Grant: Project Grant

Why are some children healthy and others not? Why do some children perform well in school and others drop out? Why are some youths arrested while others never come near the justice system? The population-based Manitoba data enable research on the consequences of birth, childhood, and adolescent experiences for health and well-being over the first 20 years. Key childhood outcomes include health events, educational performance, contact with the justice system, and poverty in the late teens. Urban/rural/regional differences will be highlighted. Health analyses will include birth outcomes (low birth weight and prematurity), events resulting in hospitalizations, teen pregnancy, and the emergence of mental health problems. Pilot analyses will suggest approaches to other diseases with origins traceable to childhood and adolescence. Educational analyses will track school readiness, subsequent standardized testing, being held back, high school grades, and high school dropout. Data incorporating contact with the justice system include all arrests and convictions. Going on income assistance as a late teen may reflect difficulty in finding work, family poverty, or lack of welfare supports after age 18. How do health and social influences play out over the child's first 20 years? These influences include a) prenatal care, as well as parental and sibling health, b)family stress, c) parental contact with the justice system (including domestic violence), d) household poverty, e) neighborhood poverty, f) residential mobility, g) urban versus rural/regional residence, h) social housing. The degree to which predictors of poor young adult outcomes occur early enough to allow the possibility of intervention will be explored. We will analyze Manitoba's data on several government projects designed to improve children's wellbeing. Finally, we will cooperate with an Ontario investigator to facilitate two-province comparisons using new Ontario linked social and health data.