Does Poverty Cause Brain Damage?
I've refrained from commenting on this study [gated, but with abstract] because I suspect it is junk science. Also, it showed up in a USA Today article before it was published with a questionable PR spin. But I suspect it's part of a pattern we will see more of: claims that poverty causes ill health. The newspaper report contained this shocking comment:
A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke.
Here is Tyler Cowen's comment:
Just to repeat two key points: a) the observed difference in electrical current patterns may depend on IQ differences, not poverty, and b) on the actual major task the poor kids did just as well. There are tasks where the poor children do less well but this is hardly news.
Also see the other comments at the Marginal Revolution blog here.
The entire concept here is idiotic. Untill the last 200 or 300 years, virtually all of human kind lived in subsistence level poverty — the kind of poverty that about one billion people continue to live in today (living on a dollar a day).
If poverty caused brain damage, we never would have evolved.
Idiotic, Ken but clever. they are laying the foundation for declaring that antipoverty programs are really health programs.
So if you deny the poor food stamps or rent subsidies, you are actually denying them health care.
A study finding smarter kids tend to have newer appliances at home does not mean that new appliances produce intelligence among children who live in close proximity to them.
Or, to say it another way, correlation does not equal causation. This is a fundamental concept anyone who works in research or otherwise technical fields understands, but lay people so often do not.
As with most things involving children, look at parents. Stupid parents tend to have stupid kids, stupid parents also tend to have low paying jobs or no job. Stupid parents also tend to not put in good parenting time with their kids. So the children of stupid parents suffer because they get the short end of the stick genetics wise (the nature part of intelligence) and they also tend to get poor parenting (the nuture part of intelligence).
This doesn’t correlate directly to money though, teachers tend to have smart children, and teachers aren’t paid a whole lot. Additionally every once in awhile you’ll have a smart, disciplined, and responsible person who has been dealt a bad hand and so maybe they’re poor, but they pass on good traits to their kids and engage in proactive parenting and their kinds turn out great and end up being doctors and lawyers and whatnot.
On the same token money doesn’t make people smart, see celebrities, Plaxico Burress, etc.
Lack of money doesn’t make people stupid, and money doesn’t make people smart. Rather, on balance, smart and disciplined people make more money than stupid and lazy people, and they pass on their intelligence and or work ethic to their children.
It isn’t poverty, it is parenting.