Workshops and conferences participation

Hope by France: «Au-delà des frontières, construire demain», Children’s Forum by UNICEF France (19 November 2024) in Paris (France). Lidia Panico and Marion Leturcq participate in the Round Table session "Comment mieux mesurer et prendre en compte la pauvreté des enfants ?" (How can we better measure and take into account child poverty?)

European Consortium for Sociological Research (12-14 September 2024) in Barcelona (Spain), in presence. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova

The emergence of health gaps in early life: The role of childhood deprivation 

Abstract: Numerous studies highlight that early childhood is a key stage for lifelong health development and that children’s early environments “get under the skin” from the earliest moments of life. As a result, the early childhood period plays a crucial role in production of health inequalities throughout life (Currie et al., 2007; Irwin et al., 2007). Much of the existing body of literature addressing health inequalities from birth uses markers of socio-economic background such as parents’ education or incomes (Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Schoon et al., 2012). However, it has been questioned whether such parent-based measures of socioeconomic background capture the same construct for young children as for adults. For example, household income has been criticized as not a reliable measure of the resources available to children as it does not fully capture children’s lived experiences of disadvantage, family composition, distribution of household income among family members, and the prioritization of resources across household members. Alternatively, a growing body of multidisciplinary research has proposed multidimensional poverty as a tool for better understanding disadvantage. The majority of measures of multidimensional poverty or well-being are based on using the Alkire-Foster method (Alkire and Foster, 2011a; Alkire and Foster, 2011b). It is a flexible technique with the primary purpose to integrate several different non-income dimensions that may identify people experiencing deprivation. The concept of multidimensional deprivation provides a more nuanced perspective on poverty, allowing for the inclusion of individuals who may not be considered in poverty based on traditional income-based measures but still face hardships in other areas of their lives. In this paper, we conceptually and methodologically bring together the economics literature on the measurement of deprivation and the epidemiological literature on health inequalities for a better understanding of the development of health inequalities in early childhood, i.e. from birth to age 5. A particular innovation of this paper is the adaptation of multidimensional deprivation for children: we use of a dynamic, child-centred, multi-domain framework to study early childhood deprivation and how it links to early health. Our focus on multiple dimensions of deprivation allows exploring which dimensions of deprivation matter most for early health; this is a critical step to move from describing to understanding health inequalities. We also look at associations with classic measures such as monetary poverty to assess whether the use of multi-domain deprivation concepts leads to different patterns of health inequalities. National contexts and policy environments may have a strong effect in moderating the relationship between early experience of deprivation and child health (Washbrook et al., 2012; Martinson and Reichman, 2016), leading to different dynamics of inequalities in early health. Thus, we compare the experience of three countries: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While these countries are comparable on broad social characteristics, such as major political and demographic shifts, important differences exist in the socio-economic polarization of fertility; family policies, including availability, cost, and quality of childcare; health policies and norms creating different food and physical activity environments; whether policies are targeted, universal, or proportionally universal, etc. (Thevenon, 2011). We examine whether these different policy environments and social institutions produce different patterns of early health inequities. 

CRIS seminar at SciencesPo (17 May 2024). Presenter: Lidia Panico

The emergence of health gaps in early life: The role of multidomain childhood deprivation

Population Association of America (17-20 April 2024) in Columbus (USA), poster. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova

The Emergence of Health Gaps in Early Life in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States: Effects of Childhood Deprivation (poster)

Children of the noughties: a conference to celebrate 21 years of the Millennium Cohort Study (13-14 June 2023) in London (UK), in presence. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova

The emergence of health gaps in early life in France: Effects of childhood deprivation

Abstract: Research literature emphasizes that inequalities in health start early in life and that children’s early environment “get under the skin” from the earlies moments of life. Early childhood is therefore crucial to our understanding of the production of health inequalities in later life. Compared to other national settings, there is less empirical research about the dynamics of health inequalities in early years for France, yet preliminary results suggest stark health gaps from birth, comparable to those documented in other developed countries. A body of research, mostly coming from the economics literature, has put forward multi-domain deprivation as a tool for a better understanding childhood disadvantage, rather than classic measures such as income poverty, which do not fully capture children’s lived experience of disadvantage. However, the epidemiology literature still uses relatively simple concepts of (parental) “socio-economic status” to describe health gaps in childhood. In this paper, we conceptually and methodologically bring together the economics literature on the measurement of childhood deprivation and the epidemiological literature on health inequalities for a better understanding of the emergence of socioeconomic inequalities in early childhood. A particular innovation of this paper is the use of a child-cantered, life-course, multidimensional framework to explore several research questions. First, whether early childhood deprivation is linked to early health. Our focus on multiple dimensions of deprivation additionally allows exploring which dimensions matter most for early health. Second, we investigate if the depth of deprivation at each age and accumulation of deprivation over the studying period play a significant role in child health.  

RC28 Conference (24-26 May 2023) in Paris (France), in presence. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova

The emergence of health gaps in early life in France: Effects of childhood deprivation (presentation)

Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference (23-25 October 2022) in Cleveland (USA), online. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova

The emergence of health gaps in early life: The role of multidomain childhood deprivation

European Consortium for Sociological Research (6-8 July 2022) in Amsterdam (Netherlands), in presence. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova

The emergence of health gaps in early life: The role of multidomain childhood deprivation

European Population Conference (29 June - 2 July 2022) In Groningen (Netherlands), poster. Presenter: Yuliya Kazakova (poster)

The emergence of health gaps in early life: The role of multidomain childhood deprivation