Читать книгу Child Psychology - Jean-Pascal Assailly - Страница 48

Child poverty is a serious public health issue. For example, over 13 million young people under the age of 18 currently live in poverty in the United States and 20% of French youth live below the poverty line.

The impact of social background on educational performance is now well known following sociological studies in the aftermath of the Bourdieusian theory of social reproduction, so there is no need to belabor it here.

Decades of research have also highlighted the adverse effects of child poverty on multiple dimensions of mental health, including depression, anxiety, behavioral problems and substance abuse. Indeed, children and adolescents from low-income families are two to three times more likely to develop mental health problems than their more affluent counterparts.

The Millennium Study showed a significant protective effect of higher family income on behavioral problems at age 11. Maternal distress is an important mediator in the relationship between income and child behavior and explains the maintaining of the effect through childhood and adolescence because of its impact on the child’s emotional self-regulation.