PRIVATION AND CHILDHOOD:THE CORROSIVE effect of poverty on early childhood are well established. But now scientists are blending economic, social and genetic data in pursuit of a fresh understanding of the psychological and physiological impact of such privation.
Those who grow up in poverty usually remain poor, and the goal is to learn how to stop “intergenerational poverty transfer”, explained Prof Jack Shonkoff of Harvard University. He organised a session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego on the Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty. “We have an amazing opportunity to learn more about the biology of poverty,” he said.
Moreover, this biological data will help inform social policy. “The implications for policy are very important.”
Prof Greg Duncan of the University of California Irvine described his economic studies looking at how children raised in poverty continue to endure lower incomes in life later. He and colleagues assessed 1,589 people born between 1968-75 – looking at income levels and publishing their findings in the current issue of Child Development. “For the first time we have high-quality data and good economic data following these children to the age of 37,” he said. It shows that having experienced poverty as a child, the individual suffers “persistent impacts” on their adult earnings. Yet the outcome altered if the family could achieve a $3,000 (€2,200) a year increase in income up until the child was five-years-old. In this case the subject’s later adult earnings jumped on average by 17 per cent, he said.
W Thomas Boyce of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver focused on the physiological consequences of childhood poverty.
Poor health has been a recognisable feature of poverty for many years, but less clear was how the health deficits arise, he said.
He was trying to find the biology behind this; what he called the “biology of misfortune”. It actually triggered changes in brain chemistry, the cardiovascular system, hormonal system and even some gene expression, he said.
Stress associated with a difficult home life was a factor but could not account for all the changes. Nor was it clear how long these physiological changes persisted.
Prof Katherine Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at how poverty affected the individual during childhood rather than later in life.
She tracked changes in social policy under welfare and the US tax credit system.
