnic and social groups identified as being most at risk.

Lead researcher, Yvonne Kelly presented the findings at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies 2016 conference in Bamberg.

Early puberty: a question of background?

New research examining the connections between early puberty in girls and their socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds is being presented to an international audience of researchers in Germany today.

Early puberty in 11-year-old girls: Millennium Cohort Study findings is work led by Child of our Time editor Yvonne Kelly using information on 5,839 girls from the Millennium Cohort Study.

The findings, presented at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies 2016 conference in Bamberg indicate clearly that socioeconomic and ethnic disparities are apparent in the UK and are important for all those interested in the short and long term implications for early puberty on women’s health and well being.

Girls growing up – questions of early puberty

The early onset of puberty in girls has been linked with better bone health in older women, but it is also associated with a host of negative outcomes including teenage pregnancy and serious ill health in mid-life. With girls over the last few decades starting their periods earlier and earlier, this is a real cause for concern. A better understanding is needed of who is affected and how if this trend is to be reversed and the long-term health of girls and women is to be secured. Researchers at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL have investigated whether a girl’s socioeconomic background or ethnicity are associated with early puberty and have looked in detail at more commonly supposed links with weight and stress. Yvonne Kelly explains more.

Sexual activity whilst still young, teenage pregnancy, mental health problems, heart disease and breast cancer later in life are just some of the things linked to early puberty in girls. Over the last few decades, girls have started their periods much earlier with the average age falling from puberty has age falling to 12.9 years in 2015.

This research is the first to look over time at whether and how a girl’s social and economic circumstances and her ethnicity might be linked to the early onset of puberty. We suspected that any link that did emerge would, most likely, be explained away by other factors such as being overweight or suffering from stress.

Using information on 5,839 girls from the Millennium Cohort Study, which has been tracking the lives of nearly 20,000 children born at or around the start of the century, it was possible to know, at age 11 whether they had started their period or not.

Details of their birth weight, ethnicity, family income when they were aged 5 and height and weight when they were 7 were also available. This rich information gathered across 11 years of the girls’ lives really enabled us to put together a detailed picture over time of how these factors come together to influence the early onset of puberty.

The girls’ mothers completed questionnaires any social or emotional problems their daughter might be facing, and their own mental health.

Puberty facts and figures

Nearly one in ten of the girls, a total of 550, had started their period at age 11, with girls from the poorest families twice as likely as their most well-off peers to have done so (14.1 per cent v 6.8 per cent). Those from the second poorest group were also nearly twice as likely to have started their period.

Indian, Bangladeshi and Black African girls were most likely to have started their period at age 11, with Indian girls three and a half times more likely than their White counterparts to have done so.

Other factors

On average, girls who were heavier at age 7 and suffered stress in early childhood were more likely to have begun menstruating. Those who had started their periods early also tended to have mothers with higher stress levels, were from single parent families, and tended to have had some social and emotional difficulties themselves.

However, even when we took all these things into account, girls from the poorest and second poorest groups were still one and a half times more likely to have started their periods early.

As far as ethnicity was concerned, income, excess body weight and stress accounted for part or all of the differences in most cases. Interestingly, though with most Indian girls coming from more advantaged backgrounds than their White peers, the likelihood of them having started their period was not explained after we took all the above factors into account.

Lived experiences

Our findings highlight the different lived experiences of ethnic minority groups in the UK: for example Indians are relatively advantaged whereas Pakistanis tend to be materially disadvantaged, Bangladeshis and Black Africans are materially and psychosocially disadvantaged and have a tendency to be overweight compared with the majority ethnic group. They also demonstrate the complex and potentially opposing factors at play for the onset of puberty.

All that considered, we can say with considerable confidence that socioeconomic and ethnic disparities are indeed apparent in the UK. Given the short and long term implications for early puberty on women’s health and well being, improving our understanding of these underlying processes could help identify opportunities for interventions with benefits right across the lifecourse, not just for the girls in our study, but for future generations.

