This study was designed to examine the prospective relations of perceived racial discrimination with allostatic load (AL), along with a possible buffer of the association. A sample of 331 African Americans in the rural South provided assessments of perceived discrimination from ages 16 to 18 years. When youths were 18, caregivers reported parental emotional support, and youths assessed peer emotional support. AL and potential confounder variables were assessed when youths were 20. Latent Growth Mixture Modeling identified two perceived discrimination classes: high and stable and low and increasing. Adolescents in the high and stable class evinced heightened AL even with confounder variables controlled. The racial discrimination to AL link was not significant for young adults who received high emotional support.

There are persistent socioeconomic disparities in many aspects of child development in America. Relative to their affluent peers, children of low socioeconomic status (SES) complete fewer years of education, have a higher prevalence of health problems, and are convicted of more criminal offenses. Based on research indicating that low self-control underlies some of these disparities, policymakers have begun incorporating character-skills training into school curricula and social services. However, emerging data suggest that for low-SES youth, self-control may act as a "double-edged sword," facilitating academic success and psychosocial adjustment, while at the same time undermining physical health. Here, we examine this hypothesis in a five-wave study of 292 African American teenagers from rural Georgia. From ages 17 to 20 y, we assessed SES and self-control annually, along with depressive symptoms, substance use, aggressive behavior, and internalizing problems. At age 22 y, we obtained DNA methylation profiles of subjects' peripheral blood mononuclear cells. These data were used to measure epigenetic aging, a methylationderived biomarker reflecting the disparity between biological and chronological aging. Among high-SES youth, better mid-adolescent self-control presaged favorable psychological and methylation outcomes. However, among low-SES youth, self-control had divergent associations with these outcomes. Self-control forecasted lower rates of depressive symptoms, substance use, aggressive behavior, and internalizing problems but faster epigenetic aging. These patterns suggest that for low-SES youth, resilience is a "skin-deep" phenomenon, wherein outward indicators of success can mask emerging problems with health. These findings have conceptual implications for models of resilience, and practical implications for interventions aimed at ameliorating social and racial disparities.health disparities | resilience | stress | poverty | aging

Many African American youth may develop high levels of allostatic load (AL), a measure of physiological wear and tear on the body as a function of developing psychosocial competence under conditions of high SES-related risk. The current study was designed to test hypotheses based on John Henryism theory about such physiological costs. We tested these hypotheses with a representative sample of 489 African American youth living in the rural South. Cumulative SES-related risks and teacher-reported competence were assessed when the youth were 11 to 13 years of age; depressive symptoms, externalizing behavior, and AL were assessed at age 19. The results revealed that rural African American preadolescents who evinced high psychosocial competence under conditions of high cumulative SES-related risk displayed low levels of adjustment problems along with high AL at age 19. These results suggest that, for many rural African Americans, resilience may indeed be only “skin deep.”

Significance Children from families of low socioeconomic status (SES) are vulnerable to a variety of health problems. These risks begin in early childhood and persist across the lifecourse. Studies hint that nurturant parenting may offset these health risks, but it remains unclear whether these findings reflect a causal process and have clinical utility. Here we describe a randomized controlled trial, which sought to improve parenting and build youth competencies in low-SES African American families. The endpoint was low-grade inflammation, a process that underlies many health problems to which low-SES youth are vulnerable. Eight years after the intervention, youth who participated had significantly less inflammation than controls. If substantiated, these findings may provide a strategy for narrowing some of America’s social and racial disparities in health.