Allostatic Load and Exposure Histories of Disadvantage

Lucy Prior
Additional contact information
Lucy Prior: School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 14, 1-17

Abstract: The stress pathway posits that those in disadvantaged circumstances are exposed to a higher degree of stressful experiences over time resulting in an accumulated biological burden which subsequently relates to poorer health. Trajectories of disadvantage, in the form of neighbourhood deprivation and structural social capital, are evaluated in their relation to allostatic load representing the cumulative “wear and tear” of chronic stress. This paper uses data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society in a latent class growth analysis. We identify groups of exposure trajectories over time using these classes to predict allostatic load at the final wave. The results show that persistent exposure to higher deprivation is related to worse allostatic load. High structural social capital over time relates to lower allostatic load, in line with a stress buffering effect, though this relationship is not robust to controlling for individual sociodemographic characteristics. By demonstrating a gradient in allostatic load by histories of deprivation, this analysis supports a biological embedding of disadvantage through chronic exposure to stressful environments as an explanation for social health inequalities.

Keywords: neighbourhood deprivation; social capital; allostatic load; biosocial; health inequalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7222/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7222/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:14:p:7222-:d:589270

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().