Growing up in a poor family negatively affects children’s cognitive development A study published in JAMA Pediatricswhich compared MRI scans of children born into families with lower and higher purchasing power, found smaller gray matter volumes (about 10 percent) in the brains of children born into poorer homes.
The European crisis has hit Spain hard, which has seen 12.8 million people (27.3 percent of its population) at risk of poverty or exclusion. Since the crisis began in 2008, 1,320,216 people have fallen into this vulnerable situation.
Many studies have focused on the relationship between poverty and alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, and crime, etc. People in poverty experience many destructive behaviors due to intense emotional suffering and the awareness of having been forgotten or despised by the system.
But this study, published in JAMA Pediatricsconfirms previous research that has shown that Children who live in poverty see their cognitive capacity affected: They perform less well in school, have lower scores on intelligence tests, and do not achieve as high an educational level as their wealthier peers.
Poverty physically affects the brain
Although poverty has devastating social effects, this study seems to indicate that it also would have a physical effect on the brain since poverty is associated with less gray matter (10 percent less) in the brain of a child born into a family with fewer economic resources.
The research was led by Elizabeth Sowell of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Kimberly Noble of Columbia University. The study found that the brain of a child from a family that earns less than $25,000 a year contains 6% less gray matter than that of a child whose family earns $150,000 a year.
Children who live in families where their income level is below the federal poverty level have up to 10 percent less gray matter. The 2015 federal poverty level in the United States is $24,250 for a family of four.
This study confirms the need to take measures against poverty
The researchers analyzed MRI scans and demographic data of 389 American children, ages 4 to 22, and assessed the amount of gray matter throughout the brain, as well as the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and hippocampus. The data was collected between November 2001 and August 2007.
The conclusions of this study, added to the existing literature on the negative consequences of poverty, provide scientific evidence of the need to take measures regarding the poverty situation in which many individuals live, since this situation negatively affects brain development, and confirms the need for early interventions to reduce the risk to which children born in poor families are exposed.
