US facing 50% of school children living below poverty level who likely have developmental lags on physical brain development. Educators, parents and policy makers have new data suggesting new challenges and opportunities to educate this substantial group of students.
A recent study in JAMA Pediatrics shows that lower income children’s brains actually show structural brain changes which correlated to a negative effect on these kids’ standardized test scores. This research is of tantamount importance for education policy makers in the United States, as over half (51%) of all US school children (as of 1913) are below the poverty level.
The study used data from 389 typically developing children and adolescents ages 4 to 22 which included magnetic resoanance imaging (MRI) scans of their ‘gray matter’. They mapped that with sociodemographic and neuroimaging data, as well as cognitive standardized test scores. They examined brain tissue imaging which included analysis of the gray matter of the total brain, and the temporal lobe, frontal lobe, and hippocampus.
The correlative analysis indicated for children below the federal poverty level, the regional gray matter brain volume showed a startling reduction of 8 to 10 percentage points. The negative deifferential even extended to the 150 percent of the federal poverty level were 3 to 4 percentage points beneath the developmental norm.
Seth D. Pollak, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his study colleagues set out to expand the undertanding of the mechanism(s) beyond poverty in the widely established standardized testing gap between lower and higher income students. This study’s findings indicate aproximately 20 percent of the gap can be attributed to development lags in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.
“Development in these brain regions appears sensitive to the child’s environment and nurturance. 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.”
Nicole L. Hair, PhD; Jamie L. Hanson, PhD; Barbara L. Wolfe, PhD; Seth D. Pollak, PhD
Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development, and Academic Achievement
JAMA Pediatr. 2015; doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1475
