New research using Understanding Society data shows that all children’s mental health worsened during the pandemic, but the steepest decline was seen in those from wealthier families. This goes against the expectation that disadvantaged children would be hardest hit – but their mental health remains worse than those from better-off families.
The research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, looked at child mental health from 2011-19, before the pandemic, and at ages 5-11 in July and September 2020 and in March 2021. The researchers examined parents’ answers to questions about their children, and took sex, ethnicity, family structure, parental education, employment, household income and area deprivation into account.
Children with highly educated, employed parents, who live together and have higher household income experienced steeper declines in their mental health during the pandemic than more disadvantaged children. The disadvantaged children tended to have lower mental health to begin with, causing a narrowing of inequalities in children’s mental health, but still leaving disadvantaged children worse off.
The research was carried out by Naomi Miall and Anna Pearce from the University of Glasgow, Jamie Moore and Michaela Benzeval at the University of Essex, and Michael Green at Duke University in America. They suggest that “social isolation and reduced access to services during the COVID-19 pandemic brought the experiences of traditionally advantaged groups closer to those already faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and/or that emergency income support measures during the pandemic may have eased the economic burden for disadvantaged families”.
It may also be that when working parents were balancing childcare and their jobs, this may have contributed to the poorer mental health of children with employed parents.
The research has been covered in The Guardian
More detail on the story from the University of Glasgow
Family and householdsHealth and wellbeingYoung people
