Asthma and child behavioral skills: Does family socioeconomic status matter?

• To study the role of socioeconomic status in modifying the developmental consequences of asthma in early childhood.
• Asthma was associated with poor behavioral skills for children from low-SES families.
• Children from high-SES families were less affected by asthma than their low-SES peers.
• Healthcare resources, family process, and environmental risks did not completely explain the socioeconomic disparities.

Asthma is associated with poorer behavioral and psychological outcomes in children, yet little is known about whether and how the social stratification process affects the impacts of asthma on children's outcomes. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort, this study considered the role of socioeconomic status in shaping the developmental consequences of children's asthma. Results showed that asthma was negatively associated with attention and social competence and positively associated with externalizing problem behaviors for children with low-educated mothers and children who lived in poor households. However, the adverse consequences of asthma disappeared for children with high-educated mothers and children who did not experience poverty. Additionally, the socioeconomic disparities were not fully explained by healthcare resources, family process, and exposure to environment risks and the disparities were found for both mild and severe cases. These findings suggest that, to fully understand the developmental consequences of illness in children, it is important to place socioeconomic status at the center of investigation.