How Poverty Changes Kids’ Brains
nautil.us
nautil.us
Unlike the overall negative tone of this study, I feel like poor kids actually have an advantage because they have a natural instinct to try harder to survive. Of course, there will always be those who simply give up because they think their station in life is set. It's probably more likely society and culture that keeps them down, not brain development.
On the other, rich kids have a skewed sense of need versus want, as well as effort versus reward. If everything comes easy, I'd argue rich kids are more developmentally challenged, possess less problem solving skills—especially under pressure—less able to deal with failure and less creative. Hence the "spoiled rich kid" stereotype. Whereas society constantly reminds poor kids all the things they can't do, rich kids are constantly reminded that they can do anything they want. Even well-meaning efforts like the "privilege" comic strip a while back reinforces this meme. I think that's where the real advantage comes from, and why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
This is something very top of mind right now as I start to plan to have kids.
It's hardly a new idea, but one of the greatest advantages of wealth is the opportunity to take risks without feeling the true punishment of hard failure (regardless of whether those are professional or personal).
High water makes navigating the boulders a lot easier, so even if we assume that rich kids are less prepared to face challenges in life - on balance - that simply doesn't matter as much.
Then it is not true a risk. I can see how this could lead to less effort.
Those with less privilege typically need to spend that time addressing immediate financial imperatives rather than focusing on delayed financial or academic rewards.
It doesn't feel like it when you're taking the risk. The older I get, the luckier I realize I am to have grown up in such a safe environment, to have gone to good public schools, and to live in such a developed society
No, it's all offset from not having great connections with the right rich people, not having personal safety net and deposits to be able to work for long in some prototype, etc, things much more important.
It might work out for you, but in general there's not much for poor startup founders over rich ones.
Technology is reducing the cost of entry for increasing number of industries. YC and other communities are providing network. Working for a few years you can save up a lot.
Imagine if you said that at a job interview. "What's your greatest weakness?" "I think I can achieve great things (or make money, or whatever) and I don't let failure stop me." That's not a weakness.
The study is about differences in brain shape and brain capability that come from poverty.
You're worried about differences in character that come from how you raise kids.
It's true that some rich parents spoil their kids. But I know plenty of people from affluent backgrounds that are just as scrappy under pressure because they've been raised well.
So as you raise kids, you could try to generate the experiences of being poor. E.g., you could make a checklist out of this article and its excellent comments:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
Or you could instead try to teach them your values through experience.
In other words, ignoring that while some poor kids may win in "hard mode" doesn't change the fact that rich kids play life in "easy mode", and as such, it's much easier for them to win, and much more of them will win, any merit and hard work put into it being equal.
It's like showing some succesful despite the odds black man in 1960 to show that "see, Jim Crow and racism doesn't matter, it's all a matter of will".
The hundreds of thousands of people who did not get stronger through their struggles are not represented, because they are not here to present themselves.
The actual stats are pretty clear in that richer kids do better and are happier as adults than poor kids.
There is a silver lining to humble roots. Shame on those who diminish all things other than wealth.
Anecdotal evidence
Not to take away from your achievement BUT you are sadly the exception. You are not giving yourself enough credit.
I have adopted and fostered children from abusive impoverished lives. They are great and are in college but they still struggle to achieve it in a timely manner. They also struggle with grades though they actually are above average in intelligence.
PS Top .1 % income children are also impacted negatively but they have an easier fall back (Grow up and financial means to give themselves unlimited supply of alcohol and drugs) Where I grew up these rich kids were having 3rd world diseases like scurvy since they just ate what they wanted.
I worry any children I have will be spoiled (because I'll instinctively spoil them) and wont have the drive I do.
_What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker_
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201008/...
"Developmental research has shown convincingly that traumatized children are more, not less, likely to be traumatized again. Kids who grow up in a tough neighborhood become weaker, not stronger. They are more, not less likely to struggle in the world."
