Effects Of Childhood Poverty Research Articles

Enriching our understanding of the effects of childhood poverty: lessons from Bangladesh.

A sobering fact to consider: the likelihood that any of us will achieve a state of sustained well-being as adults is bounded quite early in life by factors entirely beyond our control. Where one is born, when, and to whom establishes guardrails for a path of development to which merit or effort contributes but modestly. Of all the disadvantageous contingencies to which one might be exposed in early life, poverty is among the most punishing. Its effects are known to be pervasive, long lasting, and protean in their manifestations.1,2 Those who start out life poor grow less well,3 are subject to more frequent and grave episodes of illness,4 attain lesser levels of academic advancement, experience cognitive challenges unlike their more fortunate counterparts,5 earn less money,6 acquire fewer assets, develop adult-onset chronic illnesses at higher rates,7 marry less often, and die earlier.8 Despite voluminous documentation of these associations, there is yet much that remains to be explained about the pathways through which poverty exerts these pernicious influences and, in particular, its impact on cognitive development. In this issue of Pediatrics , Hamadani and colleagues contribute to our understanding of this dynamic through their study of a cohort of children in rural Bangladesh.9 The authors enrolled 2853 singleton children born between May 2002 and December 2003 and collected data on their parents, their growth parameters over the succeeding 64 months, the material resources available to their families, and information about the richness of the environments in which they were … Address correspondence to Andrew D. Racine, MD, PhD, Montefiore Medical Center, 111 East 210th St, Bronx, NY 10467. E-mail: aracine{at}montefiore.org

Impact of Childhood Poverty on Education for Disadvantaged Children in Bangladesh

Little attempt has been made to empirically investigate the effects of childhood poverty on children s educational attainments and their everyday life in Bangladesh. Quality education is a prominent aspiration in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but there are few studies of school improvement in relation to the educational achievement of disadvantaged children living in rural Bangladesh. This article offers a theoretical understanding of childhood poverty and educational exclusion, building on the empirical research carried out in two rural areas to explore the following questions: Why do so many socio-economically disadvantaged children tend to dropout from formal secondary school? and Why do some succeed? After exploring the challenges of childhood poverty and educational exclusion, it shows how the challenges could be mitigated through attention to the ecology of human development in the contexts of individual children. Complex ways in which efforts can be made to tackle the challenges of childhood poverty are influenced by ecological factors within the context of the study. Recommendations for policy and practice are offered based on the findings to improve formal secondary schooling for socio-economically disadvantaged children in Bangladesh.

Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood

Childhood poverty has pervasive negative physical and psychological health sequelae in adulthood. Exposure to chronic stressors may be one underlying mechanism for childhood poverty-health relations by influencing emotion regulatory systems. Animal work and human cross-sectional studies both suggest that chronic stressor exposure is associated with amygdala and prefrontal cortex regions important for emotion regulation. In this longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging study of 49 participants, we examined associations between childhood poverty at age 9 and adult neural circuitry activation during emotion regulation at age 24. To test developmental timing, concurrent, adult income was included as a covariate. Adults with lower family income at age 9 exhibited reduced ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity and failure to suppress amygdala activation during effortful regulation of negative emotion at age 24. In contrast to childhood income, concurrent adult income was not associated with neural activity during emotion regulation. Furthermore, chronic stressor exposure across childhood (at age 9, 13, and 17) mediated the relations between family income at age 9 and ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity at age 24. The findings demonstrate the significance of childhood chronic stress exposures in predicting neural outcomes during emotion regulation in adults who grew up in poverty.

Causes and consequences of childhood poverty in Korea: a panel data analysis

This study examines the causes and effects of childhood poverty in Korea using longitudinal data from the Seoul Child Panel Study. In the study, we find that not living with two parents or full-time employed parents are significant risk factors for child poverty in Korea. We also find that poverty is a risk factor lowering children's school achievement, and that family process factors such as family relation and parental monitoring are strongly related to children's internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. The article concludes by suggesting policy approaches to reduce child poverty and the negative impact of poverty on children's development.

Childhood Poverty and Health

A massive literature documents the inverse association between poverty or low socioeconomic status and health, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying this robust relation. We examined longitudinal relations between duration of poverty exposure since birth, cumulative risk exposure, and physiological stress in two hundred seven 13-year-olds. Chronic stress was assessed by basal blood pressure and overnight cortisol levels; stress regulation was assessed by cardiovascular reactivity to a standard acute stressor and recovery after exposure to this stressor. Cumulative risk exposure was measured by multiple physical (e.g., substandard housing) and social (e.g., family turmoil) risk factors. The greater the number of years spent living in poverty, the more elevated was overnight cortisol and the more dysregulated was the cardiovascular response (i.e., muted reactivity). Cardiovascular recovery was not affected by duration of poverty exposure. Unlike the duration of poverty exposure, concurrent poverty (i.e., during adolescence) did not affect these physiological stress outcomes. The effects of childhood poverty on stress dysregulation are largely explained by cumulative risk exposure accompanying childhood poverty.

The Black Ribbon

The Black Ribbon

Effects of childhood poverty on productivity later in life: Implications for public policy

This paper presents a conceptual model for better understanding how poverty jeopardizes a host of childhood and adulthood abilities. An explicit link is made between this conceptual model and various policy initiatives which attempt to curb poverty or its detrimental effects. To better flesh out the model—and illustrate the myriad ways poverty exerts its effects on children's lives—this paper reviews related social science research. This review reveals that low family income compromises children's physical growth, cognitive development and socio-emotional functioning. It decreases the achievement of children when they are in school and puts them at heightened risk of dropping out of school early. Studies also reveal that low childhood income impairs productivity later in life. While productivity is partly compromised through limited educational attainment, there are other important causal pathways not adequately explored in existing social science research.

Education for Young Children Living in Poverty: Child-Initiated Learning or Teacher-Directed Instruction?

This article presents evidence that high-quality early childhood programs can partially offset the negative effects of childhood poverty and produce modest but definite benefits in children's subsequent education and early-adult socioeconomic success and social responsibility. Given such potential, the relative effectiveness of various types of early childhood curricula becomes an important question. This article presents evidence that early childhood programs that emphasize teacher-directed academic instruction, although they are just as successful as programs that focus on child-initiated learning in helping children improve their intellectual performance and academic achievement, may not be as effective as such programs in improving children's social development.