It was also encouraging to note that in the decade or so covered by the data we used, there appears to have been no further decline in the average age that girls begin puberty.

Early puberty in 11-year-old girls: Millennium Cohort Study findings is research by Yvonne Kelly, Afshin Zilanawala, Amanda Sacker, Robert Hiatt andRussell Viner and is published in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Photo credit: Afla

Mixed race kids: happier than we might think!

It’s been said and shown over the last few decades that mixed race and mixed ethnicity children tend not to do as well socially and emotionally as their non mixed peers. But new research casts a rather different light on the matter, showing that children both in the UK and US who are from mixed backgrounds are actually doing rather better.  James Nazroo from the University of Manchester has been looking at the issue with colleagues at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies, UCL and discusses his surprising findings in our latest podcast episode.

Socioemotional wellbeing among mixed race/ethnicity children in the UK and US: Patterns and underlying mechanisms is due to be published in the Journal of Health and Social Behaviour. It is part of a wider programme of ESRC funded research led by Child of Our Time editor, Yvonne Kelly at ICLS.

Photo credit: Philippe Put

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Changing behaviour and mixed ethnicity

The number of mixed ethnicity children born in the UK is growing. Research to date has shown that coming from a mixed ethnicity as opposed to a non mixed background has no impact on the likelihood of a child having behaviour problems. But a new report from a team at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL and just published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood journal, tells a different story, as its lead author Afshin Zilanawala explains.

It’s known that children from an ethnic minority background in the UK tend to have poorer health and to be disadvantaged in a range of other ways, but there has been hardly any research on children of mixed ethnicity, particularly when it comes to looking at their behaviour.

What little research has been done has been constrained by a lack of data and the need to look at broad or ‘catch-all’ ethnic groups in order to have sufficient numbers to examine.

Behaviour problems and poor outcomes

Given that children’s behaviour problems have been linked to poor academic achievement and lower levels of wellbeing in adult life, it’s important to try to get to grips with the sorts of things that might influence that early behaviour.

One study that looked at mixed ethnic differences in the behaviour problems of 3 year-olds found no link. A London study looking at mixed Black Caribbean/White 11-13 year-olds found no differences between them and their White peers.

Both studies looked at the children at a point in time, so there was no chance to look at any changes in behaviour over time. But our research shows something quite different.

Using the Millennium Cohort Study, we were able to look at a group of more than 16,000 children’s behaviour from when they were 3 through till when they had turned 11 years-old.

A range of questions about peer problems, challenging behaviour, hyperactivity and emotional problems were answered by the main respondent (usually the child’s mother) and from those responses, we were able to create an overall score (TDS) to represent the level of behavioural problems the child exhibited.

Mixed ethnicity and behaviour

Interestingly, at age 3, most mixed ethnicity children had fewer problem behaviours compared with their non mixed counterparts. White mixed, Indian mixed, Pakistani mixed and Bangladeshi mixed had fewer problems than their non mixed peers.

There was no difference, however, between mixed Black Caribbean children and their non mixed counterparts and the differences for Black African mixed and non mixed children were very small.

COOT-mixedage3

White mixed, Pakistani mixed, and Bangladeshi mixed children experienced increases in problem behaviours compared with their non-mixed counterparts, notably after age 7.

By age 11, White mixed, Indian mixed and Black African mixed children had fewer problems than non mixed, but Pakistani mixed, Bangladeshi mixed and Black Caribbean mixed children have more problems than children from a non mixed background.

Coot-mixed11Identity crisis as children get older?

What do we make of all this? As our mixed ethnicity children get older, is there some sort of identity crisis, both social and personal that is triggering a change in behavior? The behavior problems of the mixed 11 year-old children in our study could reflect children’s struggle to reconcile their families’ heritage and culture and their personal identity formation.

As children spend more time in school, they are less influenced by their home environments and have more interactions with peers and friends, all of which could be playing a role in the behavioral difficulties some mixed ethnicity children are experiencing.