You're probably successful in spite of, not because of, the circumstances of your upbringing.
https://ptgi.uncc.edu/files/2015/01/Positive-outcomes-follow...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034961045755602...
https://webfiles.uci.edu/rsilver/Seery,%20Holman,%20&%20Silv...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201111...
Natural ?
I would bet (and is only a personal impression, I can't back it with data) that the effect shows in more than one generation.
If you compare parents that are more or less of the same socio-economic status now (because good public education, luck, talent, whatever), the parents that come from affluent households, see as normal that a children should have a foreign nanny, music formation, travel a lot.. this kind of things.
The parents that never had that in their childhood simply don't know how to do that because they didn't experiment that themselves. Of course they try, but it's obvious that it's not the same. Maybe, with luck, their grandchildren will be there.
I am talking about professional workers, not spoiled children of millionaires. I suppose that is totally other situation.
Given the choice between a job candidate with a perfect resume and one who has fought through difficulty, human resources executive Regina Hartley always gives the "Scrapper" a chance. As someone who grew up with adversity, Hartley knows that those who flourish in the darkest of spaces are empowered with the grit to persist in an ever-changing workplace. "Choose the underestimated contender, whose secret weapons are passion and purpose," she says. "Hire the Scrapper.
That said, this article is extremely light on the science and history of how and why we know what we know. I've written an essay on the history and hard-science behind why we have social welfare and how we know why poverty influences IQ if anyone is interested in learning more about it:
https://medium.com/@ideonexus/the-scientific-imperative-for-...
This is not new information. We have known about this correlation--and more importantly the causation--for decades. I wish it would become common knowledge so we can stop rediscovering it and debating it each time it comes up.
/kicking cans
I'm going by logic that Ben Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is equal to a pound of cure." However I admit that I accept this by experience, and not by scientific study.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/langlearninglab/cgi-bin/publi...
http://www.versame.com/research/
EDIT: Point being, lower socioeconomic households can speak more to their children for free, and the brain development would much greater match those in higher SES.
There are many pathways potentially linking family economic circumstances and brain structure and function, and we are very interested in two of them. The first is the investment, or “what money can buy,” pathway. Parents with more resources can buy more books and toys, afford better child-care experiences, provide housing in better neighborhoods, and provide better learning opportunities inside and outside the home.
The second possibility is the family-stress pathway: Families facing economic strain often deal with stressors that are associated with less responsive and less warm parenting. If the parents are very worried about how to keep the lights on, or they have to work that third job, they’re less able to be present with their kids.
I suspect it's a combination of the two.
Not if they're working two jobs.
I grew up poor, yet my family stressed education (I had a library card at 6 and checked out books every week for 10+ growing up). Myself and my 3 brothers all went to college and have somewhat successful careers. My dad is uneducated and grew up so poor, he couldn't even afford clothes.
Friends that I had that were poor didn't have that push in education and never went to college and are still in the same place they were when we used to hang out 15 years ago (minimum wage job..living paycheck to paycheck)
There are TONS of resources to get ahead and now with free Internet at pretty much every library in the US, you can get educated on many topics without paying a dime.
Have they looked at the children of immigrants that came to the US 30+ years ago? Many of these children went on to have successful careers and grew up in abject poverty.
A friend of mine works as a teacher in one of the poorest school districts in the US. She has heart-breaking stories about how no matter how much a child learns in the classroom, it's all negated when they get home because the parents either don't care, can't help (many don't have educations beyond elementary school).
The problem with articles like this is that it gives this false impression that there is no way to succeed in life if you are poor. It's doing a disservice to all of the people really do have a chance.
Money will always give you some sort of advantage in life, but that doesn't mean you can't overcome it with education (which is power).
Too many people are unwilling to sacrifice and do what it takes to succeed.
That's an awful lot of belief and very little inquiry concerning the genetics behind results as reported.
It gets even worse actually. Every scientific discipline has "folklore": Results commonly known by experts but not organized for pedagogical purposes anywhere. Unpublished theses, coffee table discussions, lecture notes that are distributed in private, etc. So even if one knows where to look in the literature to find evidence for a claim, it might not even be there. One may have to talk to an expert directly.
