Recession Turns Infants into Delinquent Teens

Exposure to unfavorable economic conditions during early stages of life can affect the healthy growth of a child. According to a new study, the economic environment of an infant can predict whether he/she will display delinquent behavior and engage in substance abuse during teenage days, researchers said.

A team of researchers led by Seethalakshmi Ramanathan of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University examined the impact of recession, i.e., high rates of unemployment between 1980 and 1982 on children.

For the study, they looked at nearly 9,000 adolescents who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1997. All the participants were born between Jan. 1, 1980 and Dec. 31, 1984.

They found exposure to regional unemployment at 12 months increasing the risks of marijuana use (1.09), smoking (1.07), alcohol use (1.06), arrest (1.17), gang affiliation (1.09), petty (1.06) and major theft (1.11).

"The results demonstrate a strong correlation between the unemployment rate during infancy and subsequent behavioral problems," the authors wrote in a news release. "This finding suggests that unfavorable economic conditions during infancy may create circumstances that can affect the psychological development of the infant and lead to the development of behavioral problems in adolescence."

Researchers hope their findings will help medical practitioners in treating children who were exposed to economic crisis.

"Our findings suggest an important static risk factor that mental health professionals may want to take into account when dealing with children exposed to the current economic crisis," the authors said. "We hope that the study inspires mental health professionals to look for potential causes and explore interventions that can mitigate some of these long-term consequences."

Results of the study have been published online in Archives of General Psychiatry.

Previous studies have shown economic recession leading to child abuse. A study published in the journal Pediatrics, July, found a large number of children being hospitalized due to serious physical abuse in the past 10 years, an impact of the economic recession and housing crisis in the U.S.