Poverty Can Change The Brain
Recent articles in The Atlantic, Scientific American and The Guardian say that the stress of poverty can change the brain in ways that further disadvantage the poor.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says that you need to take care of your physiological needs, safety, and belonging before you can worry about self esteem, cognitive needs and beyond. It’s a known fact that poverty decreases the mental capacity of the brain. People who are just working to make ends meet really aren’t able to develop the same mental capacity as those who are more fortunate.
The poor are getting poorer. The proportion of American adults living in low income families increased from 25 percent in 1971 to 29 percent in 2011. Growing up poor increases the chances that you’ll also be poor as an adult. Neuroscientists are beginning to see this trend as they study the impacts of low socioeconomic status on childhood brain development.
Growing up poor creates a vicious cycle against time. Imagine going through middle school or high school, having to wake up each day and go to a public water reservoir to get clean water before school. Underprivileged students sit in the same classroom as and try to compete in class with other students who take running water for granted.
The good news is that there are so many people who endured living in an underserved community and against many odds become successful. How did they do this? A big factor is lack of stress. An example would be parents, often times students grew up knowing that they are poor, but their parents worked hard to make sure that their children feel less of that stress — freeing up their mental capacity.
“Depending on how busy your mind is or how busy your life is, you tend to see things in black and white — ‘I need to get this done,’ versus ‘If I can’t do this completely I can’t get this done,’” she said, pausing before settling on something closer to reality. “Life is gray.”- The Atlantic
Poverty also places limits on one’s brain. As a child who experienced poverty first hand, I used to think that there was a limit of how high I could jump and then go immediately into thinking about finding evidence to back up that claim. I thought that because of genetics and my actual body weight that there was no way to improve my vertical. Author Carol Dweck summarizes what I experienced in my early youth as a Fixed Mindset in her book Growth and Fixed Mindset.
So what is the solution to this, you might ask. Well, the answer might not be as obvious.
Meditation is scientifically proven to reduce stress, reorganize the plasticity of the brain to its normal functionality, improve cognitive capabilities, grow more grey matter and so many other positive things. Exercise helps clear and reinvigorate the brain too.
One of the main reasons I co-founded ScholarJet was to provide an opportunity for all students, regardless of background to be able to take advantage of college scholarships.
Tuan Ho is a recent Northeastern University graduate who co-founded ScholarJet and is on a mission to make college scholarships readily available to students from any economic background.
