Griffiths et al equalisation of health inequalities EHB_final_revise and resubmit 3 without track changes.pdf (114.55 kB)
In urban South Africa, 16 year old adolescents experience greater health equality than children
journal contribution
posted on 2014-10-06, 14:26 authored by Paula GriffithsPaula Griffiths, Will JohnsonWill Johnson, Noel Cameron, John M. Pettifor, Shane A. NorrisDespite the strongly established link between socio-economic status (SES) and health across most stages of the life-course, the evidence for a socio-economic gradient in adolescent health outcomes is less consistent. This paper examines associations between household, school, and neighbourhood SES measures with body composition outcomes in 16 year old South African Black urban adolescents from the 1990 born Birth to Twenty (Bt20) cohort. Multiple regression analyses were applied to data from a sub-sample of the Bt20 cohort (n=346, 53% male) with measures taken at birth and 16 years of age to establish socio-economic, biological and demographic predictors of fat mass, lean mass, and body mass index (BMI). Results were compared with earlier published evidence of health inequality at ages 9-10 years in Bt20. Consistent predictors of higher fat mass and BMI in fully adjusted models were being female, born post term, having a mother with post secondary school education, and having an obese mother. Most measures of SES were only weakly associated with body composition, with an inconsistent direction of association. This is in contrast to earlier findings with Bt20 9-10 year olds where SES inequalities in body composition were observed. Findings suggest targeting obesity interventions at females in households where a mother has a high BMI.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Research Unit
- Socio-economic status and child/adolescent health in Johannesburg-Soweto Study
Published in
ECONOMICS & HUMAN BIOLOGYVolume
11Issue
4Pages
502 - 514 (13)Citation
GRIFFITHS, P.L. ... et al, 2013. In urban South Africa, 16 year old adolescents experience greater health equality than children. Economics & Human Biology, 11 (4), pp.502-514.Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2013Notes
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Economics and Human Biology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2013.05.004ISSN
1570-677XPublisher version
Language
- en