Poverty hampers children's brain development: study

Children of poverty stricken families suffer lags in brain development and score as much as 20 per cent lower on cognitive tests, a new study has found.
Low-income children had atypical structural brain development and lower standardised test scores, with as much as an estimated 20 per cent in the achievement gap explained by development lags in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, researchers said.
Socioeconomic disparities in school readiness and academic performance are well documented but little is known about the mechanisms underlying the influence of poverty on children's learning and achievement.
Seth D Pollak, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues analysed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 389 typically developing children and adolescents ages 4 to 22 with complete sociodemographic and neuroimaging data.

The authors measured children's scores on cognitive and academic achievement tests and brain tissue, including grey matter of the total brain, frontal lobe, temporal lobe and hippocampus.
They found regional grey matter volumes in the brains of children below 150 per cent of the US federal poverty level to be 3 to 4 percentage points below the developmental norm, while the gap was larger at 8 to 10 percentage points for children below the federal poverty level.

On average, children from low-income households scored four to seven points lower on standardised tests, according to the results.
The authors estimate as much as 20 per cent of the gap in test scores could be explained by developmental lags in the frontal and temporal lobes.

"These observations suggest that interventions aimed at improving children's environments may also alter the link between childhood poverty and deficits in cognition and academic achievement," the study concluded.
The study was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.