Association of Parental Socioeconomic Status and Physical Activity with Development of Arterial Stiffness in Prepubertal Children

The present study examined the prospective association of parental household income, education level, migration background, and physical activity (PA) behavior with the development of pulse wave velocity (PWV) in prepubertal children. A total of 223 children (initial age 6–8 years) were included in this prospective school-based cohort study from 2014 to 2018. Parental socioeconomic status, migration background, and PA behavior were assessed by the use of questionnaires at both times points. PWV was measured by an oscillometric device at follow-up (2018). No significant association of household income, education level, and parental migration background with PWV in children after four years was found. However, a high level of maternal PA was related to a lower childhood PWV at follow-up (mean (95% CI) 4.6 (4.54–4.66) m/s) compared to children of mothers with a low PA behavior (mean (95% CI) 4.7 (4.64–4.77) m/s) (p = 0.049). Children of mothers with a high PA level revealed a beneficial arterial stiffness after four years. Little evidence for an association of socioeconomic status and migration background with childhood arterial stiffness was found. Increased parental PA seems to support the development of childhood vascular health and should be considered in the generation of future primary prevention strategies of childhood cardiovascular health.

Sports participation of children and adolescents in Germany: disentangling the influence of parental socioeconomic status

Background Participation in sports and physical activity (PA) is a critical resource for children’s health and social development. This study analyzes how the parental socioeconomic status (SES) of children and adolescents affects their PA in sports clubs (organized sports) and outside of sports clubs (unorganized sports) and tests whether the potential impact of parental SES is mediated by the opportunity structure of their residential area (walkability, infrastructure, etc.) and by family and peer support for PA. Furthermore, PA is analyzed respecting differences by gender and migration background. Methods Using representative data from the MoMo/KiGGS study (2009–2012 and 2014–2017), we take into account about 8000 measurements from about 7000 subjects. We estimate hurdle regression models to analyze the minutes per week spent on sports activities. Results Results show that children with a higher parental SES, children living in areas with many opportunities for PA, and children receiving family and peer support are more physically active than children without these features. Controlled for opportunities and support, status effects are small but visible. The differences regarding parental SES are much more apparent for organized sports than for unorganized sports, indicating the relevance of economic resources. Boys are more active than girls, whereas there is no clear effect of migration background. Conclusions The coefficient of parental SES on organized sports most probably relates to the resources needed to participate in sports clubs, including fees and equipment. Lower membership fees might potentially help to integrate children with low parental SES into sports clubs and thereby make organized sports more accessible to all social classes.

Two Forms of Social Inequality in Students' Socio-Emotional Skills: Do the Levels of Big Five Personality Traits and Their Associations With Academic Achievement Depend on Parental Socioeconomic Status?

Some researchers and policymakers advocate a stronger focus on fostering socio-emotional skills in the hope of helping students to succeed academically, especially those who are socially disadvantaged. Others have cautioned that this might increase, rather than reduce, social inequality because personality traits conducive to achievement are themselves unevenly distributed in disfavor of socially disadvantaged students. Our paper contributes to this debate. Analyzing representative, large-scale data on 9,300 ninth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and using the Big Five personality traits as a measure of socio-emotional skills, we cast light on two related yet distinct aspects of social inequality in socio-emotional skills: First, do levels of personality traits conducive to achievement vary as a function of students' parental socioeconomic status (pSES)? Second, do the returns to personality traits in terms of trait–achievement relations vary as function of pSES? Results showed that differences in Big Five traits between students with different pSES were small (0.04 ≤ |r| ≤ 0.09), especially when compared with pSES-related differences in cognitive skills (fluid intelligence) and sex-related differences in personality. The returns to Conscientiousness—the personality trait most relevant to achievement—in terms of its relations to academic achievement were higher in higher- vs. lower-SES students. Trait–achievement relations did not vary as a function of pSES for the other Big Five traits. Overall, both types of inequality were limited in magnitude. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and practice and delineate directions for further research.

Socio-cognitive engagement (but not socioeconomic status) predicts preschool children's language and pragmatic abilities

Parental socioeconomic status (SES) strongly influences children's language abilities but less is known about its influence on pragmatic abilities (e.g., inferring intentions from relevance implicatures). Moreover, by focussing on SES, the role of socio-cognitive engagement (e.g., joint parent-child interactions) has been overlooked. We tested four- and six-year-old children (n = 92) with a communication task, a questionnaire assessed parents’ SES and socio-cognitive engagement. Socio-cognitive engagement predicted children's communication abilities while the parental educational background and income did not. This emphasizes the notion that communication is a highly socio-cognitive task, one which children perform the better the more frequently they engage in socio-cognitive interactions.