
What Poverty Does to the Young Brain - akbarnama
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-poverty-does-to-the-young-brain
======
flycaliguy
The effects of poverty on a child's IQ are at this point indisputable. (Duncan
et al. 1998)

Chronically inadequate diet in the early stages of development will disrupt
brain development. Missing meals will impair functioning and learning on the
day of. These kids see reduced access to health services and often all around
inadequate parenting from overworked and stressed guardians.

In ALL countries that have been studied, children with wealthy homes score
higher on IQ tests than kids from poor homes (Case, Griffin, & Kelly; Keating
& Hertzman, 1999). Also of interest is that in the US and developed countries
in which the gap is widest, the differences in IQ is much larger than in
countries with a smaller wealth gap.

Some kids overcome this challenge. They are the "resilient children" and their
ability usually came from a shielding of negative influence through quality
parenting or guardianship. Be careful not to absorb the narrative of these
achieving kids and dismiss the very real effects of low SES on children.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
You are not accounting for the fact that IQ is heritable, one of the more
obvious truths we're tempted to ignore. Pinker's The Blank Slate is a good
book on the topic.

At this point improving nutrition does not add much to IQ. Ours is a well fed
nation. Soon, the cheapest means of raising IQ will be iterated embryo
selection, later direct genetic modification.

Iterated embryo selection could raise IQ by 80
points:[http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf)

I look forward to when Singapore makes it available to its citizens and
ideologues here try to insist that vitamins will do the same.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
> Soon, the cheapest means of raising IQ will be iterated embryo selection,
> later direct genetic modification.

So many people on the internet go on about the inevitability of genetic
engineering for traits like intelligence. There's pretty much zero
experimental evidence it's going to work as of yet. It's all statistical
wankery. Find me one mouse experiment where they can repeatedly engineer a
faster mouse or a smarter mouse from common mice. Oh, they can make its fur
green (or whatever), but there's not even a hint anyone is close to
manipulating complex aspects of phenotype any better than dog breeders.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Genetic engineering is really hard. A huge amount of genes contribute to IQ.
It's not possible now and it won't be until we can safely alter thousands of
genes in an embryo. I don't see direct engineering in the near future.
Iterated embryo selection (and just plain embryo selection) however, do seem
likely in the next two decades.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
There is _zero_ experimental basis to assume embryo selection will work better
than breeding for complex traits in the near future. It's a scifi idea that
for some strange reason gets nerds excited.

~~~
barry-cotter
Who cares of it works better than being for complex traits? If it works as
well as being for complex traits that's really great. Selective breeding can
move a population mean about half a standard deviation per generation. That's
not iterated embryo selection, just once. I would pay a _lot_ of money to be
guaranteed a child in the upper 50% of what is possible with me and my
girlfriend's genes.

If you want an illustration of the power of selective breeding contemplate the
various breeds of dog. For a modern and well documented example see the
domestication of the Silver Fox. It only took them six generations to
domesticate them.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox)
_The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when
stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let
themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to
experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging
their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to
add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated
elite," are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention
and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this
kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18
percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35
percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally
selected population._

------
dschiptsov
It depends.. I spent my childhood riding fright trains, visiting every dump
and basically coming home only to sleep. I don't regret.

Another common situation, is when parents or relatives or mere circumstances
are forced children to perform some very restricted, repetitive tasks, like
agricultural jobs or any other kind of dumb labor. This is usually a disaster.

Add to this a constant abuse, social pressure and wrong, primitive
conditioning, especially for girls, to complicate the matters.

Basically, unless one is lucky enough to be a lonely street kid, not a member
of some gang, to develop a habit of reflective thinking and acquiring
knowledge by understanding the causes of events, one will end up what they
call "developmental delay", or just aggressive ignorance.

BTW, some Eastern countries, where there are most population are poor, there
are much less problem in urban areas, where kids could escape restricted
repetition of rural life in poverty.

~~~
dschiptsov
OK. According to non-meme based psychology, there are two major developmental
factors - genes and environment, your parents and your neighborhood, nature
and nurture.

Leaving leaving genes aside, environmental factors consists of conditioning -
social, cultural, of personal experiences and of chance events. There is
nothing but conditioning and nutrition that accounts for a development.

