A Canadian study found that 14 percent of adolescent boys and 20 percent of girls rate their health as "poor."

Researchers from Queen's University in Ontario used data on 2,384 students in the 9th and 10th grades to determine what factors influence teen health and what government programs could improve it. They found that teen health was a complex interaction between factors such as risk taking, family income and the degree to which an individual teen connects to others.

Low-income teens were twice as likely as their more affluent peers to engage in risky behavior including taking drugs, smoking tobacco, using alcohol, and not using seat belts or condoms.

"Our analysis actually states that social capital, affluence, and risk taking all influence health, but these things do not work together," said the study's author, Owen Gallupe. "To improve adolescent health, programs should reduce risk taking [and] improve social capital and levels of affluence."

This study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Labels: health, income, research