The inverse association of socioeconomic status with current morbidity and mortality has been clearly demonstrated. It is also well established that childhood sociodemographic and psychosocial factors (e.g. socioeconomic status) and family stability are predictive of later intellectual and emotional health. In contrast, the effects of childhood psychosocial factors on lo…

A life course approach offers an interdisciplinary framework for guiding research on health, human development and aging. Psychologists, sociologists, demographers, anthropologists, and biologists have actively promoted such an approach for many years. The interdisciplinary research area of developmental science, also brings together psychological, cognitive, and biologi…

En este trabajo realizamos una revisión de la investigación llevada a cabo en los últimos treinta años sobre el papel del padre en la dinámica familiar. Partiendo de estudios descriptivo-comparativos sobre el comportamiento materno y paterno, el campo de estudio ha ido ampliándose y complejizándose, en parte influido por los cambios sociales ocurridos en las…

Research has consistently linked marriage and positive health outcomes. In addition, many researchers have found that couples often have similar or concordant health statuses. However, concordance research has been conducted in many fields for decades without a concise review of the literature, nor has one theory of health concordance been established. A systematic revie…

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous group of disorders classified into three subtypes: asthmatic, bronchitic, and emphysematous. In 2000, an estimated 10 million U.S. adults reported physician-diagnosed COPD, of whom approximately 726,000 were hospitalized. While smoking is the primary risk factor for COPD, multiple factors other than smoking …

As patterns of union formation and dissolution in adult lives become complex, the living arrangements of American children are becoming increasingly fluid. With a sample (N = 12,843) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study attempted to capture this complexity by mapping out children’s family structure histories across their early life…

A large percentage of American adolescents are engaging in poor eating habits, including skipping meals, lower than recommended consumption of vegetables, fruits, and dairy products, frequent consumption of candy and fast food, and greater reliance on packaged foods and eating out. Inadequate nutrition impairs children’s growth and development and sets the stage for poor…

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, a collaborative effort between Kaiser Permanente (San Diego CA) and the CDC (Atlanta GA), was designed to examine the long-term relationship between ACEs and a variety of health behaviors and health outcomes in adulthood. The ACE Study proposes that stressful or traumatic childhood experiences have negative neurodevelopmental

Disparities in child health outcomes persist despite advances in medical technology and increased global wealth. The social determinants of health approach is useful in explaining the disparities in health. Our objective in this paper is four-fold: (1) to test whether the income relationship (and the related income gradient) is the same across different child health…

Significant associations between retrospectively reported childhood adversities and adult mental disorders have been documented in numerous epidemiological studies. Most of these studies, however, either considered only a single childhood adversity or a composite measure that did not allow differential effects of multiple childhood adversities to be examined. Only a few …