Countries with high income inequality have more school bullying among preadolescents & adolescents

[Hannah Bell]

Bullying: We Need to Increase Our Efforts and Broaden Our Focus
Pierre-André Michaud
Journal of Adolescent Health
October 2009 (Vol. 45, Issue 4, Pages 323-325)


Abstract

Purpose
To examine the association between income inequality and school bullying in an international sample of preadolescents and to test for mediation of this association by the availability of social support from families, peers, and schools.

Methods
The study used economic data from the 2006 United Nations Development Program Human Development Report and survey data from the 2005/2006 Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study which included 66,910 11-year-olds in 37 countries. Ecological correlations tested associations between income inequality and bullying among countries. Multilevel linear and ordinal regression analyses tested the effects of income inequality on perceived social support and bullying others at school.

Results
Income inequality was associated with rates of bullying among the 37 countries (r = .62). Multilevel analyses indicated that each standard deviation increase in income inequality corresponded with more frequent bullying by males (odds ratio = 1.17) and females (odds ratio = 1.24), less family support and school support but more peer support. Social support from families and schools was associated with less bullying after differences in wealth were taken into account; however, social support did not account for the association between income inequality and bullying.

Conclusions
Countries with high income inequality have more school bullying among preadolescents than countries with low income inequality. Further study is needed to understand the mechanisms that account for this association. Findings suggest that adolescents in areas of wide income inequality—not only those in deprived schools and neighborhoods— should be a focus of antibullying campaigns.

http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(09)00145-1/abstract


Performing your original search, inequality bullying, in PubMed will retrieve 221 records.

Am J Public Health. 2009 May

Socioeconomic inequality in exposure to bullying during adolescence: a comparative, cross-sectional, multilevel study in 35 countries.
Due P, Merlo J, Harel-Fisch Y, Damsgaard MT, Holstein BE, Hetland J, Currie C, Gabhainn SN, de Matos MG, Lynch J.

Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. [e-mail]

Abstract
OBJECTIVES: We examined the socioeconomic distribution of adolescent exposure to bullying internationally and documented the contribution of the macroeconomic environment.

METHODS: We used an international survey of 162,305 students aged 11, 13, and 15 years from nationally representative samples of 5998 schools in 35 countries in Europe and North America for the 2001-2002 school year. The survey used standardized measures of exposure to bullying and socioeconomic affluence.

RESULTS: Adolescents from families of low affluence reported higher prevalence of being victims of bullying (odds ratio = 1.13; 95% confidence interval = 1.10, 1.16). International differences in prevalence of exposure to bullying were not associated with the economic level of the country (as measured by gross national income) or the school, but wide disparities in affluence at a school and large economic inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) at the national level were associated with an increased prevalence of exposure to bullying.

CONCLUSIONS: There is socioeconomic inequality in exposure to bullying among adolescents, leaving children of greater socioeconomic disadvantage at higher risk of victimization. Adolescents who attend schools and live in countries where socioeconomic differences are larger are at higher risk of being bullied.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19299676

[LAGC]

1. When I was in junior high, all the popular kids were the rich kids.

Who could afford all the expensive name-brand clothes and fashion.

While it wasn't necessarily them who picked on the less popular kids, just the fact that there existed such cliques of haves and have-nots, made it tempting for those in the middle trying to fit in to discriminate against the have-nots to make themselves feel superior.

Then we all grow up and find out in the adult world it works largely the same way. The rich have all the toys, and have largely convinced the middle-class to wage war against the poor people instead of turning their anger against them.

Why am I not surprised by this study?

[OHdem10]

2. Income Inequality is here to stay.. The Election and the way

it was won. COC and Money assured that.

[Hannah Bell]

3. nothing is ever "here to stay". everything changes.

[Hannah Bell]

5. k

[blindpig]

4. There it is again...

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an “eternal law.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

I think this applies

[Starry Messenger]

6. k&r