Lower socioeconomic status (SES) is a risk factor for psychopathology. Youth living in low SES neighborhoods experience a myriad of stressors, particularly social stressors (e.g., discrimination), which may be particularly stressful for adolescents sensitive to peer feedback (i.e., blunted sensitivity to acceptance from peers). This study thus aimed to test whether neighborhood SES moderates the relationship between brain responses to peer feedback and affect outside of the lab, measured through ecological momentary assessment (EMA). To measure neural response to acceptance (relative to rejection), 13–18-year-old adolescents (N = 172) completed an event-related potential (ERP) task during which they received accepting or rejecting feedback from peers. They also rated their positive and negative affect via EMA for a week. Neighborhood SES moderated the relationship between brain responses to peer acceptance and negative affect. Specifically, for adolescents living in low SES neighborhoods, blunted brain response to acceptance was related to elevated negative affect. Prevention and intervention efforts (e.g., neighborhood/community interventions) may benefit from focusing on increasing hedonic responses to social feedback.

Inclusive fitness theory predicts that to maximize fitness, individuals should invest in kin, but relatives can also compete for resources. These opposing forces can have opposite effects on fertility, which was further constrained by marital and inheritance norms in traditional Western societies. How available resources influence this balance between helping and competing remains poorly understood. To investigate whether kin help or harm fertility, we used genealogical records from a population registry to study how relatives alive at age 15 were associated with marriage and lifetime number of children in Finnish people born 1752–1879, comparing landowning and landless individuals. Our results show that for focals born to landowning families, both older and younger siblings were associated with a higher age at first marriage, but the maternal grandmother and younger sisters were positively associated with fertility. These associations also differed by the focal’s sex. Among the landless, siblings were also relatively weakly associated with poor marital outcomes, but not with the lifetime number of children. Relatives were not associated with lifetime childlessness. These results suggest that a high level of resources may intensify both positive and negative associations between kin and fertility, possibly through inheritance patterns, competition for resources and childcare help.

Personal networks provide crucial support during crises, yet people are embedded in different network types that structure unequal access to such resources. The current study integrates these perspectives to examine whether—and how—network turnover contributed to disparities in mental health across socioeconomic status (SES) groups during the pandemic. Using two-wave panel data from the COVID-19 Pandemic and Social Network Panel Study (2020–2021), an egocentric network study of the college population in Wuhan, we employ random forests and spectral clustering to identify 7 types of core networks based on 43 network variables (i.e., Family, Friend, Restricted, Family & Community, School & Career, Just Activity, and Homebody). We find that as local social-distancing policies tightened, respondents increasingly shifted to Family and Friend networks and withdrew from School & Career and Just Activity. Individual fixed-effect models reveal that these network turnovers have heterogeneous mental health consequences net of observed and time-invariant unobserved confounders. Moving into Family and Friend networks yields the most favorable mental health outcomes for higher-SES groups, whereas benefits are less pronounced and even reversed among lower-SES groups. This pattern is consistent with SES-based differences in social support available in these network types. The current research advances an updated machine-learning approach for identifying personal network typologies. It also shows how the pandemic laid bare unequal resources embedded in personal networks and intensified health-related social inequality, underscoring the need to theorize network effects as contingent on individuals’ social status and the contexts in which networks are formed and embedded.

This report examines gender differences in trust-based social networks in contemporary China. Using data collected from a uniquely designed survey, respondents rate the trustworthiness of 24 prototypical social roles, enabling our construction of gender-specific networks. Community detection analysis reveals a tripartite structure in men’s networks – older-generation kin, same-generation kin and non-kin – versus a simpler kin/non-kin split among women. Two explanatory pathways are tested: cultural dispositions and life chance access. Matching analyses suggest cultural orientation as the primary driver: when men and women both embrace traditional ideas to the same degree, their network partitioning differences cease to exist. Further analyses suggest that the gender difference in social network partitioning lies in the fact that men are more traditionally oriented than women. This study highlights a gendered cultural configuration in which men appear relatively more “traditional” and women more “modern” as played out through gendered forms of social networking.

Major depressive disorder (MDD), smoking, and drinking frequently co-occur, with evidence suggesting these relationships may differ by sex. However, the direction of causality and the extent of sex-specific associations remain unclear. We investigated sex-specific genetic relationships between MDD and substance use phenotypes using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) from the UK Biobank and publicly available sex-stratified GWAS for MDD and problematic alcohol use (PAU). Causal effects were assessed using bidirectional, sex-stratified Mendelian randomization (MR). We further applied multivariable MR (MVMR) to evaluate the influence of socioeconomic status (SES). Genetic correlation analyses indicated significant shared genetic architecture between MDD and all substance use traits in sex-combined GWAS. In sex-specific analyses, the correlation between cigarettes per day and MDD was significantly stronger in females, and drinks per week were correlated with MDD only in females. MR analyses showed that genetic liability to MDD increased the risk of smoking initiation and PAU in females, and was associated with reduced alcohol drinking frequency in males. In contrast, no tested substance use trait showed evidence of a causal effect on MDD in either sex. MVMR adjusting for SES attenuated the association between MDD and smoking initiation. The effect on PAU in females remained. In males, the negative association between MDD and drinking frequency became non-significant after SES adjustment. These findings reveal sex-specific genetic and causal relationships between smoking, drinking, and MDD, and highlight the role of SES as a potential confounder. Incorporating sex and socioeconomic context is critical when examining these associations.

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to pubertal development, mental health issues, and academic performance. However, the role of early pubertal development in the link between low SES and mental health and academic outcomes is unclear. Using longitudinal data from the ABCD Study (9–10 years at baseline, N = 9,848, 52.2% males) across four time points, we examined associations between household and neighborhood disadvantage, pubertal development, and mental health and academic achievement. Greater household and neighborhood disadvantage were associated with more advanced pubertal status at baseline in both males and females. Among females, higher pubertal status at baseline mediated the association between lower household income and neighborhood disadvantage with greater mental health problems and poorer school performance. Additionally, slower pubertal tempo attenuated the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and these outcomes in females. These findings underscore the importance of considering both household and neighborhood contexts in shaping adolescent development and highlight pubertal development as a potential pathway underlying socioeconomic disparities in mental health and academic achievement.

Socioeconomic disadvantage has been established as a key risk factor for adverse child behavioral outcomes. Understanding how individual components of socioeconomic status (SES) interact with each other can elucidate protective factors and inform interventions and policies to promote positive developmental outcomes. This study examined the interactive effects of prenatal household income and neighborhood deprivation on child externalizing and internalizing problems (N = 793; Mage = 8.37 years; 51.2% females; 81.5% White). Results revealed an interaction effect between prenatal household income levels and neighborhood deprivation on child externalizing problems. Higher neighborhood deprivation was associated with higher child externalizing outcomes only at lower household income levels per person. Although no interaction between household income and neighborhood deprivation on child internalizing problems was observed, lower household income levels were independently associated with higher child internalizing problems. These findings underscore how prenatal individual- and neighborhood-level SES factors interact to shape children’s behavioral outcomes across childhood.