kids stressed out

Children in low-income families lag behind their higher-income counterparts on virtually all measures of achievement, and this gap tends to increase over time and one cause is chronic stress from adverse neighborhood and family conditions.

"Their homes, schools and neighborhoods are much more chaotic than those of their higher-income counterparts," says Gary Evans, professor of design and environmental analysis and of human development, who has been studying the effects of poverty on children for more than two decades. "They live with such stressors as pollution, noise, crowding, poor housing, inadequate school buildings, schools and neighborhoods with high turn-over, family conflict, family separation, and exposure to violence and crime. These conditions can produce toxic stress capable of damaging areas of the brain associated with attention, memory and language that form the foundation for academic success."

Childhood poverty leads to lower academic and occupational achievement, in part, because the multiple risks typically faced by children growing up in poverty lead to chronic stress, which in turn, negatively affects children's cognitive abilities to succeed in school.