Parental Objective, Subjective, and Contextual Socioeconomic Status and Children's Mental Health in Iran: The Mediating Effect of the Subjective Measure

Background: Children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) households are at greater risk for mental illnesses. Socioeconomic status has different dimensions: Objective SES, subjective SES, and contextual SES. Evidence suggests that subjective SES partially mediates the impact of objective SES on mental health. However, these hypotheses have not been tested in Middle Eastern cultures, including Iran. Objectives: We aimed to investigate: (1) if there is an association between parental objective, subjective, and contextual SES measures and their children's mental health in a network of general practitioners' clients, (2) if such an association exists for objective or contextual indicators, is it partially or fully mediated through subjective measure? and (3) if such an association exists, is it affected by children's age? Methods: We assessed 1,103 parent-child pairs in the general practitioners' network of clients. The child's mental health was assessed by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and parental objective SES by education level, subjective SES by the MacArthur scale, and contextual SES by the household neighborhood. Linear regression models were used to investigate the impact of different SES measures on the SDQ score both bivariately and adjusted for each other. A mediation analysis was performed for objective SES' indirect effect on SDQ score through subjective SES. Results: We found a significant association between objective and subjective SES and the SDQ score, which remained significant after adjusting for each other. Both objective and subjective measures had a small effect size (Cohen's f-squared = 0.03). There was no association between contextual SES and SDQ scores in our sample. Conclusions: Socioeconomic status impacts children and adolescents' mental health. However, SES is a multi-dimensional concept. Further research considering different dimensions is needed to understand the interplay of these dimensions in different cultures and contexts. Addressing such exploratory questions may help pave the way for detecting and addressing these social determinants in primary care settings.