Poverty and brain development

Poverty shrinks brains from birth       

Studies show that children from low-income families have smaller brains and lower cognitive abilities.  Sara Reardon

30 March 2015

 

 

 

The stress of growing up poor can hurt a child’s brain development starting before birth, research suggests — and even very small differences in income can have major effects on the brain.

 

Researchers have long suspected that children’s behaviour and cognitive abilities are linked to their socioeconomic status, particularly for those who are very poor. The reasons have never been clear, although stressful home environments, poor nutrition, exposure to industrial chemicals such as lead and lack of access to good education are often cited as possible factors. 

 

In the largest study of its kind, published on 30 March in Nature Neuroscience¹, a team led by neuroscientists Kimberly Noble from Columbia University in New York City and Elizabeth Sowell from Children's Hospital Los Angeles, California, looked into the biological underpinnings of these effects. They imaged the brains of 1,099 children, adolescents and young adults in several US cities. Because people with lower incomes in the United States are more likely to be from minority ethnic groups, the team mapped each child’s genetic ancestry and then adjusted the calculations so that the effects of poverty would not be skewed by the small differences in brain structure between ethnic groups.

 

Read the entire essay here.

Life without "Welfare"

What Happens If You Have No Welfare and No Job?

A new report from The Atlantic  looks at the devastating lengths single moms go to when they have neither employment nor cash assistance.

Olga Khazan

Jun 13 2014, 8:00 AM ET

 

                                          

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the welfare reform of the 1990s led to many poor mothers being kicked off welfare rolls. While some poor adults could still receive help from food stamps and disability insurance, the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" dramatically cut how much cash aid they could collect. The hope was that they would find work, but many didn’t.

Meanwhile, spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the only cash assistance program that non-disabled, non-elderly, poor single mothers are eligible for, has dropped precipitously: It was lower in 2007 than it had been in 1970.

That left me wondering—what happened to the moms who had neither jobs nor cash assistance through TANF, which comes with strict time limits?

Read the entire report here.

Poverty and the children of Dallas

This report appeared in DMagazine's FrontBurner release posted just yesterday.  I've just copied and pasted to share the entire story. Read directly from the original post here.

Dallas Kids Still Abnormally Poor, Census Shows

Posted on December 13th, 2012 11:42am by Bradford Pearson
Filed under Charts, Civics, Crime, Demographics, Gripes, Urbanism

Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week show that Dallas County children, on whole, are poorer than not only most other Texas children, but most other children in America’s largest cities.

Close to 30 percent of children in Dallas County between the ages of five and 17 live in poverty, the numbers show, nearly a five percent increase since 2007. The below chart shows the poverty rates for those aged children, in Dallas-area counties:

Source: U.S. Census data

Jump for even more disturbing news, and a few bright spots.

Okay, first with the bright spots. Dallas isn’t the worst county in Texas for child poverty, and it’s not even close. The five counties with the highest child poverty rates in 2011 (I removed Loving County from the list, because it’s the least populous county in the U.S., with only 82 residents.):

Brooks County: 48.1 percent
Hidalgo County: 46.2 percent
Cameron County: 45.5 percent
Starr County: 44.7 percent
Zapata County, Zavala County: 44.3 percent

Those six counties either hug the border or sit one county away from the border. Bleak stuff. Before I get to the bleakest data – the ones that show how poorly Dallas stacks up against the rest of America’s biggest cities — here are the overall poverty rates for the Dallas area. Most counties have oscillated slightly in recent years; Dallas has shot right for the bottom of the bucket.

Source: U.S. Census data

Now onto the part of the show where we compare Dallas to its similar cities, the fine folks in the other most-populous cities. Seems kids are doing a whole lot better in them than in Dallas, for the most part. These are based on county numbers for 2011:

New York (Bronx County: 41 percent; New York County: 28.8 percent; Queens County: 22.2 percent; Kings County: 33.3 percent; Richmond County: 16 percent)
Philadelphia (Philadelphia County): 38.6 percent
Dallas (Dallas County): 28.3 percent
Houston (Harris County): 27.5 percent
Chicago (Cook County): 26 percent
Los Angeles (Los Angeles County): 25.1 percent
San Antonio (Bexar County): 24.2 percent
Phoenix (Maricopa County): 23.4 percent
San Diego (San Diego County): 18.4 percent
San Jose (Santa Clara County): 12.1 percent

C’mon people, we can’t be worse than Houston. You can explore every county in America, back to 1989, here.

ROI: Be Careful What You Cut!

