A new study of more than 1,300 Taiwanese adolescents living in poverty suggests that the quality of relationships with family, teachers, and peers may help explain how material deprivation relates to substance use and psychological distress. The authors, Zewei Liu and Ji-Kang Chen of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, publish their findings in Behavioral Sciences & the Law.
Adolescence is a critical period in which many young people experience psychological distress and, in some cases, engage in behaviours such as substance use that can affect school performance, health and relationships. Material deprivation—lacking essential resources such as food, clothing, electricity or money for everyday needs—has long been linked to distress, but past studies have produced mixed results about its connection to substance use.
The researchers proposed that the impact of material hardship on teens could be shaped by the quality of their social relationships. They hypothesised that deprived adolescents would experience poorer relationships with family, peers and teachers, and that these relationships would, in turn, relate to higher distress and greater substance use. Previous work on this topic has largely focused on more advantaged groups of adolescents.
Data came from the Taiwan Database of Children and Youth in Poverty, a national sample drawn from poor families. More than two-thirds of participants lived in households receiving government assistance for low- and lower-middle-income families, while the remainder came from poor families recognised by the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families. The study analysed survey data collected in 2013 and 2014 from 1,329 students aged 10 to 17, with an average age of 15; around half were girls and most (78%) came from non-intact families.
The survey included 17 yes-or-no questions on material deprivation—for example, whether adolescents “do not eat breakfast or lunch to save money” or “do not go out with friends because of not enough pocket money.” It also measured relationship quality with family (using items adapted from the Family Adaptation and Cohesion Scale), peers (three items) and teachers (six items). Psychological distress was assessed via items from the Brief Symptom Rating Scale, and substance use asked about recent smoking, alcohol use and betel-nut chewing—the latter a stimulant risk factor linked to oral cancer, with minors reportedly prohibited from purchasing betel nuts in Taiwan.
In the findings, adolescents reporting more material deprivation tended to have slightly worse relationships with peers, very slightly worse family and teacher relationships, and somewhat higher psychological distress. Material deprivation, however, was not associated with substance use in the overall sample.
When researchers tested a statistical model, they found that deprivation was linked to poorer social relationships, which in turn related to distress and to substance use in different ways. The pathway through family relationships emerged as a mediator for distress: greater deprivation led to poorer family relationships, which were associated with higher distress. Relationships with peers and teachers did not serve this mediating role for distress, while deprivation retained a direct link to distress.
For substance use, all three relationship types contributed in different directions. Better family relationships were associated with less substance use; teacher relationships showed a similar but weaker pattern; conversely, better peer relationships were linked to more substance use, a pattern the authors suggest may reflect peer influence. Notably, these indirect associations were described as very weak.
The study’s authors note that the family-relationship pathway held for both girls and boys and across middle- and high-school students. They advocate that efforts to support adolescents in poverty could combine financial assistance with programmes designed to strengthen family relationships, potentially mitigating distress and influencing substance-related behaviours.
Limitations acknowledged by the researchers include that all data come from adolescents in poverty, which may limit variability in material deprivation and weaken certain associations. The cross-sectional design means no causal inferences can be drawn, and the results rely on self-reported data that may be subject to under- or over-reporting. Importantly, the data were collected more than a decade ago, so the current context for poverty among Taiwanese youths may differ from that captured in the study.
The paper, “Material Deprivation, Psychological Distress, and Substance Use Among Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Adolescents: The Mediating Roles of Social Relationships,” was authored by Zewei Liu and Ji-Kang Chen for the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
