Poverty and Brain Development

Poverty and Brain Development in Childhood

In infancy, children of low-income families exhibit reductions in brain structure indicated by lower cortical gray matter volume, even after controlling for birth weight. Throughout childhood and adolescence (ages 3–20), family income is positively associated with brain structure (assessed by cortical surface area or cortical thickness) across cortical regions. The association between income and cortical structure is stronger among children from lower income families than children from higher income families—which suggests that a change in income has a greater impact on brain development among low-income children than among high-income children. The observed reductions in brain structure are a concern because they are associated with poorer academic and cognitive performance including language, reading, and executive function in children.

Regarding neural functioning in childhood, the prefrontal cortex has received much of the attention for its importance in academic and cognitive performance. Dampened prefrontal cortex activation is observed among low-SES children compared to their middle- to high-SES counterparts during a range of cognitive tasks including executive function, language, and arithmetic tasks. Low-SES children also show greater difficulties in attentional control (i.e., staying focused on a target stimulus while suppressing responses to distracting information).

Compared to cognitive development, less is known about the associations between poverty, the brain, and emotional development in childhood. Some work suggests a developmental pattern with early poverty associated with smaller amygdala volume and later poverty with larger amygdala size. In adolescents, low SES is associated with increased amygdala responses to negative social information (i.e., angry faces). This heightened neural sensitivity to negative emotional information may increase the risk of emotion dysregulation and further the development of psychopathology in children. Problems with early emotion regulation may also forewarn of a less effective repertoire of coping strategies later in life.

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