The conditioning is vastly complex and highly interrelated, but it boils down
to the variety and 'intencity' of experience.

Common sense tells us that a brain is a muscle - it must be trained and
nourished. Any impoverishment results it failure to develop appropriate habits
and skills, which later will handicap one's performance compared to the
members of favourable social classes.

The point is, any external causes, such as developmental disorders aside,
poverty leaves one developmentaly delayed due to restricted, repetitive
behavior and wrong conditioning.

In some Eastern societies, like Indian and of most Buddhist counties, with
emphasis on community and family rather than individuality and competition,
the effect of poverty is less dramatic. Poor of India or Nepal or Cambodia are
incomparable better that those of Russia, which is a social shithole, famous
of its ignorance and cruelty amongst its poor.

------
threatofrain
I think it is unfortunate when people do not express their biological
potential, but I'm not sure that's what people actually want to talk about.
I'm not sure that really improves the human condition.

I see the problem as the sum of human economic actions creating a structure
where _only a few people can win and most people must lose_. What does it
matter if we bump up people's IQ? Would that make it so that more people try
to apply to be leaders and CEO's of tomorrow, when there are so few positions
available?

Is the lack of meritocracy the principle emotional bother here? Does society
become better if it were meritocratic? I don't think so. Why not focus on the
fact that there's a race where only a few people win? Is it because we're okay
with the current distribution of wealth if we find out that it corresponds
with intelligence?

All I see from this is a more efficient nation due to better labor allocation,
which is an agreeable value, but is that what people wanted to talk about?
Economic inefficiency due to bad labor allocation?

I think GATTACA shows a meritocratic world. A very meritocratic world. Now, it
may be that the movie has some moral message to deliver on "true potential"
being more than biology, but that society was largely on target with
identifying potential, at least way better than our current world. A few
errors now and then sounds very tolerable for a futuristic system, even if it
results in a few tragic stories about a denied astronaut with heart problems.
I'm sure they can improve and become even more accurate at identifying aspects
of human merit.

But in that world, we have corporate dominance of working opportunities, elite
rule over inferior biology, a feeling of fate, and shitty jobs -- a world of
winners and losers. There will always be more people of merit than there will
be jobs of merit. If this last statement is true, what are the implications
for the losers of society?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You're accepting a number of premises there without questioning them,
including corporatisation, labour/management/owner caste splits, and the fact
that a silly science fiction movie is the best of all possible worlds.

I suspect none of those are a given.

>There will always be more people of merit than there will be jobs of merit.

Which explains why it's so hard to hire good people, I guess.

------
Joeboy
> Over the past decade, the scientific consensus has become clear: poverty
> perpetuates poverty, generation after generation, by acting on the brain.

Is that true? It sounds rather controversial to me, but I am not a
neuroeconomist.

Edit: Although, I suppose that sentence makes no claim as to how large the
effect is in relation to other systemic problems, so maybe it's not as bold a
claim as I first thought.

~~~
kranner
Book recommendation: Scarcity by Mullainathan and Shafir which discusses
"scarcity traps" at length, esp. in the case of poverty, but also in other
contexts (such as time scarcity for busy people, food scarcity for dieters,
socialization scarcity for lonely people, etc.):

[http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-
Lives/...](http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-
Lives/dp/125005611X)

~~~
Joeboy
It doesn't seem controversial that poverty can lead to worse education,
negative behaviours and overall worse outcomes eg. due to things like stress,
altered priorities, prejudice etc. The idea that this is because poor people
sustain brain damage as children (or foetuses) is the bit I'm not sure about.

~~~
kranner
I think I misread your comment by skipping the effect-on-the-brain bit. The
book is indeed about altered priorities and resultant behaviour due to
scarcity, but it is a good read anyway.

------
louithethrid
To sum it up- poverty brings you the experience of a thirld world enviroment.
Constant stress and existential crisis/dread.

Can you write a app for that? One where creatures in crisis find other
creatures in crisis nearby, forming a add-hoc anti-stress community that also
teaches itself the basics to startup society against all odds?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_To sum it up- poverty brings you the experience of a thirld world
enviroment._

Western poverty does not do this. Most folks suffering western style poverty
have an abundance of food, clean water, power, sanitation, leisure, education
and health care. Having just come back from India, it's not even a close
comparison.

Any stress/existential crisis/dread is purely based on status envy or
pathologies caused by other (relatively) poor westerners.