The fact that mixed relationships are more common among Black Caribbeans compared with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis could explain why there are no behaviour differences between Black Caribbean mixed and non mixed children, whilst differences do exist between the mixed and non mixed South Asian groups.

In other words, it could be that there is less strain and anxiety in mixed partnerships when those types of interethnic relationships are more common.

It would be interesting to dig further into all of this by taking into consideration school, psychosocial and socio-demographic factors, all of which could be at play here.

Mixed ethnicity and behavioural problems in the Millennium Cohort Study is research by Afshin Zilanawala, Amanda Sacker and Yvonne Kelly. It is published in Archives of Childhood Disease.

Racism, mixed race and child health

Child of Our Time Editor, Professor Yvonne Kelly has been outlining the impacts of racism on the health and development of children in her keynote talk at a workshop hosted by the Institute for Economic Analysis of Decision Making.

Professor Kelly, who is based at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL, has led a major programme of research looking at the role that ethnicity plays in disparities in child health and behaviour and she and her team have published a range of research from the project.

In today’s talk, she shared some of the key findings from the research around the different outcomes for children from various ethnic backgrounds, including their:

  • birthweight
  • physical development
  • obesity
  • early onset of puberty
  • mother and teacher reports of challenging behaviour
  • verbal skills

The talk also covered the frequency of racist attacks on different groups and their impact on children’s physical and mental health. Brand new research focusing specifically on mixed ethnicity children and their behaviour was also included.

Professor Kelly commented:

“Our research shows clearly that direct and indirect experiences of racism can negatively influence a child’s development and health – whether it be via their access to resources tor the increased likelihood that they will take up unhealthy behaviours.”

She added:

“It’s never too late to prevent disease in childhood or later years. Our research shows that racism is a key consideration for all those seeking to achieve that; policy makers, practitioners and the wider public alike.”

 

 

Reporting children’s challenging behaviour

When it comes to dealing with children’s problem behaviour, do parents and teachers report the same things in the same way and is that linked in some way to the child’s race or ethnicity ? That’s the focus of a recent study by a cross Atlantic team of researchers from the University of Michigan and University College London. Professor Pamela Davis-Kean from the  University of Michigan talked to Child of our Time about the research.

Reports of Externalizing Behavior: Comparative Analyses between the UK and US is research by Rebecca Waller, Afshin Zilanawala, Sheryl Olson, Amanda Sacker, Meichu Chen, Sharon Simonton,  James Nazroo, Yvonne Kelly, James S. Jackson, Pamela Davis-Kean.

Photo credit: helpingting

 

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Can racism towards a mum hurt her children?

Racial discrimination affects people in a range of ways. We know, for instance, that it can lead to poor health. We know, too, that our lives are linked, particularly with those of family members. So, can racism suffered by a parent affect a child? Are the negative effects of social ills transmitted within families? If so, how? And how might we be able to break negative links? A new study reveals some interesting patterns and possible explanations, as Dr Laia Becares from the University of Manchester, explains:

Understanding how our lives are linked is an essential part of understanding how society works. We know that racial discrimination affects the health and life chances of an individual, and it leads to inequalities in health among ethnic minority people, compared to the White majority population.

We know, too, that racial discrimination experienced by one individual impacts not only on that particular person, but on family members of the same generation, and those of previous and future generations. For example, if someone is discriminated against at work in terms of a promotion to a better position, or even in terms of getting hired, this has clear important financial consequences for that person, but also for her/his children, and older family members who may be under their care.

This is one of the ways in which the harm of racial discrimination is perpetuated across generations. Socioeconomic circumstances are strongly linked to health, so this example also shows how racial discrimination leads to poor health indirectly – via socioeconomic inequalities.

Racism and our health

But what about the direct association between racial discrimination and poor health, and the way this harm is transmitted across generations?

The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a representative study of children born in the UK between September 2000 and January 2002, offers a quality and quantity of data that, with the right interrogation, offers some important suggestions.