"The only way to really test that is to move beyond correlational studies and conduct experiments. I’m part of a team of social scientists and neuroscientists from around the country who are planning to do just that: We’re currently fundraising for and piloting the first clinical trial of poverty reduction."
I see "Ursache, A. and Noble, K.G. (under review). Socioeconomic Status, White Matter Development, and Executive Function." from the Lab's website.
It's not clear that poverty is causing the changes, but are merely correlated.
There could be many problems with the methods which need to be examined closely to see if the assertion that poverty is causing the changes is true and not something like poor parenting.
Or it could be because it's also obvious to them and was obvious years ago, and by now it's so banal and irrelevant to their day-to-day work that it's not worth mentioning.
That said, I do expect this perspective to make church more bearable :p
But I meant something different. Software developers, for example, mostly don't talk about voltage levels, even though everything we do is influencing a voltage level somewhere. When I describe a social interaction, I don't open with, "Well, we're all primates, so we often eat together for reasons of social bonding." When you go visit your doctor, they don't open with, "You know you'll die right? So let's talk about slightly prolonging your inevitable gruesome death."
Bringing the basic frame back into focus can be interesting, and occasionally it's revolutionary. But when a novice says, "You're ignoring this super-obvious thing!" it's mostly pretty dull. It often drags a conversation from the level of a graduate seminar to a remedial class.
That's not to say I'm opposed to teaching somebody the basics. But HN has a depressing tendency to assume that our raw smarts are just as good as somebody else's decades of experience. Even when, as here, those people are also obviously smart. I'd love to see more commenters asking themselves, "What if they already had considered my point?" Rather than just assuming, as here, that a team of 25 MDs and PhDs from a variety of serious institutions had just never even thought of genetics as a possible explanation for a biological phenomenon. And doing that based not on a careful reading of the paper and related work, but on a 6-item Q&A in a lightweight pop-sci magazine.
If IQ is hereditary (which the evidence really does support) improving the lives of impoverished children is an engineering problem - nothing some pretty doable advances in embryo selection won't fix, basic embryo selection gives you about a standard deviation per generation, iterated embryo selection takes you to the edge of human capability in one conventional generation. The fact that IQ is heritable and increases human productivity is reason for hope. Biology is mutable, society is fixed:http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolog...
> In this study, we’ll recruit 1,000 low-income families across the country at the time of their children’s birth. Half of the families will receive a large monthly income supplement, and half will receive a nominal monthly income supplement. They’ll get these payments every month for the first three years of their children’s lives. In this way, we’ll be able to study the effect of poverty reduction on children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development, as well as the effect on family behaviors.
Aside from simple heredity, stress during pregnancy and early life could make its mark on the child via epigenetics. We know already that this happens in mice-- a young mouse that is touched by its mother receives beneficial epigenetic changes (lower life stress, etc) than mice that are not touched by their mother or not touched a sufficient amount. There are doubtless such mechanisms at play with humans.
TBH I'd prefer that researchers at this point would stick to saying that they've made an interesting observation, which they have, and do less of the speculation.
Though that would have made a very short and quite dull article so I understand the urge to extrapolate a bit.
http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~mfarah/research/socioeconomic-st...
As neuroscientists, we believe that nothing could be further from the truth. We know that the developing brain is very malleable. We believe that the differences we reported are largely the result of experience, and have every reason to believe that by changing those experiences—through preventive measures or interventions—we can change children’s trajectories for the better."
Or how not to answer the question. Sure if the study is right it may be possible to apply preventive measures and avoid that, but that was not the question!
The question is: do you think that by growing poor, these kids are now "worthless". As in, is there no way to go back for the current poor children, not the ones in the blue sky future.
There is a class of person in this world who were made slightly broken, and whose lives and conditions embody every aspect of the term we use to describe them: poor. Poorness in ability and work ethic, or else they would have earned wealth. Poorness in morals, because we all know poor are more disposed toward crime. Poorness in learning, or they would see how uncultured the way they live and behave is. Poorness in character, since they can't muster the resolve to elevate themselves from their state. Poorness in foresight and planning, since any money they get they squander. They are poor because they are poorly.
