Early Life Socioeconomic Disparities in Children’s Sleep: The Mediating Role of the Current Home Environment

Abstract

Despite identified concurrent socioeconomic disparities in children's sleep, little research has examined pathways explaining such associations. This study examined the quality of the home environment as a direct predictor of sleep and potential mediator of associations between early life socioeconomic status and objective and subjective indicators of sleep in middle childhood. A socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 381 twin children (50% female; 46.6% lower middle class or living at or below the poverty line; 26% Hispanic/Latino) were assessed at 12 months for SES and eight years using gold-standard home environment interviews and actigraphy-measured sleep. Multilevel mediation path models indicated that lower early SES and lower quality concurrent home environments were associated with shorter sleep durations, longer sleep latencies, and greater sleep timing variability. The home environment significantly mediated associations with sleep duration and sleep timing variability. The findings illustrate an important target in the prevention of poor childhood and adolescent sleep.

Early parental positive personality and stress: Longitudinal associations with children's sleep

“…Participants in the current study include 381 twins and their primary caregivers that are part of the longitudinal cohort (191 families; monozygotic or MZ families = 28.3%, same‐sex dizygotic or DZ families = 37.7%, opposite‐sex dizygotic or DZ families = 33.0%, unknown zygosity = 1.0%). Recruitment and response rate of the current sample have been previously described in detail (see Doane et al ., ; Lemery‐Chalfant et al ., ). One twin was excluded from all analyses due to significant disabilities; all reports are on 381 twins.…”

“…Parental stress and positive parent personality reports were assessed when the children were in their first few years of life; therefore, this study did not rely on retrospective reports of the early environment. Given recent findings from this sample illustrating early‐life socioeconomic disparities in children's sleep (see Doane et al ., ), we proposed to examine indicators of parental stress from caregiver‐related domains and also focused on promotive and potentially resilient indicators from early life that were associated with children's sleep. Our focus on parent‐related factors coincides with factors that have been identified as potentially modifiable to promote resilience in childhood in the face of other adversities (e.g., poverty; Traub & Boynton‐Jarrett, ).…”

Sociodemographic and environmental factors associated with childhood sleep duration

“…In addition, we hypothesize ethnic/racial differences in children’s sleep, with Asian, Black, and Latino children sleeping less than their White counterparts 3 , 13 , 14 . We also hypothesize shorter sleep duration for children from lower SES families 8 – 10 , and shorter duration for United-States-born youth than foreign born youth 6 , 7 . Finally, based on the existing research 16 , 18 , we expect that residential crowding and living with a smoker are negatively associated with sleep duration.…”

“…Nativity has been found to be related to sleep, with United States-born individuals having shorter sleep 6 , 7 . In addition, family socioeconomic status (SES) has also been implicated to be associated with sleep duration 8 – 10 . Black and Latino children and adults report shorter sleep duration and poorer quality sleep relative to Whites.…”

<p>Sleep Duration Is Associated with Academic Achievement of Adolescent Girls in Mathematics</p>

“…Principal component analyses employing Varimax rotation was used to integrate multiple sleep dimensions and aggregate sleep means and variability measures into reliable sleep indices. We then used Pearson product-moment correlations to examine the associations between age, 40 pubertal status, 41 SES indicators, [42][43][44][45] report-card grades, and the factor scores derived from the sleep measures.…”