To ask the right questions of the data we needed a hypothesis. Drawing on well-established literature, we chose to focus on two potential mechanisms of transmission.

First we looked at the possible impact of racial discrimination on a mother’s mental health and then at the possible impact on parenting practice, particularly the possibility of it increasing harsh discipline tactics. These two mechanisms are centred on increased stress experienced by the mother following experiences of racial discrimination.

We also looked at three different types of exposure to racial discrimination – that suffered by the mother, that suffered by the family as a whole and that affecting the whole neighbourhood.

Information about the MCS children has been collected at various points since the start of the study. We used data collected when the children were between five and eleven years old.

Measuring discrimination

Racial discrimination was measured in terms of the mother’s experience of racially motivated insults, disrespectful treatment, or unfair treatment. We also used measures of whether family members had been treated unfairly, and whether the family lived in a neighbourhood where racial insults or attacks were common.

Mental health was assessed using the Kessler-6 scale – a well-established scale based on how often an individual has felt such things as depression and nervousness over the past month.

We measured harsh parenting practices by using records of how often parents had smacked or shouted at their children. And we measured the child’s socioemotional development by using another well-established scale – the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire developed by Robert Goodman and others.

We adjusted for complicating factors such as mother’s age at time of birth, mother’s educational attainment, household income, whether the mom was born in the UK, and the language most often spoken in the home.

For each factor we used data gathered at relevant stages. So, the measure of racial discrimination is based on data collected when the children were five years old, the mother’s mental health and parenting practices when the children were seven years old and the outcome when the children were aged eleven. The sample was pooled from all UK ethnic minority groups.

Racism and mental health

Around the time of the child’s fifth birthday almost a quarter (23%) of ethnic minority mothers reported having been racially insulted. There was a strong association with less good mental health for the mother two years later.

Both increased maternal psychological distress and increased harsh parenting practices were associated with increased socioemotional difficulties for the child at age 11. A worsening of the mother’s mental health had the most consistent indirect effect on a child’s socioemotional difficulties six years later.

Our results also showed some direct effects of racial discrimination on children. Family experiences of unfair treatment all had a direct effect on a child’s later socioemotional development.

We have to acknowledge some limitations of the study. We restricted ourselves to discrimination faced by mothers and its consequences. There are other things going on in families that affect children’s health. Plus ethnic minority children are likely to experience discrimination directly at school. And, of course, ethnic minority families are more likely to live in deprived areas and to suffer from other social inequalities.

Damage over time underestimated

The study does, however, offer strong support to our hypothesis that a mother’s experience of racial insults, of being treated disrespectfully by shop staff and broader family experience of unfair treatment, harms children over time as a result of the mother’s worsening mental health. This has been underestimated in the past.

If we are to break cycles of deprivation and begin to redress the imbalances in health between the majority and minority populations, policy-makers would do well to put more emphasis on mothers’ mental health.

Whatever is done to reduce a child’s direct experience of racial discrimination – at school, for instance – the mother’s experience and its effect on her is now shown to be important factor in the health of ethnic minority children. That said, the main implication of this study is that racial discrimination is harmful to individuals, families, and societies, and so efforts should be targeted at eliminating it.

A longitudinal examination of maternal, family, and area-level experiences of racism on children’s socioemotional development: Patterns and possible explanations is research by Dr Laia Becares, Professor James Nazroo and Professor Yvonne Kelly and is published in Social Science and Medicine.

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Ethnicity, birthweight and growth in early childhood

Birthweight varies according to ethnic group but height at the age of five does not. Why might that be? Does it tell us anything about the lives of second and third generation immigrants? And does it offer any useful guidance to health professionals hoping to target disadvantaged groups? Professor Yvonne Kelly outlines recent research with colleagues at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies looking at differences in birthweight and early growth between ethnic groups.

