Education: Family resources help girls more than boys when it comes to mental-health problems

Abstract

Research has established that school performance relates: (i) negatively with poor mental health during childhood and (ii) positively with family socioeconomic resources. In this article, we examine the potentially moderating effects of family resources on the relationship between school performance and poor mental health, using register data covering all children born in Sweden in 1990. The dependent variable is graduation from upper secondary school. We perform separate analyses for girls and boys. Our results indicate that compensatory effects of the socioeconomic resources of the family on the risk of graduation failure among those with poor mental health is more pronounced among girls compared to boys.

Keywords

• upper secondary school graduation
• family socioeconomic resources
• mental health