The social determinants of young people’s health

This paper provides an overview of evidence on the social determinants of young people’s health. 

Untangling social determinants and health outcomes for young people is complicated. There are important distinctions to be made between income, income inequality, educational achievements and other measures of disadvantage. Important issues include: how inequalities exist in adolescence and whether they narrow or widen at this stage of life. There is less data relating specifically to adolescence rather than adult age groups.

There are health inequalities linked to all of the social determinants included in this report, but some of these relationships are stronger for certain outcomes (including mortality, obesity and under 18 conceptions), and some are weaker than for other age groups (including risky health behaviours such as alcohol use).

Evidence for some kind of ‘equalisation’ in health inequalities in adolescence has been suggested, but evidence on this is equivocal. In addition, how social inequalities play into the transition into early adulthood has not received much attention.