Childhood socioeconomic status is associated with psychosocial resources in African Americans: The Pittsburgh Healthy Heart Project.

A substantial literature on humans and animals has demonstrated that early life adversity confers harmful health risks into adulthood (Saplosky, 2004 for animal studies; for reviews in humans see Galobardes, Lynch, & Davey Smith, 2004; Galobardes, Davey Smith, & Lynch, 2006; Matthews, Gallo, & Taylor, 2010). The studies in humans have primarily assessed associations between predictors of early life adversity, such as lower socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood, and negative emotions and physical health in adulthood. Psychosocial resources such as social support, social network diversity, and coping skills are thought to mitigate the effects of low adult SES on negative emotions and poor physical health, and may also mediate the effects of childhood adversity on adult outcomes (Gallo & Matthews, 2003; Matthews et al., 2010). Thus, the association between childhood SES and psychosocial resources in adulthood may shed light on the psychosocial processes linking early life adversity to poor health outcomes into adulthood. The intergenerational transmission of psychosocial resources as a function of SES has been described in the Reserve Capacity Model (RCM; Gallo & Matthews, 2003; see also the Conservation of Resources Model, Hobfoll, 1985). The RCM conceptualizes psychosocial resources as tangible, interpersonal, and intrapersonal tools that comprise one’s reserve capacity to manage stress in daily life. Having a larger supportive network, greater emotional connectedness with others, and the ability to draw on effective coping strategies when faced with stressors are posited as critical psychosocial resources. Unfortunately, lower SES environments may expose individuals to more stressors while equipping them with more limited resources (Matthews et al., 2010). Further, when stressors do arise, already limited psychosocial resources may become strained, and, in turn, lessen an individuals’ capacity to manage stress as effectively at that time and in the future. Thus, lower SES as early as childhood may be adversely related to the development of psychosocial resources, a deficit that may be evidenced later in the lifespan. The purpose of the current study is to test whether childhood SES is associated with three psychosocial resources in adulthood – social support, social network diversity, and coping skills – and whether these associations remain, regardless of adult SES. Several studies have assessed the association between childhood SES and psychological outcomes such as positive and negative emotions, personality characteristics, and cognitive functioning (Gilman, Kawachi, Fitzmaurice, & Buka, 2002; Harper et al., 2002; Heinonen et al., 2006; Kaplan et al., 2001; Luo & Waite, 2005; Lynch, Kaplan, & Shema, 1997; Poulton et al., 2002) in adulthood, but few have assessed the relationship between childhood SES and a psychosocial resource. Three studies (Lehman, Taylor, Kiefe, & Seeman, 2005; Sanders & Spencer, 2005; Taylor et al., 2006) have assessed the relationship between childhood SES and a psychosocial resource, specifically social support in adulthood. In the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, an epidemiological investigation of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in young and middle-aged African American and Caucasian adults: participants whose parents had lower education reported less support in their social interactions with others in adulthood (Lehman, 2005; Taylor et al., 2006). In contrast, childhood SES as measured by parental occupation was not independently associated with social support in adulthood in an Australian sample (Sanders & Spencer, 2005). Perhaps differences in racial/ethnic composition of the samples or type of SES measures might explain the latter null findings (Sanders & Spencer, 2005) . Research has demonstrated that parents with greater education are able to provide their children with a greater array of resources from financial to social capital, which consists of resources gained through various social connections and ties (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). Children with such access may have the opportunity to directly engage in and benefit from related supportive social interactions and relationships. Thus, one could argue that having better educated parents would provide children with more opportunities to develop optimal social skills helpful in establishing supportive social networks and in problem solving. Although these associations are plausible, it is unclear whether the association between parental education and support as obtained in CARDIA will replicate in another sample of African Americans and Caucasians, whether the relationship remains regardless of adult SES, and whether similar associations exist between childhood SES and other psychosocial resources – social networks and coping skills – in adulthood. In the U.S., relative to Caucasians, African Americans are more likely to experience greater early life poverty and relatively worse health even at similar SES levels (MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health, 2010). One in five children in the U.S. grow up in neighborhoods characterized as poor, and for racial/ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, the rates are even higher (Mather & Rivers, 2006). About 24.7% of African Americans live in poverty compared to 8.6% of Caucasians (Mather & Rivers, 2006). Similarly, the impact of lower SES on the well being of African Americans is posited to be more harmful in comparison to Caucasians (MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health, 2010), perhaps due to lower status on the basis of racial/ethnic and structural inequalities. Whether racial/ethnic differences in early life low SES are evidenced in more limited psychosocial resources in adulthood among African Americans is unknown. The current study sought to address two questions regarding the association between childhood SES and psychosocial resources in adulthood in a sample of healthy middle-aged African American and Caucasian adults. First, is lower childhood SES associated with less social support, a more limited social network, and less prosocial coping skills? Second, are these effects more pronounced in African Americans? For both hypotheses, we assessed whether these associations were significant independent of adult SES. The current study makes at least two methodological contributions to this area of study. First, we measured a number of different psychosocial resources as opposed to one. Second, we utilized a multi-methods approach in the assessment of social support. In addition to the use of a traditional questionnaire measure, we employed an ecological momentary assessment (EMA; Stone & Shiffman, 1994) method to measure real-time perceptions of social experiences and the frequency of social interactions in daily life, a method which potentially reduces the recall bias that might accompany retrospective measures. The momentary assessment of social experiences may serve as an indicator of positive social contact with others, whereas the frequency of social interactions may give some indication of social connectedness with others.