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Poverty May Affect the Growth of Children's Brains
sciencehabit writes: Stark and rising inequality plagues many countries, including the United States, and politicians, economists, and — fortunately — scientists, are debating its causes and solutions. But inequality's effects may go beyond simple access to opportunity: a new study finds that family differences in income and education are directly correlated with brain size in developing children and adolescents. The findings could have important policy implications and provide new arguments for early antipoverty interventions, researchers say.
according to my wife.
So what? Are the poor entitled to brains of a specific size?
Will the government be passing out brains? Will the bottom of society become dependent on welfare brains? Will the middle class ultimately have to pay for all of it while still suffering from diminutive brain size compared to the upper class? Will the top 1% control 99% of grey matter?
most of our ruling class aren't poor!
They may have found a correlation, but that's not the same as determining the direction of causation.
Poverty doesn't cause it, most likely has to do with poor Nutrition.
Which is why, if I were in charge, Food Stamps would be for Fruits, Veggies, Meat, and Milk only. If you add anything else, it is abused. Cereal? FruitLoops is a cereal, and currently counts as "food".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm not sure that brain size by itself is a particular indicator of intelligence but when it's combined with poor nutrition and stressful living it probably is correlated. If you're concerned about the welfare state then it's something that should concern you. People with low intelligence are much more likely to require welfare to get along in life.
most of our ruling class aren't poor!
Don't conflate intelligence (or, in the case of TFA, certain aspects of learning and higher order function) with social success. Politics is more emotional than technical. It is abundantly clear that intelligence (whatever the hell that actually happens to be), the ability to learn, the ability to think have only a modest bearing on what happens to an individual throughout their lives.
Besides, the actual magnitude of the effect in TFA seems rather small - there are likely a number of other factors involved to determine if you are fated to be Steve Woz or Idi Amin.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Stark and rising inequality plagues many countries, including the United States"
Change that to: "Stark and rising inequality plagues every country."
But of course a dig at the US has to be in there somewhere, so...
could have been just as valid a title. The methodology in the article had no way to control for the fact that genes control brain development, so children inherit both their parents genes and socioeconomic status.
Do we even want a society where everyone has the exact same amount of money?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
for part of the problem. Sometimes children are born with sunken fontanelles. In many African-American cultures, it is not uncommon for the father to repair this issue by smearing his ejaculate on the child's fontanelle or ejaculating in the child's mouth, although sometimes he will also have sex with the infant in order to enhance its cognitive abilities.
If whites started doing this to their children, they would be a lot smarter than they already are, and they would be much better off.
http://slashdot.org/story/06/0...
I would expect nutrition to be a big factor. But I also expect other environmental factors like intellectual stimulation, healthcare, etc. also play into it.
This may help to explain the IQ differences that exist across ethnic lines, which are sometimes aligned with those of social equality.
Studies have been done and published then buried over the last 100+ years that clearly show intelligence differences between races. Statistics and demographics show the same for crime/race.
Go look it up yourself, I did, convinced me.
ie: compare countries where a given race is wealthy and dominant and the crime rate per demo. is the same, etc.
This study may only be referenced by Liberals when promoting new ways to take from those who produce. If ever referenced by Conservatives, such as for explaining certain inequities and suggesting that some people might actually be smarter than others, it is racist.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So the Top 1% needs to give the bottom 99% all their money. Problem solved.
the growth of children's girths:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#Children_and_teens
But inequality's effects may go beyond simple access to opportunity
I'm not sure what they're defining as "opportunity" here, but it clearly doesn't include access to a healthier diet, better educational tools, more experiences in life, quality time & attention from their guardians, etc, etc.
In fact, I'd like to know exactly what they what they think opportunity is if it's *not* those things?!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah; it's really about developmental psychology (feed your kids well while their brains are forming, and they'll work better), but the discussion will devolve into head size jokes before you know it.
Poor people have less nutrition for their body. Poor people have less access to toys and media which exercise the brains. Thankfully smart phone prices are coming down in price, and educational apps are popping up all the time. So in third world countries, people may be able to get education straight from a smart phone. We as app developers should have education in mind. Whether we're doing illustrated story books which the spoken word synched with highlighted words, or we're doing K-12-University lectures and workbook activities... We should focus more on education and helping out over directly our own pocketbooks to a degree.
God spoke to me
The least well off 1% of Americans are still better off than 80% of the rest of the world. Immigrants gladly come to the US to be there with nothing but the cloths on their back. Water, libraries, roads, police, SNAP, the U.S. is a paradise. There is no such thing as poverty there.
Perform kkeping the latest Netcraft this is consistent year contract.
It seems obvious that people who come from rich families can afford private schooling, more friends in high places, and sometimes full time attention and tutoring from birth. Obviously these people will have better development and job opportunities.
People from a poor background are more neglected during development be it from divorce, drug/alcohol abuse, and poor schooling. This sets them up for a terrible uphill battle for the rest of their lives.
The synopsis implies that diet affects brain size and that brain size determines intelligence. If we take this at face value, it implies that statistically developed-world employees should outperform H1B visa holders. And that men should outperform women. I believe the junk science of the synopsis was debunked quite some time ago. With a synopsis like this why would I bother reading the article.
