BIPS Institute Seminar: Child Poverty and Health Inequalities

Children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances are more likely to experience health and social adversity. This lecture explores how persistent poverty and family experiences-including parental mental ill-health, domestic violence and parental alcohol misuse-can accumulate throughout childhood and affect physical and mental health in adolescence.

The research draws on the UK Millennium Cohort Study, which follows around 19,000 children from birth into adulthood. Alongside health, the lecture considers social outcomes, including contact with the police and the risk of not being in education, employment or training (NEET). It will conclude by examining how tackling child poverty and supporting families could help reduce health inequalities.

About the speaker: Dr Nicholas Kofi Adjei is a Senior Research Fellow in the Health Inequalities Policy Research team in the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems at the University of Liverpool. His research examines how social and economic disadvantage shapes inequalities in health and social outcomes across the life course, with a particular focus on children and young people.

Before joining Liverpool in 2020, he worked at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS, where he also completed his PhD. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), an Associate Editor of the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health, and Guest Editor of the BMC Public Health collection "Poverty's Role in Health."

Wednesday, 25 November 2026, 14:00-14:55
BIPS, Room 1.550
Host: Prof. Dr Hajo Zeeb

Anyone interested in attending the event can register at institutsseminar(at)leibniz-bips.de.