Children raised in families with low socioeconomic status (SES) are more likely to exhibit symptoms of psychopathology. However, the strength of this association, the specific indices of SES most strongly associated with childhood psychopathology, and factors moderating the association are strikingly inconsistent across studies. We conducted a meta-analysis of 120 estimates of the association between family SES and child psychopathology in 13 population-representative cohorts of children studied in the US since 1980. Among 26,715 participants aged 3–19 years, we observed small to moderate associations of low family income (g = 0.19), low Hollingshead index (g = 0.21), low subjective SES (g = 0.24), low parental education (g = 0.25), poverty status (g = 0.25), and receipt of public assistance (g = 0.32) with higher levels of childhood psychopathology. Moderator testing revealed that receipt of public assistance showed an especially strong association with psychopathology and that SES was more strongly related to externalizing than internalizing psychopathology. Dispersion in our final, random effects, model suggested that the relation between SES and child psychopathology is likely to vary in different populations of children and in different communities. These findings highlight the need for additional research on the mechanisms of SES-related psychopathology risk in children in order to identify targets for potential intervention.

在社会经济地位（SES）较低的家庭中长大的孩子更有可能表现出精神病理学症状。然而，这种关联的强度、SES 与儿童精神病理学最密切相关的具体指标以及调节这种关联的因素在各个研究中都显着不一致。我们对 1980 年以来在美国研究的 13 个具有代表性的儿童队列中的 120 项家庭 SES 与儿童精神病理学之间的关联进行了荟萃分析。在 26,715 名 3-19 岁的参与者中，我们观察到低到中度的关联。家庭收入（ g = 0.19）、低Hollingshead指数（ g = 0.21）、低主观社会经济地位（ g = 0.24）、低父母教育（ g = 0.25）、贫困状况（ g = 0.25）和接受公共援助（ g = 0.32），儿童精神病理学水平较高。主持人测试显示，接受公共援助与精神病理学有特别强的关联，并且 SES 与外化精神病理学的关系比与内化精神病理学的关系更密切。我们最终的随机效应模型的分散性表明，社会经济地位与儿童精神病理学之间的关系可能在不同的儿童群体和不同的社区中有所不同。这些发现强调需要对儿童 SES 相关精神病理学风险的机制进行更多研究，以确定潜在干预的目标。