Childhood Poverty and Intellectual Development

The Effects of Childhood Poverty on Intellectual Development

It is widely known that poverty has many negative effects on the development of children who grow up in impoverished homes. One of the most influential outcomes of a person’s life is their intellectual development, which takes place primarily within the first years of life. Not only can childhood poverty result in less enjoyable childhoods, but adversely affects the cognitive and behavioral development; yet more specifically, children’s intellectual development (Duncan 406). In fact, the economic conditions that a child is subjected to during early and middle childhood is very crucial for forming ability, achievement, and intellectual development (Duncan 408). Poverty has a “deleterious effect” on a child’s development, causing impoverished children to be much more likely to have lower levels of mental growth than those who are non-poor. Studies show that children that live in poverty for longer periods of time have 9.1-points lower IQ scores than children who are never poor (Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, and Klebanov 307) and studies find frequently large affiliations between poverty in early childhood and academic outcomes (Moore 4). Hindered intellectual development of low-income children is a result of several “mediating mechanisms”(see Figure 1), which are affected by poverty, and then in turn affect the ability to develop intellectually (Guo and Harris 432). These mediating mechanisms can be described as the physical environment of the home, mother’s involvement with child, cognitive stimulation at home, child health, and child care quality (Guo and Harris 432). Through the outcomes of mediating mechanisms, which vary with economic status, poverty is able to effect the intellectual development of poor children, consequently minimalizing their opportunities for success.

Guo and Harris 432

Physical Environment and Cognitive Stimulation at Home

First of the mediating...