Childhood Poverty Affects Neurobiology

June 14, 2010

Author: Catherine M. Callery (Kate)| Louise M. Tarantino

In May 2009, we reported on a Cornell University study showing that chronic stress from growing up in poverty can physiologically impact children's brains, impairing their working memory and diminishing their ability to develop language, reading and problem-solving skills. According to scientists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, researchers may be closer to learning about the specific mechanisms of how poverty-related stress affects neurological development.

W. Thomas Boyce, M.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of British Columbia, said that whether biology or environment has a stronger impact should no longer be the question “because clearly they are affecting each other.” Other speakers related data on more than 1,500 individuals born between 1968 and 1975 taken from a 40-year demographic study of US households. There were "striking differences" in how the children's lives turned out as adults, depending on whether they were poor or comfortably well-off before the age of six. Poor children complete two fewer years of schooling, work 451 fewer hours per year, earn less than half as much, and were more than twice as likely to report poor overall health or high levels of psychological distress. Poor children were also fatter than their more affluent counterparts, and were more likely to be overweight as adults.

But according to Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., professor of child health and development at Harvard University, learning the biological implications of poverty does not mean that children are predetermined to be less successful. Shonkoff suggests that this knowledge allows us to enhance early education and other social interventions. It provides "an amazing opportunity to learn more about the biology of misfortune and that will help us to develop some new ideas and create new interventions that may be able to mitigate the impact of adversity." See http://news.aaas.org/2010/0221impacts-of-early-childhood-poverty.shtml