Birthweight is important. There is a large body of work that suggests links between low birthweight and the development of chronic disease. Height at the age of five is a less straightforward indicator but still an important measure. The relationship between the two is important as well. Rapid post-natal growth may also have a role in later disease risk, and any correlation may tell us something about the lives of people born in the UK to parents born elsewhere.

Earlier research shows that babies born to South Asian and Black mothers weigh up to 300g less than those with White mothers. They are also up to two and a half times more likely than their White counterparts to have low birthweight.

Our study made use of the rich information available in the Millennium Cohort Study and enabled us to drill down further into ethnic differences. We were able to look at White, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean and Black African groups.

These, of course, are groups that have very different migration histories. The Black Caribbeans and Indians mainly migrated to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. The Pakistanis arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, the Bangladeshis in the 1980s and the Black Africans in the 1990s.

Social v biological

If you accept that ethnicity is a social not a biological construct, these variations must be the result of factors that are not intrinsic to the group but tend to go with membership. Relevant factors are likely to be either socioeconomic or maternal.

So, if one group tends to have higher incomes and higher levels of educational attainment, it is likely to have fewer babies with low birthweight. Similarly, if mothers within one group are less likely to smoke they too are likely to have heavier babies.

Because our research compared data on birthweight to those on ethnicity, socioeconomic status and maternal characteristics, it was possible to identify which were most closely associated.

The results suggest that socioeconomic factors are important in explaining birthweight differences in Black Caribbean, Black African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani infants. Maternal characteristics are important in explaining birthweight differences in Indian and Bangladeshi groups. Clearly, both must operate to some extent in all cases.

Our study identifies the dominant factor for each ethnic group and recommends policy-makers pay attention to the different socioeconomic and culturally related profiles of ethnic minority groups when devising policies aimed at reducing inequalities in birthweight.

A question of height

One key maternal characteristic identified was height. Mothers from the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups were on average 8cm shorter than White mothers. We speculate that it might take several generations for individuals within ethnic groups to reach their height potential.

And it could be that increases in maternal height do not happen so much for the first couple of migrant generations due to the ‘accumulated effects of disadvantage, including racism, discrimination and poverty that are disproportionately experienced by migrants’. That idea was put to the test in a second study also using MCS data.

The primary aim of this research was to investigate ethnic differences in height at 5 years of age. The same ethnic groups were used. Again, the sample was large and broadly representative of the whole UK.

Playing catch up

In contrast to the findings on birthweight, Indian, Pakistani, Black Caribbean and Black African children were taller than White children at age 5. Bangladeshi children were the same as White children. Birthweight was not entirely irrelevant. It was a weak to moderate predictor of height in White, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and African children.

All the measured variables favoured the White group over all ethnic minorities. This is consistent with the suggestion floated towards the end of the first study that what is happening is that a generation is ‘catching up’, earlier generations having been previously thwarted by such factors as poor nutrition in underdeveloped home countries.

Saying that, catch-up growth is likely to explain only a part of the ethnic height differences identified and further research is important here. It is also important to note that taller children are more inclined to obesity and so the height advantage of ethnic minority children might not translate into a health advantage in adulthood.

The links between ethnicity, birthweight and height in childhood are not, then, straightforward or by any means fully understood. It is clear that outcomes associated with different groups are the result of social and not biological characteristics.

The length of time a group has been established in the UK also appears to play a part with at least some suggestion of a generational ‘catch-up’ effect. Though there may be plenty of inequality left to address, that does at least suggest things are moving in the right direction.

Further information

Why does birthweight vary among ethnic groups in the UK? Findings from the Millennium Cohort Study is research by Yvonne Kelly, Lidia Panico, Mel Bartley, Michael Marmot, James Nazroo and Amanda Sacker and is published in the Journal of Public Health.

Ethnic differences in growth in early childhood: an investigation of two potential mechanisms is research by Amanda Sacker and Yvonne Kelly and is published in the European Journal of Public Health.

Photo credit: moinuddin forhad

[1] Ethnic differences in growth in early childhood: an investigation of two potential mechanisms. A. Sacker, Y. Kelly