Parental Income, Education and the Diagnosis of ADHD in Children and Adolescents: The Case for Germany

Abstract

Using survey data for Germany, we examine how parental income and education are associated with the severity of ADHD symptoms and the likelihood of diagnosis in children and adolescents. We find that children from low-income families tend to have higher ADHD symptom scores and are more likely to be diagnosed than children from higher-income families. However, they were also shown to have a higher likelihood of being underdiagnosed (conditional on not having a diagnosis) and were less likely to visit a pediatrician. Interestingly, migrants were significantly less likely to be diagnosed than non-migrants, but were more likely to visit a pediatrician.

Parental education variables were shown to “absorb” the effect of income when added to all of these regressions, considerably reducing the significance of the effect of income on all outcome variables. These results seem to suggest that children from families of low socioeconomic status in Germany may be at a “double jeopardy” in terms of having a higher prevalence of ADHD, and yet not receiving the appropriate diagnoses necessary for further treatment.