Home to Health: A Sibling Correlation Approach to Family Background and Mediating Effects on Early Adulthood Mental Health

Lotta Lintunen , Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health
Lauren Bishop, University of Helsinki
Pekka Martikainen, University of Helsinki
Joonas Pitkänen, Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health
Lasse Tarkianen, Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health

Systematic health disparities between population groups remain a critical concern in welfare states, with young people’s mental health diagnoses and early deaths signalling deep social inequalities. This study investigates the pathways by which family background influences such health outcomes in early adulthood, focusing on the mediating roles of educational trajectory, and school performance. Utilizing total population Finnish register data for birth cohorts 1970–1995, we link educational and health records including psychiatric diagnoses and drug purchase reimbursements with family and sibling information. Using sibling-based models, we test how variation in educational choices, and school performance mediate the total effect of family background on youth mental health diagnoses in emerging adulthood. We hypothesize that educational pathways and school achievement substantially mediate the influence of family background on emerging adulthood mental health and expect the intra-class correlation attributable to shared family factors; genetic, environmental, and social, to decrease with mediators accounted for. The sibling correlation decomposition method enables direct comparison of mediating effects across different pathways, and over time, making it highly relevant for policy evaluation. The prospective findings provide actionable knowledge for social and health policy: improving educational opportunities and drawing attention to cumulative processes of cognitive skill development and school environment could mitigate health disparities among young people and break cycles of disadvantage.

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 Presented in Session 118. Flash Session Families, Partnerships and Health