Cumulative Disadvantage and Youth Well-Being: A Multi-domain Examination with Life Course Implications
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Cumulative Disadvantage and Youth Well-Being: A Multi-domain Examination with Life Course Implications Paula S. Nurius1 • Dana M. Prince2 • Anita Rocha1
Published online: 29 April 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract The accumulation of disadvantage has been shown to increase psychosocial stressors that impact life course well-being. This study tests for significant differences, based on disadvantage exposure, on youths’ emotional and physical health, as well as family supports, peer assets, and academic success, which hold potential for resilience and amelioration of negative health outcomes. A 12 item cumulative disadvantage summed index derived from surveys of a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of urban high school seniors (n = 9658) was used to distinguish youth at low, moderate, and high levels. Findings supported hypothesized stepped patterns such that as multiple disadvantages accumulate, a concomitant decline is evident across the assessed outcome variables (except positive academic identity). Post-hoc tests indicated a pattern of groups being significantly different from one another. Overall, results lend support for an additive stress load associated with stacked disadvantage, with implications for continuing trends into adulthood as well as preventive interventions. Keywords Stress Disadvantage Adversity Youth Health Life course
& Paula S. Nurius [email protected] 1
School of Social Work, University of Washington, 4101 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105, USA
2
School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Introduction Life course models are amplifying attention to early life conditions as roots of later health and status attainment disparities (Braveman and Barclay 2009; Shonkoff et al. 2009). In addition to factors such as health behaviors and services access, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a significant component of life course well-being is shaped by the social environment and the ways that disadvantages ‘‘stack up’’ and contribute to a cumulative burden (Nurius et al. 2015; Turner 2013). Social and material inequalities and sources of marginalization form the backdrop of everyday life for disadvantaged youth, constituting stressors and deprivations that exert influence both contemporaneously and as part of life course trajectories. This study draws upon a sociodemographically diverse sample of high-school seniors to test for hypothesized patterns of difference across multiple domains of well-being as a function of cumulative disadvantage. Cumulative disadvantage here captures a developmental snapshot of youths’ aggregated social status characteristics and discrimination experiences that signal differential exposure to stressors and to access to psychosocial resources. We draw upon life-course-stress models to undergird theorizing about the additive effects of multiple facets of social disadvantage in jeopardizing physical and emotional health of youth, as well as family, peer, and academic health resources that hold promise for fosteri
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