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. 2010 Mar;100(3):540-6.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2008.150771. Epub 2009 Aug 20.

Association between socioeconomic status and the development of asthma: analyses of income trajectories

Anita L Kozyrskyj  1 , Garth E Kendall, Peter Jacoby, Peter D Sly, Stephen R Zubrick
Affiliations

Association between socioeconomic status and the development of asthma: analyses of income trajectories

Anita L Kozyrskyj et al. Am J Public Health. 2010 Mar.

Abstract

Objectives: Using data on 2868 children born in the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, we examined the association between changes in family socioeconomic status and childhood asthma.

Methods: We determined the likelihood (odds ratio) of a child having asthma at ages 6 and 14 years for 4 family-income trajectories (chronic low, increasing, decreasing, and never low) over the child's lifetime. The trajectories were created from longitudinal latent-class models.

Results: We found a 2-fold increased risk of asthma at age 14 years among children who had lived in a low-income family since birth, especially for girls. Asthma was less likely to occur in children born to single parents; income rose over time in many of these families. Compared with children in chronic low-income families, children in households with increasing incomes had a 60% lower risk of asthma. Single-point measures of low income were not found to be associated with asthma.

Conclusions: Chronic exposure to a low-income environment from birth was associated with the development of persistent asthma. There was also a protective effect against asthma among those children whose families had moved out of poverty.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Probability of a child's membership in 4 low-income trajectories from birth until age 14 years: Western Australia Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, Perth, Australia, 1989–2005.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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