Apr. 22--Poverty can have negative effects on child and adolescent brain development, a report out today concludes.
Those effects, in turn, can lead to learning disabilities, behavior problems and other psychological and emotional problems, the report says.
The report, "Child Poverty in North Carolina: A Preventable Epidemic," is being released by the nonprofit group Action for Children North Carolina.
It reviews known health effects of poverty, such as reduced access to primary health care, with poorer health as a result. And it reviews socioeconomic factors.
But it also draws on research from Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child to report that "toxic" high stress levels experienced by families living in poverty can harm brain development in children and teens.
The issue is key in North Carolina, where one out of five children, and 25 percent of children younger than 5, live in poverty.
The state's poverty rate is higher than the national average.
"With our recent capacity to look at brain development through scans and really look at what's happening within our children, we're realizing how much more impactful growing up in poverty is," said Margaret Arbuckle, executive director of the nonprofit Guilford Education Alliance and an Action for Children board member.
"The brain doesn't just form; it forms over time," she said. "Environmental factors impact the development of the synapses and the architecture of the brain, so that as the brain is constructed, if there's not appropriate nutrition and there (are) stress and other health factors, that can impact the way the child's brain actually grows and develops."
The results, Arbuckle said, can be seen in children's complex thinking and reasoning skills, impulse control, and their ability to create relationships and discern social cues.
"When parents are living in poverty and superstressed ... through their emotional interaction with their children they send off signals to the baby," she said. Also, "poor parents don't have time to have that continual interaction of stimulus and response from the adult" that is essential to proper brain development.
Such children are "likely to develop stress-related illnesses and mental health problems like depression and anxiety, which can then lead to risky behavior later in life," she said.
The fixes the report calls for are sweeping and expensive, ranging from "decent wages" to environmental cleanup in poor neighborhoods. But the report says that cost must be measured against the need for an adult work force large and capable enough to compete in the global marketplace and meet the needs of an aging population.
"If (children) enter kindergarten with such developmental delay because of a lack of (learning) opportunities and the stress in which they've grown up, it's hard to say that they're going to ever be able to catch up," Arbuckle said.
Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lex.alexander@news-record.com
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Last updated: 05/01/2008 - 03:06 PM