Does Growing up Poor Harm Brain Development? The Economist reports on research on the link between parental income level and a child’s early development
May 3, 2018
Plenty of evidence suggests that growing up poor has a
detrimental impact on child development. Children from rich
families tend to have better language and memory skills than
those from poor families. More affluent children usually perform
better in school, and are less likely to end up in jail. Growing
up poor risks the development of a smaller cerebral cortex. But
these are associations between poverty and development, not
evidence that poverty causes these bad outcomes, says Kimberly
Noble, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York.