~~~
nitrogen
This kind of judgmental appeal to worse problems is completely
counterproductive to solving western poverty, and ignores those who do not
have access to abundant food, leisure, and health care. This can happen for a
number of reasons, including stigmatization of welfare assistance, lack of
awareness of available programs, incomes too high to qualify for aid but too
low to live on (especially for those poor who do not have children), medical
conditions that prevent one from reaching the social services before 5PM close
(even things as simple and unappreciated as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia,
delayed sleep phase, and PTSD), or lack of transportation ($5 for food, or for
bus/gasoline?).

------
pvaldes
Is not so simple in fact. Twins with similar diets can have differences in IQ
just by growing in different cities. Between 20 and 40 Ascaris roundworms in
the body of a child can lower their IQ to 5-10 points, delay the psychomotor
development and end in poor growth until properly treated (IQ is restored them
to normal levels). Powerty can mean that people don't have a reliable source
of water, or feels fine about eating roadkills because is in their culture
(increasing the probability of having roundworms or other parasites from
carnivores). A bad Malaria in children can lead to permanent low IQs also.

Any research about this question should check and discuss parasite loads also.

Further readings:

Eppig, Fincher and Thornhill (2010), Parasite Prevalence and the Worldwide
Distribution of Cognitive Ability., Proceedings of the Royal Society B
277(1701): 3801-3808

Christensen & Eslick (2015). Cerebral malaria as a risk factor for the
development of epilepsy and other long-term neurological conditions: a meta-
analysis. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 109(4):233-8.

[http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/06/do-
parasit...](http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/06/do-parasites-
make-you-dumber)

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sickle-
cell...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sickle-cell-anemia-
can-lead-to-lower-iq-scores-study-shows/)

------
autokad
"In the nineteen-nineties, during the media panic over “crack babies,” he was
among a number of scientists who questioned whether the danger of cocaine
exposure in utero was being overstated. (Levitt spent two decades examining
the brains of rabbit mothers and their offspring that were dosed with the
drug, and says that the alarm was “an exaggeration.”"

I been telling people that for years, but people get super defensive and wont
even consider that's a possibility.

------
cyphunk
Didn't we already try the theories of "differing brain size means
<insert_gender,race,etc_here>" in the past? Any time I hear "fMRI" I feel a
hidden tinge of Phrenology trying to pull itself back from the grave of
pseudoscience. In this article I started to wonder here:

    
    
        As might be expected, more educated families produced children with 
        greater brain surface area and a more voluminous hippocampus. But 
        income had its own distinct effect: living in the lowest bracket left
        children with up to six per cent less brain surface area than children
        from high-income families. 
    

"As might be expected"? Meaning we naturally expect a difference in any form
of the brain to give merit and reason to any argument toward difference.

I fully support the idea that scarcity and other social environment issues
create toxic effect on human development. However, I'm first curious if the
statistical variance of research referenced in the article merits the tone of
the article, and secondly where if at all does the size of this or that part
of the brain provide less muddied proofs. I think basing important arguments
on risky science (bordering pseudo-science in some applications) is counter-
productive.

Actually, unless a large statistical variance is shown, the argument of
surface amount or size of hippocampus is absolute hogwash. You might as well
say women are paid % less per $ then men because the size of their brain is %
less.

Related:

"Seduction without cause: uncovering explanatory neurophilia" [1] "The
Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations" [2] "Neural correlates of
interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An
argument for multiple comparisons correction" [3]

1\.
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661308...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661308001563)

2\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/)

3\. [http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-
Salmon-2009.pdf](http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf)

------
Rylinks
>The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic
heritage

That's a pretty impressive achievement

------
skidoo
If your mommy and daddy pay your bills, it does not mean you have any smarts
about you. I am reading some thoroughly biased comments here. Money is for
people without skill, more often than not.

------
toolsadmin
"The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic
heritage and look more closely at how socioeconomic status affects a growing
brain."

Right...

