Clustering of adverse health and educational outcomes in adolescence following early childhood disadvantage: population-based retrospective UK cohort study

Background Disadvantage in early childhood (ages 0-5 years) is associated with worse health and educational outcomes in adolescence. Evidence on the clustering of these adverse outcomes by household income is scarce in the generation of adolescents born since the turn of the millennium. We aimed to describe the association between household income in early childhood and physical health, psychological distress, smoking behaviour, obesity, and educational outcomes at age 17 years, including the patterning and clustering of these five outcomes by income quintiles. Methods In this population-based, retrospective cohort study, we used data from the Millennium Cohort Study in which individuals born in the UK between Sept 1, 2000, and Jan 1, 2002, were followed up. We collected data on five adverse health and social outcomes in adolescents aged 17 years known to limit life chances: psychological distress, self-assessed ill health, smoking, obesity, and poor educational achievement. We compared how single and multiple outcomes were distributed across early childhood quintile groups of income, as an indicator of disadvantage, and modelled the potential effect of three income-shifting scenarios in early childhood for reducing adverse outcomes in adolescence. Findings We included 15 245 adolescents aged 17 years, 7788 (51.1%) of whom were male and 7457 (48.9%) of whom were female. Adolescents in the lowest income quintile group in childhood were 12.7 (95% CI 6.4-25.1) times more likely than those in the highest quintile group to have four or five adverse adolescent outcomes, with poor educational achievement (risk ratio [RR] 4.6, 95% CI 4.2-5.0) and smoking (3.6, 3.0-4.2), showing the largest single risk ratios. Shifting up to the second lowest, middle, and highest income groups would reduce multiple adolescent adversities by 4.9% (95% CI -23.8 to 33.6), 32.3% (-2.7 to 67.3), and 83.9% (47.2 to 120.7), respectively. Adjusting for parental education and single parent status moderately attenuated these estimates. Interpretation Early childhood disadvantage is more strongly correlated with multiple adolescent adversities than any of the five single adverse outcomes. However, shifting children from the lowest income quintile group to the next lowest group is ineffective. Tackling multiple adolescent adversities requires managing early childhood disadvantage across the social gradient, with income redistribution as a central element of coordinated cross-sectoral action.

Automated summary

Background disadvantage in early childhood is associated with worse health and educational outcomes in adolescence. This study examined the association between household income in early childhood and various outcomes at age 17, and found that lower income during childhood was strongly correlated with multiple adverse outcomes in adolescence. However, shifting children to a slightly higher income group had limited impact on improving outcomes.