Welfare schemes may help poor children’s brains grow normally
Context:
- Anti-poverty policies don’t have a big impact on the association between low income and brain development, which is fairly well established. This gap was addressed by a recent study that used brain scans from nearly 10,000 kids, aged 9 to 11, spread over 17 different states in the United States.
The mental repercussions of poverty:
- Three studies released in 2015 found that children and teenagers from low-income parents had smaller brains and fared worse on academic performance tests. The cortex is the brain’s outermost layer.
- One of the 2015 research, in addition to the cortex, concentrated on the hippocampus and discovered a positive correlation between the size of this intricate, deep structure and a family’s socioeconomic status, but not parental income. Scientists refer to this area as the “seat for learning and memory” due to the fact that researchers commonly use it in their study.
- Now, a Harvard University and Washington University study, which was released in the journal Nature Communication in May 2023, has shown that children growing up in low-income families do in fact run the risk of having a smaller hippocampus and that generous anti-poverty policies significantly reduce this risk.
- The finding draws attention to the potential for state-level public policies to address the link between low income and brain development as well as the possibility that children from low-income families may have smaller hippocampi, which may be connected to later inequities in [their] physical and mental health outcomes.
- According to studies, participants from families with somewhat greater wealth had larger hippocampi.
- A higher prevalence of psychopathologies including major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder has been associated with impaired hippocampus development.
- The study looked at the prevalence of internalizing (such as anxiety and depressive disorders) and externalizing (such as drug misuse and violent behavior) psychopathologies in children.
- Researchers discovered that increased family wealth was “negatively associated” with reduced incidence of internalizing and externalizing psychopathologies in children.
- The study concluded that poverty might have an effect on biological processes, including brain development, and it emphasized the role that public policy and governments could play in reducing these effects.
Welfare has a purpose:
- The complexity and flexibility of the brain allow for the occurrence of compensating mechanisms that occasionally reduce these effects. The current findings suggest that more comprehensive anti-poverty initiatives may either exacerbate or alleviate stressors linked to low income.
- In other words, families who are better off financially may be protected from some of the ongoing stressors brought on by poverty, which can harm hippocampus development.
- Effective anti-poverty programs can also enable families to make decisions that result in lower compensation but less stress, such as working fewer hours, in addition to increasing family income.
Conclusion:
- Additionally, the study demonstrated how supporting social safety net programs might greatly reduce the cost of treating potential socioeconomic gaps in neurodevelopment-related issues related to mental health, education, and financial difficulties.
