Poverty and Brain Development

This looks like an important report from University of Pennsylvania’s centre for cognitive neuroscience reported in the Financial Times last weekend. And an interesting piece to include when teaching about the longer term external costs and consequencea arising from increases in relative poverty within society.

‘Neuroscientists said many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. That effect is on top of any damage caused by inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins. Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-economic status.’

Paul Krugman followed this up in his blog today with a passionate piece criticising the unwillingness and inability of successive administrations to put in place effective counter-poverty strategies. Perhaps there will be more than a grain of hope when the Presidental elections are over in November.

‘In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery. Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.’