Nursery World - Young children's behavioural problems linked to poverty

Children from poor families are more than twice as likely to have behavioural problems at age three than those from wealthier backgrounds, a study by the University of Bristol has found.

The research, commissioned by the Sutton Trust and using a Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire for parents, found that 35 per cent of boys from the most deprived backgrounds had clinical-level behavioural problems compared with 15 per cent of those from more affluent families. At age seven, 22 per cent of poorer children still had behavioural problems compared with 10 per cent of those wealthier. Twenty-nine per cent of girls from deprived families had behavioural problems at age three and 20 per cent at age seven.

The study found that inequalities in behaviour had widened significantly over the past decade. Girls born in the early 1990s were twice as likely as their better-off peers to have behavioural problems at age seven, but this figure rose to three and a half times more likely for girls born within the last ten years.

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