Just as modern economies undergo periods of boom and bust, human ancestors experienced cycles of abundance and famine. Is the adaptive response when resources become scarce to save for the future or to spend money on immediate gains? Drawing on life-history theory, we propose that people's responses to resource scarcity depend on the harshness of their early-life environment, as reflected by ch...

Just as modern economies undergo periods of boom and bust, human ancestors experienced cycles of abundance and famine. Is the adaptive response when resources become scarce to save for the future or to spend money on immediate gains? Drawing on life-history theory, we propose that people’s responses to resource scarcity depend on the harshness of their early-life environment, as reflected by ch...

Substantial research links economic adversity to poor coping in stressful or threatening environments. Neuroimaging studies suggest that activation of the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) plays a key role in self-control, and it seems that individual differences in neurocognitive systems underlying self-control are determined in part by subjective childhood socioeconomic status (S...

BACKGROUND This study examined whether there were associations between individual measures of socio-economic status (SES) and the 12-month prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) in representative samples of Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Whites in the USA. METHOD The data used were from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies (CPES). RESULTS There was an association between h...

INTRODUCTION Quality of care could be influenced by individual socio-economic status (SES) and by residential area deprivation. The objective is to synthesize the current evidence regarding inequalities in health care for patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (Type 2 DM). METHODS The systematic review focuses on inequalities concerning process (e.g. measurement of HbA1c, i.e. glycolised haem...

BACKGROUND The link between diet quality and socio-economic status (SES) may extend to the use of vitamin/ mineral supplements. This article examines factors related to Canadians' use of such supplements, with emphasis on associations with household income and education. DATA AND METHODS The data are from the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey-Nutrition (n = 35,107). The prevalence of vita...

Preterm birth may be affected by the interaction of residential air pollution with neighborhood economic hardship. The authors examined variations in traffic-related pollution exposure--measured by distance-weighted traffic density--using a framework reflecting the social and physical environments. An adverse social environment was conceptualized as low socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods-...

Theoretically, measures of household wealth can be reflected by income, consumption or expenditure information. However, the collection of accurate income and consumption data requires extensive resources for household surveys. Given the increasingly routine application of principal components analysis (PCA) using asset data in creating socio-economic status (SES) indices, we review how PCA-bas...

Individuals with lower socio-economic status (SES) are at increased risk of physical and mental illnesses and tend to die at an earlier age [1-3]. Explanations for the association between SES and health typically focus on factors that are environmental in origin [4]. However, common SNPs have been found collectively to explain around 18% of the phenotypic variance of an area-based social depriv...

PURPOSE Little is known about associations of adolescents' socio-economic status (SES) and their sexual activity and risk behaviours. This study examined these associations in Nova Scotia adolescents aged 15-19. METHODS Students at four high schools in northern Nova Scotia completed surveys examining relationships of family SES factors and: 1) sexual activity (having had vaginal or anal inter...