In so many ways, they are like children that need the scolding and guidance of those who have made something of their lives, or, at the very least, our mercy and pity for lacking what the rest of us have. When you do consistently poorly in school, you are not promoted to the grade for your failures. In the same way, poor people should not be elevated from their class except by their own means and efforts. And when their failures compound, though they resist, taking their children to be raised in better homes is a kindness that saves a life that might been ruined by their parents' poorness.
If any part of either of these passages rubs you the wrong way, why is it that you don't you do your shopping on that side of town or worry whether your doors are locked in some places more than other?
I know people exceptionally biased against those in poverty, who draw a broad line between "them" and "us", without being aware. And despite years of volunteerism, until I read "Poor Economics" by Banerjee and Duflo (http://www.pooreconomics.com/), I didn't really understand much about how poverty worked at any scale, and I'm glad for the excellent and sometimes damning research into its effects.
Children currently in poverty are not doomed, but resource scarcity is a tremendous drain on their ability to engage in risky but impactful changes. I think this complication is reinforced by mores on respecting elders and authority, who may command that children not value academic educations over the teachings of their family or religion or else risk punishment or conflict. Parents who didn't receive education can also be dismissive of its value, and prideful authoritarians can resent children who outgrow them too quickly. A good question, then, is, how do cultures and societies survive new information?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_and_HIV
This strongly anti-circumcision site has some more info, but the ranting gets a bit much: http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV-SA.html
The numbers are there in the project. You can reproduce your results from that. You can ask people the same questions that this study did. You can take from the same pool of people for your survey. You can also take MRIs of your sample.
Seems completely reproducible. It is an issue with the "So What...."
With these you have the numbers and the research. You would have to say something was wrong in their approach and redo it. In these instances you look at the data and you make analysis of it. No need to reproduce it.
Here is some reading on irreproducible research. http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-1.17552
Please don't take HN conversations in this direction. Not only is there nothing wrong with sharing one's experience and wondering, those things are the life of good conversation. Meanwhile, comments like this one kill the interesting conversation, and pettiness takes its place.
Note that this has nothing to do with one's actual views. Look at how thoughtfully https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10745355 made a counterpoint. That's what we want here. This subthread is what we don't want here. We've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10744567 and marked it off-topic.
Also, this study doesn't look remotely thorough. Correlation does not imply causation. Explain the test parameters better, etc, etc.
People are responsible for their own actions and own lives, not their environments. Lets move on
I also think that correlating income with the shape of the brain is not really the case here. Link bait maybe? But the real question is not if you can blame the action of one on another, but why people act as they act. To downplay the role of environment, upbringing and even income (and how if affects the social life of a kid) seems just as wrong.
I can forgive that on some topics. We all have things we'd rather not think about, biases we're inclined to protect. But when the basic line of argument is, "I want to indulge my just-world bias [1] so please let's let young kids continue to live in misery" it seems monstrous to me.
One way to increase brain growth is mental stimulation and learning, and children are very dependent on their parents to provide such. When it comes to genetics, unless you're taking about inherited mental disabilities or developmental delays can certainly account for some lack of brain growth. Otherwise it's largely environmental.
If a family embraces the negative values of generational poverty chooses to imprint their children with the same intellectually repressive values/lifestyle upon their children, then the children would not be exposed to any brain-building activities or stimulation. What do you think the brain development differences would be between a kid who watches TV vs. one that's given a 1k piece jigsaw puzzle instead?
Luckily there are some parents in low income brackets that heavily invest in their children's learning and character development because they want them to have a better life. Some kids find mentors and support outside the home. Poverty doesn't doom any child, but it can make learning how to make better choices in life far more difficult if they don't have anyone who can teach or motivate them. Difficult, but not impossible.
I'm another child of poverty, grew up in a ghetto. All things were equal with the exception that my family placed a high value on education and they were highly involved and active in my learning.
"Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
The article, incidentally, acknowledges this aspect of things. "The only way to really test that is to move beyond correlational studies and conduct experiments."
> "Its not your fault you dont do anything with your life, its what you were born into" is dumb as hell.
Few make that argument. The more nuanced and accurate version is "it's not shocking people with more obstacles to success fail more frequently".
Personally, I can't relate to growing up in a ghetto with all the poverty, drugs and violence. You had no father? That sucks... It must have been real tough having various new "dads" move in over the years. Those ass beating probably helped keep you line. I am sure you forgive your mother today... When your bother got shot dead at 14 I am sure it inspired you to take a different path then him. Growing up with so little your whole childhood must make you really appreciate everything you have today.
Really, good job being able to take life by the horns and escaping all that to become a productive citizen.
Sure, but their environment informs them about what is normal. To change beyond what is normal takes commitment. To give a silly example, do you walk around shopping malls in your pajamas? There's a social code that makes such an action stand out, even though in other parts of the world pajamas are more socially acceptable in this environment (admittedly, they look different from what we commonly think of as pajamas).
To give another example, if you grew up in a mining town, and your grandfather was a miner, and your father was a miner, and everyone else's father in the town was a miner, what do you think would be normal to aim for? I'm not saying you couldn't aim for something different, I'm saying you'd have to be committed to aim for something different, and be clear about what you want. If you're not clear about what you want, then it's likely you'll end up with the 'default option'.
The point is, they are only to a degree. It's actually our cultural meme of pesonal responsibility that makes us blame everything on an individual's lack of discipline - even problems systemic in nature. And then we're surprised we can't solve obesity or poverty. Free will is overrated.
What confuses me a bit is that people are so quick to assume that everything is about discipline, and yet the entire marketing industry is one big proof that free will can be easily overriden by the environment.
This is the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
Yeah, right? Inequality is so inconvenient.
As Arthur Schopenhauer once said, "man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants." The point being made here is that poverty strikes at the will that is beyond your control, so it is meaningless to say the poor have responsibility for their condition.
Excellent, I agree with you. The problem is that a brain raised on poverty makes people less capable of making good decisions. That's what we're concerned about.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120227061723/http://www.psych.u...
How does society ensure that parents are providing proper mental stimulation for their growing children? Crafts, puzzles and books can be incredibly cheap. But even if these are given away for free will they be accepted or shunned for TV and video games?
How does a society fix bad parenting? There's parental rights involved that limit how far that can go. For example, we can't declare a parent unfit just because they're poor, and we can't force them to raise their children in better ways.
How does a society intercept and prevent parents from imprinting generational poverty culture on their children? This is a problem for children of other income brackets as well where the parents are absent and don't teach their children how to be smart, responsible adults. I knew quite a few people in college who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths that are now in poverty once their parents cut them off and they weren't taught how to make it on their own.
But implying that brain development is directly affected by the family income, without any other cultural aspect whatsoever, that's bullshit.
Brain development is not a money problem.
The problem is how you are reading the article.
"economy strain" -> poverty
"often deal with stressors" -> causes
"less responsive and less warm parenting" -> bad parenting
How come this quote doesn't read as implying causation? There's no further explanation of such correlation other than "parents are worried on how to keep the lights on". And that's a very simplistic and narrow attempt of an explanation. In other words, that's bullshit.
There's absolute no answer on "How", only a couple of poor blind guess.
"Family Income Changes Kids’ Brains" would be more honest, since this is precisely what they found.
A grammatically similar statement might be "How bananas are changed when you cut them in half," followed by a treatment of the measured effects of different kinds of knife.
Sure, it's somewhat confusing, but the article makes it clear.
Scientists have reached a very interesting finding. You can either write an article about how such finding was made(actual experiments, data collected, curiosities along the work, oppositions against common sense, etc) or what such finding means (what I already made a point).
If the article is about the finding (and not what it means), as I believe it's what you're saying, note that there is nothing meaningful about the research at all, just the conclusion.
Great articles tackles both points. Good articles tackles one. This article tackles none.