Poverty

The Multiple Effects of Poverty

Poverty is an example of a risk factor that has multiple effects on multiple members in a family. The influence of poverty on each member of a family and their relationships often perpetuates a cycle of devastation that effects the infant/toddler’s development, success in school, and future ability to get out of low socioeconomic status (SES) as an adult and parent/caregiver.

Poverty is a factor that affects all races and ethnicities. However, it disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic children. In 1990, Non-Hispanic White children were about three times more likely than non-Hispanic Black children and Hispanic children to live in families with high incomes.[40] Looked at another way, the proportion of children living in a family with low income was more than two and a half times larger for non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics than for non-Hispanic Whites.[41] While the time between 1990 and 2000 was a period of widespread decline of child poverty across races, this was found to be dependent on a variety of factors depending on employment and change in family structure, among other things.[42]

Below is a list of the components Gary W. Evans of Cornell University has found are included in environments of childhood poverty:[43]

- Exposure to family turmoil, violence, separation from their families, instability, and chaotic households

- Less social support

- Parents are less responsive and more authoritarian

- Read to relatively infrequently, watch more TV, and have less access to books and computers

- Low-income parents are less involved in their children's school activities

- The air and water poor children consume are more polluted

- Homes are more crowded, noisier, and of lower quality

- Low-income neighborhoods are more dangerous, offer poorer municipal services, and suffer greater physical deterioration

- Predominantly low-income schools and day care are inferior

Poverty’s detrimental impact on early development mounts on children, their relationships, as well as success in school, ability to get a job, and that likelihood that they raise children while living in poverty. For example, chronic exposure to poverty influences areas of the brain vital to learning and building successful relationships including those responsible for working memory, impulse regulation, visuospatial, language, and cognitive conflict.[44] Young children living in persistent poverty are twice as likely to have lower IQ levels and psychopathology.[45] In addition, children in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to experience behavioral problems than those living in moderate or affluent neighborhoods.[46]

Maternal depression is one example of the domino effect poverty can cause in parent/caregivers’ ability to provide a financially and emotionally secure relationship with their children, who read their parent/caregivers’ cues, and have poorer developmental outcomes.

• • Low-income and minority women are disproportionately likely to be affected by maternal depression, with rates reaching as high as 40%.[47]

  • 11% of infants living in poverty have a mother suffering from severe depression.[48]

  • Infants as young as 3 months are able to detect maternal affective states (i.e. depression).[49]

  • Infants [of depressed mothers] look at the mother less often, engage with objects less, show less positive and more negative effect, and have lower activity levels and greater physiologic reactivity as indexed by higher heart rate and cortisol levels.[50]

  • Older children of mothers depressed during infancy often exhibit poor self-control, aggression, poor peer relationships, and difficulty in school, increasing the likelihood of special education assignment, grade retention, and school dropout.[51]

Nationally, the 2011 federal poverty level was approximately $22,000 for a family of four, $18,000 for a family of three, and $14,500 for a family of two.[52] Families need an income equal to about two times the federal poverty level to meet their most basic needs.[53] The amount needed for basic expenses also depends on the family’s geographic location.

Parent/caregivers’ that find it difficult to meet their children’s basic needs have a limited capacity to spend time cultivating a relationship with their children through talking, reading, and playing with their children. There are several theories about why this is the case:[54]

- Greater family stress leads to higher chances of maltreatment

- Parent/caregivers with low incomes, despite good intentions, may be unable to provide adequate care, other parental characteristics may make parents more likely to be poor (i.e. have a history of abuse, be abusive, have substance abuse issues)

- Poor families may experience maltreatment at rates similar to other families, but are reported to CPS more frequently. They may have more contact with and are under greater scrutiny from individuals who are legally mandated to report suspected child maltreatment.

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