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Despite the vast body of literature investigating the effects of childhood economic conditions, few studies have investigated the significance of the timing and extent of economic hardship experienced during childhood. This study utilised the 1987 Finnish Birth Cohort, which includes all 59,476 children born in Finland in 1987, to explore the impact of the timing of childhood economic hardship on subsequent well‐being, with a special emphasis on gender differences during three developmental stages. We examined the relationship between the timing and extent of childhood economic hardship and the following four subsequent adolescence and early adulthood outcomes: the cohort members' criminal convictions, early school leaving, psychiatric diagnoses, and social assistance (SA) recipiency in adulthood. We found a strong association between heavy receipt of SA during secondary school and the cohort members' early adulthood receipt of SA. Furthermore, early childhood economic hardship seemed to be especially detrimental for girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the occurrence and coexistence of externalising and internalising problem behaviour among Swedish boys and girls, and investigated whether there are differences in the accumulation of problems among adolescents with different behavioural, demographic and social characteristics. The results are discussed in the context of self-salience schemas. The source material comprised all ninth grade pupils in a province in central Sweden in 2008 (N = 3,095). First, girls were found to be more prone to experience internalising problem behaviour, whereas no sex differences were found regarding externalising problem behaviour. Second, multidimensional scaling maps indicated that, compared with boys, self-esteem and the Psycho Somatic Problem ( PSP) scale among girls more closely indicated externalising problem behaviour components, whereas anxiety was situated far from the other externalising problem behaviour indicators. Finally, linear regression analyses indicated family type as the primary explanatory background factor for externalising problem behaviour and economic hardship as the primary explanatory background factor for internalising problem behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]