Method: We use nationally representative child cohort data from the US, the UK, and France to construct a multidimensional measure of deprivation including the following domains: material, housing, parenting, and health behavior deprivation. We then examine the relationship between deprivation and child health as measured by asthma and wheezing (respiratory health), unintended injury, and overweight longitudinally when children are one-year old, entering preschool, and entering kindergarten. First, we carry out analyses measuring associations between each dimension of deprivation and the overall deprivation indicator with each child health outcome. We also examine associations with classic measures such as monetary poverty to assess whether the use of multi-domain deprivation measures produces different patterns of health inequalities. Second, we apply structural equation models including autoregressive paths and cross-lagged effects, allowing simultaneously estimating sets of longitudinal relationships.
Results: Our results show that the US has the highest rates of material deprivation across early childhood, followed by the UK and then France. Children who experience higher levels of deprivation are statistically more likely to experience overweight than their non-deprived counterparts in all 3 countries. However, for respiratory health, this pattern was found only in the US and UK. Finally, we found that the depth of deprivation is important for overweight and respiratory health, where more dimensions of experienced deprivation increase the likelihood of children experiencing these health consequences in early life.
Conclusion: We find that multidimensional deprivation harms children health and wellbeing early in the lifecourse, and these results are robust to the inclusion of a robust set of controls including standard measures of socioeconomic status (income and education). These findings have implications for early life policies that vary across these countries.