Why cuts to Tax Credits cost us all


When it comes to fixing the deficit, be careful what you cut.

Eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit now would increase child poverty by 23 percent in the future.

And since poor children are more likely to drop out of high school, they are less likely to find steady work as adults.

Not to mention that paying for each year of high school dropouts costs us more than $125 billion over the course of their lifetimes.

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DISD and poverty

Several years ago, a candidate for the Dallas School board dropped by my office to chat about his campaign efforts.  In the course of our conversation he asked me, "Larry, what do you consider the greatest challenge facing the DISD?"

I remember exactly what I told him:  "That is easy to answer and very, very difficult to overcome.  In a word, the biggest challenge facing our public schools is poverty." 

I'm not sure he liked my answer or agreed with my assessment, but I believe I was right then, and things have only grown more difficult.  So, I read with gratitude the editorial page comment from The Dallas Morning News on Sunday, February 12, 2012.  What follows is one part in the paper's series dubbed "Tactics for Turnaround project" dealing wtih the important enormous work that faces everyone who cares about urban, public education here in Dallas.  I hope you'll take the time to read the entire essay. 

Editorial: Poverty’s role in DISD reform

There’s no way to sugarcoat the serious challenges ahead for DISD’s next superintendent. One of the biggest is that Dallas public schools are overwhelmed by a worsening cycle of poverty. Less than a decade ago, 73 percent of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches at school. Last year, that number had grown to 88 percent, and the trend shows no sign of reversing.

Poverty is by no means a pathway to failure. In fact, despite the growing number of poor children in DISD, dropout rates are declining, four-year graduation rates are up and some standardized test scores are improving. Poverty doesn’t have to be the insurmountable obstacle to success that some might assume.

Still, students living in poverty are far less likely to get the shot at success that all kids deserve. Studies show that, from birth through high school, children growing up in poor households tend to lack crucial developmental skills, proper health and nutrition, and the crucial component of parental involvement in their academic pursuits.

Even before they enter school, kids in poverty are more likely to have stunted vocabularies and be on track to develop debilitating health problems such as obesity. By kindergarten, if a child hasn’t developed a vocabulary of roughly 2,200 words, he or she is already behind, both in literacy and speaking ability. The problem is even worse for those children who don’t speak English; nearly 70 percent of the Dallas district’s student population is Hispanic.

To read the entire opinion click here.

High impact, human need, great hope

From time to time in the New Year I intend to share the stories of the real people we encounter every day here at CitySquare. What follows here is the first:

A 36-year-old single mother with a 7- year- old daughter came to CitySquare in January 2011 in need of rental assistance. The woman and her daughter were previously homeless before moving into their apartment in September 2010.

In November 2010, she lost her job and fell behind on her rent. CitySquare provided rental and utility assistance through the Homeless Prevention Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) that we administer for the City of Dallas. The woman remained in the program and received intensive case management and financial assistance for 9 months.

During this time, the woman gained full time, permanent employment. She applied for and received childcare services and transportation vouchers). She also attended CitySquare’s Money Management Class and Employment Workshops. She opened a checking account and is now able to budget her money. In addition, we were able to change her electric provider to TXU (who waived her deposit) and enrolled her in Light-Up Texas. More recently, she moved into a cheaper and safer apartment.

She completed the HPRP program and is now stably housed. Last October she paid her rent on her own and still had over $400 in her bank account! As of December 2011, she continues to be employed and stably housed.

This woman worked hard and made significant achievements in becoming self-sufficient. She continues to meet with her case manager here at CitySquare, Krystal Lotspeich, to work and strive to meet her future goals.

Shoes

A pair of new shoes.
Ancient Amos’ retail value, the purchase price
For what’s left of the life of a poor man.
Not too bad a deal, unless you are the man.

One prescription,generic antibiotic for tiny ears and the fever
Of night—the purchase price for one more shred of
A father’s, a mother’s dignity willingly offered up
In a crowded place of charity instead of life.

High tech preservation of the good life whirls nearby,
With new robotics and life-scanners projecting full-color
Images of the insides of those with deep pockets and policies,
Clearing minds and hearts of a reality just a block away.

A penny for your thoughts, about as prophetic as we get,
While children cry and mothers pray and fathers wince against
The plight that is their city, the place of light and games
And the new—clearly as old as Amos himself.

High steeples point up to Heaven to keep from facing Earth,
Minds stolen away from the street
By the power of salvation’s lure,
Have it all and don’t look back—
Amos’ tears still fall.

[First posted on January 8, 2005]