The Effects of Poverty on Childhood Development

Poverty is one of the most devastating preventable phenomena working against the healthy development of children. The effects of poverty can reach from childhood into adolescence and adulthood, even if the family's income changes. Poverty can influence a child's physical health, emotional and psychological health, and intelligence from early childhood throughout their life span.

Poverty can begin to affect the child's development while it is still in the womb. The mother's life of poverty includes a number of issues that can affect her unborn child. Her lack of prenatal care, or of health care even before getting pregnant, will certainly have a negative impact on her child's health. The lack of good, consistent medical care and poor nutrition are important factors in the baby's birth weight; and low birth weight babies have an increased risk of health problems, lower levels of intelligence and educational achievement, and increased risk of infant mortality.

Once children are out of the womb, poverty still effects their development. Mothers living in poverty are going to have a more difficult time obtaining the food and supplies they need to raise the baby well. They will have less access to quality health care and often have trouble finding the emotional and social support they need to be the best parent possible. In addition, children living in poverty are more susceptible to environmental toxins. In fact, a study from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the years 1988-1991 discovered that 16.3% of children living in poverty had levels of lead poisoning above the current intervention threshold as determined by the Centers for Disease Control as opposed to only 4.7% of children living above the poverty level.

Children living in poverty also tend to perform less well in school and have a higher rate of incompletion than children living above the poverty level. They are also more likely to have developmental delays and learning disabilities. They are twice as likely to be forced to repeat a grade, expelled or suspended almost twice as much, and over two times as likely to drop out of high school. In addition, females raised in poverty are over three times as likely to give birth as out-of-wedlock teenagers, and young adults of both sexes are more likely to turn to crime or drug use.

A look at the potential negative effects of poverty on children would not be complete without considering the plight of the mother and how she came to be living in poverty in the first place. It is likely that she was undereducated herself and may have become pregnant as a teenager. Depending on her circumstances and how long she may have been living in poverty, she could be suffering from physical, psychological, or emotional problems that she lacks the resources to deal with. She could be having trouble finding employment or social support, and she may be unable to afford birth control or never been taught how to use it properly. Possibly, she was raised in poverty herself and was thus herself a victim of a learning disability or development disorder that went undiagnosed and untreated. Or maybe she has been living in poverty for so long that she has simply abandoned hope, embraced depression, and withdrawn from society. These possibilities all factor in to the type of caregiving and nurturing she will be able to provide her new infant, which will impact the infant's attachment response, which will affect the infant's relationships for the rest of her life.

Poverty effects the development of children on every level-from quality prenatal care to the family's ability to provide food and diapers for the new infant to the neighborhood school's capability to provide adequate education. Poverty creates challenges for parents and children in every area of life, in far more potentially damaging ways than for families living above the poverty line. It takes away the family's physical safety and comfort, makes basic survival a struggle, makes education more difficult, creates more health problems, prevents normal physical development, and decreases the chances of a child finding a hopeful future.