By Kim Bo-eun
Children from low-income households have a greater risk of developing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), according to a study revealed Monday.
A team of professors led by Park Eun-cheol at Yonsei University’s Severance Hospital studied 18,029 children born in 2002 and 2003. The team looked at changes in the income status of the children’s households in their first four years of life. It also analyzed how this affected their risk of developing ADHD between the ages of 10 and 11.
Of the participants, 554 (3.1 percent) were identified as having ADHD by these ages.
The team divided households into four groups ― low, mid-low, mid-high and high income ― and studied the children’s risk of developing ADHD based on changes in income.
The results showed children of households that saw a decrease in income and those of consistently low or mid-low income households had a 1.7 times higher risk of developing ADHD at age 10 or 11 than children from the mid-high income group.
Children from households which moved from the mid-high to high income group saw their risk of developing ADHD reduced by 0.9 times.
“Promotion of targeted policies and priority support may help reduce ADHD in this vulnerable group,” the authors wrote in the study.
The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology’s February edition.