Neighborhood disadvantage and adolescent stress reactivity

Abstract

Lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher levels of life stress, which in turn affect stress physiology. SES is related to basal cortisol and diurnal change, but it is not clear if SES is associated with cortisol reactivity to stress. To address this question, we examined the relationship between two indices of SES, parental education and concentrated neighborhood disadvantage, and the cortisol reactivity of African-American adolescents to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). We found that concentrated disadvantage was associated with cortisol reactivity and this relationship was moderated by gender, such that higher concentrated disadvantage predicted higher cortisol reactivity and steeper recovery in boys but not in girls. Parental education, alone or as moderated by gender, did not predict reactivity or recovery, while neither education nor concentrated disadvantage predicted estimates of baseline cortisol. This finding is consistent with animal literature showing differential vulnerability, by gender, to the effects of adverse early experience on stress regulation and the differential effects of neighborhood disadvantage in adolescent males and females. This suggests that the mechanisms underlying SES differences in brain development and particularly reactivity to environmental stressors may vary across genders.

Keywords: HPA axis; cortisol; neighborhood disadvantage; parental education; socioeconomic status; stress reactivity.

Figure 1

Timeline of procedures.

Figure 2

Predicted cortisol reactivity by gender and level of concentrated disadvantage. Model-based graphs of cortisol concentration during the reactivity and recovery periods protocol by gender and level of concentrated disadvantage. This model controls for the effects of sleep and asthma medication (non-steroidal). For illustrative purposes we selected two values representing high and low disadvantage, 1.5 SD above and below the mean (following Aiken and West, 1991). Error bars represent standard error.