Research project Poverty and mental illness in the children of migrants
Poverty has a clear impact on the mental health of children, but when and how it happens is still unknown. The project "Poverty and mental illness in the children of migrants – a longitudinal study of inequalities and key mechanisms" will fill in the knowledge gaps using unique data sources and innovative methods.
When during childhood is children's mental health affected by poverty? What factors drive these effects? And how do these effects differ between children of migrants and children of non-migrants?
The project will answer these questions using unique data sources and innovative methods. The researchers are examining the relationship between poverty and mental health in the early life course (5-25 years) and describing inequalities, if there are any, between children of migrants and non-migrants.
The study also aims to understand how mental illness arises as a result of poverty and whether inequalities in mental health are reduced if parents get out of poverty.
Project description
Focusing on the early life course (5-25 years), the specific project aims and research questions are:
- To examine associations between poverty and mental health, and describe differences between the children of migrants and non-migrants
- 1A. How do trajectories of mental health over the early life course relate to childhood poverty?
- 1B. How does parental migration status moderate such associations?
- To assess the role of potential key mechanisms in the relationship between poverty and children’s mental health, and how their relative importance differs between children of migrants and non-migrants
- 2A. Is the relationship between poverty and children’s mental health mediated by: a) embodied psychosocial stress (inflammation) in children, and b) the mental health of parents?
- 2B. To what extent are these mediating effects different between migrant and non-migrant families?
- To asses how shifts out of chronic poverty impact children’s mental health
- 3A. Do shifts out of chronic poverty reduce the incidence of mental illness in children?
- 3B. To what extent is this association moderated by parental migrant status?
We will use a collection of longitudinal individual-level Swedish register data which covers all residents of Sweden from 1968-2025 (total N>16,000,000). The data includes intergenerational links, detailed individual-level and annual information about socioeconomic status (e.g. income and benefit receipts), migration events, and country of birth. These data are linked to health data from the national in- and outpatient registers and the national drug prescription register. These data allow longitudinal estimations of poverty and mental health trajectories in children over the years 2005-2025.
In addition, we use data from the AMORIS (Apolipoprotein-related MOrtality RISk) cohort (N=812,073; of which 8% aged ≤20 years); an occupational healthcare cohort containing biomarker data linked to register data to examine inflammation as a marker of psychosocial stress and a potential explanatory mechanism of the relationship between poverty and depression. The methods include longitudinal latent class analysis, mediation analysis with time-varying confounding (using g-formula), and a target trial framework of causal inference. Heterogeneities by gender, parental country of birth, and reasons for migration will be examined.
Project members
Project managers
Lisa Harber-Aschan
Researcher
Members
Siddartha Aradhya
Researcher, Docent
Raffaele Grotti
Associate professor
Sol Juarez
Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor
Stefanie Möllborn
Professor of Sociology
