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The association between the latent classes of household economic deprivation experience and parent-reported measures of child health
Yoo, Joan P. (Seoul National University)
Chung, Grace H. (Seoul National University)
Lee, Sang-Gyun (Catholic University of Korea)
The aims of this exploratory study are to identify the underlying typology of economic deprivation of households with elementary and middle school children, and to examine whether significant differences in parent-reported measures of child health are observed between these discrete groups. Data from the first wave(2014) of the “Seoul education and health welfare panel(SEWHP)”, which consists of survey data from 4th grade elementary and 1st grade middle school students and their parents living in Seoul were utilized. Latent class analysis(LCA) is used to estimate the latent classes of economic hardship. Multinomial and binomial logistic regression are employed to examine the association between the latent classes and children’s health outcomes. Analytic results show three latent classes of economic hardship including ‘no income poverty-material hardship’ group, ‘income poverty- material hardship’group, and no economic hardship group. The relative proportions of the identified groups are ‘no income poverty-material hardship’ group(16.2%), ‘income poverty-and material hardship’group(14.3%), and no economic hardship group(69.5%). Analytic results show that the latent classes of economic hardship are associated with children’s subjective physical and mental health, and limitations in activities due to chronic illness. No difference between latent classes were found for underweight and obesity. Implications of study findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Key words: Child health, socioeconomic disparities in health, economic hardship, latent class analysis
Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies, vol. 46(1), 2015 Spring. pp.397~431