Academic Disparities and Health: How Gender-Based Disparities in Schools Relate to Boys' and Girls’ Health

Publication Date

5-2019

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Gender, Disparities, Metabolic syndrome, Asthma

Abstract

Rationale

Recent research reveals that, although girls encounter some barriers in school (e.g., in science and math), on balance, boys perform worse academically. Moreover, other research has identified a correlation between exposure to a context characterized by large disparities in performance or resources and a range of negative outcomes, including negative health and well-being, among members of lower status groups.

Objective

Building on these literatures, the present research tests the relationship between gender disparities in academic performance within a school and students' health outcomes. Specifically, we investigated whether boys had worse health when they attended schools where there was a greater disparity between boys' and girls’ academic performance.

Method

We tested this hypothesis in two different samples with different health outcomes. In a sample of healthy eighth graders (Study 1; 159 girls and 81 boys), we assessed two indices of metabolic syndrome, and in a sample of children with asthma (Study 2; 122 girls and 153 boys), we assessed immune function (Th1 and Th2 cytokine production) and self-reported symptoms. Participants in both samples also reported the name of the school that they attended so that we could access publicly available information about the percentage of girls and the percentage of boys in each school who met expectations for their grade level on standardized tests.

Results

In both samples, the greater the gap in a school between the percentage of girls and the percentage of boys who met expectations for their grade level on standardized tests, the worse boys’ health. This pattern did not emerge among girls.

Conclusion

Results thus highlight the negative health correlates of academic disparities among members of lower-performing groups.

Copyright Date

3-22-2019

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Elsevier Ltd. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Levine, C. S., Miller, G. E., Shalowitz, M. U., Story, R. E., Manczak, E. M., Hayen, R., . . . Chen, E. (2019). Academic disparities and health: How gender-based disparities in schools relate to boys' and girls’ health. Social Science & Medicine, 228, 126-134. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.02.036

Accepted Manuscript is openly available through the "Link to Full Text" button.

The published Version of Record is available at libraries through Compass or Worldcat.

Rights Holder

Elsevier Ltd.

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Social Science & Medicine

Volume

228

First Page

126

Last Page

134

ISSN

1873-5347

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