Socioeconomic status and antisocial behaviour among children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Previous research on the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and child and adolescent antisocial behaviour has produced mixed findings showing variation in the strength of association. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to summarise evidence on the relationship between socioeconomic status and broadly conceptualised antisocial behaviour, investigating variation across a range of antisocial subtypes and other potential moderators, including age, sex and informant. We identified 133 studies containing data suitable for effect size calculation, and 139 independent effect sizes were analysed (total N=339868). The global meta-analysis showed that lower family socioeconomic status was associated with higher levels of antisocial behaviour. Moderation analyses revealed this relationship was stronger where callous-unemotional traits were the outcome, and where antisocial behaviour was reported by parents or teachers rather than self-reported. The relationship between family SES and antisocial behaviour, however, was independent of higher-level constructs such as national income inequality. These results indicate that SES can be considered a robust correlate of broadly conceptualised antisocial behaviour but the strength of this relationship may depend on the antisocial subtype under investigation and the design of the study.

Relationship between Parenting Styles, Self-compassion and Emotional Intelligence and Antisocial Behaviors in Students

“…Research has shown that sociopathy at least includes two aspects: (1) Primary sociopathy (interpersonal and emotional aspect) that includes apathy, narcissism, and acting against morality; and (2) secondary sociopathy which is the aspect of antisocial life style that includes behaviors that are considered impulsive, hostile, and irrational (3). Moreover, it has been shown that several risk factors are associated with antisocial behavior such as socioeconomic level (4) and violence (5).…”

Risk of Psychosocial Problems in Children Whose Parents Receive Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment

“…Children whose parents had low education levels were more likely to show peer relationship problems than children of parents with higher educational levels. Previous research on children's wellbeing and their parents' socioeconomic status (SES) suggests a similarly negative association, implying that mental health problems are more prevalent in children from families with a low SES than in children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Piotrowska, Stride, Croft, & Rowe, 2015;Rajmil, Herdman, Ravens-Sieberer, Erhart, & Alonso, 2014;Reiss, 2013). Several studies among children and adolescents from general population samples report similar negative associations between parental education and peer relationship problems (Havas, Bosma, Spreeuwenberg, & Feron, 2009;de Laat, Essink-Bot, van Wassenaer-Leemhuis, & Vrijkotte, 2016;Rajmil et al, 2014).…”

Dopamine Transporter And Transmission Of Psychopathological Risk. A Review Of Gene-Environment Interplay

“…Parental psychopathological symptoms may influence children mental health (a) through predisposition to vulnerability genes (Cicchetti, 2016) because parents share approximately 50% of their genes with their biological offspring (Kim et al, 2009), and/or (b) through exposure offspring to higher adverse and non supportive environment, including poor parenting (Cimino et al, 2016), interparental conflict and (Breslend et al, 2016) a lower socio-economic status (Piotrowska et al, 2015).…”