There's a very informative online video of Paul Krugman, Thomas Piketty, and Joseph Stiglitz discussing inequality at a 92Y event.
In theory, anyone can scrimp and save and work hard and get ahead. I've done it .. without a college education and growing up in a from a family barely getting by, I've managed to improve my income starting as a minimum wage bike repair worker, working two years as an office clerk, and 35 years later clear over $130K/year. I did it because I'm smart, reasonably personable, and have a strong work ethic that makes it easy for me to do just about any job my company asks for, yet strong enough to go look elsewhere when the time is right.
So .. should stupid people have the same opportunity that I have had?? How about lazy people??? How about liars and thieves???
So what type of opportunity are they talking about?? My son and daughter took two different paths through life, she took the college/marriage/house/kid route and she and her husband, who just got his doctorate, are doing much better than I was at 30 years young.
On the other hand, my son took a more laid back, artsy, 'no working for the man' route. While fiscally, he is far worse off than I was at 32, he has traveled the entire United States, has friends in probably every state, does what he wants, doesn't pay taxes, and yet makes enough money to not live off the state. He is 100% debt free. He lives on what he makes, and occasionally dumpster dives for food and materials. Yet .. it's what he has chosen to do. Because he feels we throw away far too much stuff, buy way too much stuff, and spend too much of our lives doing work we don't like.
The things they both have in common is they are both very smart, have good work ethics, and both know the importance of living within their means. I'm sure my son would qualify as someone below the poverty line. Yet he has never gotten food stamps in his entire life and has never asked me for money. Except that one time he broke his glasses jumping off a freight train in Kansas City.
He also is far more in touch with the nutritional value of food and makes good choices when he can than I am. He's pretty darn healthy for someone that doesn't have a regular job. Yet also knows how to pour concrete, build a boat, restring a fiddle bow, and a dozen other things. He has become a modern jack-of-all-trades than can make a few bucks in just about any town, any time he wants to.
So is opportunity just getting what you want?? Or is it having a specific income level??
'Equal opportunity' is a phrase that means nothing, and is constantly overused by those willing to take things from other people and give to others under the guise of 'doing good'. Or as an excuse to control people's behaviors or, in this case, probably their children.
What a great excuse, taking children away from people simply because they are poor. What will the progressive's think of next ....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Causation and correlation are often confused. Consider: parents who are genetically prone to produce offspring with poor brain growth may also have a higher propensity for poverty.
I have a choice where I live and work. I chose the US
A lot of other people don't have that choice due at least in part to immigration laws.
Fortunately there is no correlation between brain size and IQ, so no need to worry here.
Hey Mr, we are from NSA!
Denial is futile, we checked yer PET scan images from our latest hack!
And the size doesn't lie !!
From time to time whenever I find myself some free time I take long bus rides which zip through areas of poverty as well as places with posh mansions
I observe what the passengers carry, and eat and it never fails me --- people boarding buses from the poverty stricken areas often feed their children junk, and I mean, junk --- like 'flavored ice' which has been mixed with coloring and sugar, and stuffs like that
Passengers boarding from more wealthy area, I never see children eating those kind of junks
The finding of the sociologists may be sound, but their conclusions have missed a big fact --- that no matter how much money those junk-minded parents get they will still feed their children with junk
Of course it does, I would be surprised if it didn't.
Being poorer typically means you aren't as properly fed due to financial reasons which will stunt growth in all kinds of areas.
Plus the added stress of being in that situation changes the way your brain develops as you age as well.
It seems like a pretty common sense conclusion.
The sad thing is you will probably see a few tards on here mistake the brain growth as cause when in fact it is an effect more than likely.
Nobody is lining up to give poor people professional baseball teams, or choice executive positions at energy companies. Nor does a poor working stiff who just finished a hard day of running pipes or installing drywall open his motel door in the middle of the night to see women looking to have sex with him.
It's not being willfully obtuse as to how this country, and capitalism in general, actually works.
I am surprised that nobody pointed out that the causality might be backwards: smaller brain size is hereditary and causes poverty.
Think about it in reverse: in a reality where resources are limited, who is going to get the least resources? Everyone equal or generally by descending order of intellect?
... in 1960-th there was a toy - a metal constructor. It was a big box full of different plates, axes, wheels, nuts, bolts a.s.o. It was relatively cheap (since it was produced basically by the same plants where the nuclear bombs were made). It was needed to have some brains to model something with this toy. There were lots of cheap magazines publishing projects for this toy. Sometimes it was problematic to subscribe for these magazines (it's Russia!!!!1111) but they still were cheap.
About 2010, I needed such a constructor to model some of my ideas before I implement them in full scale metal. I went to the toy shop. And I found that no such constructor is sold now. There was only a Lego. During some more searches I found the old-school metal constructor but it was extremely costly.
So, what do I think about this: 1) It was a deliberate policy of Commie Ruskies to grow bright engineers that would produce the Kuzkina Mat' (H-Bomb) of next generation; 2) It is a deliberate policy of modern Russian (and USA too since Lego is your production) to grow a controllable population.
Don't assume that politicians aren't intelligent. Unless they are complete figureheads, they're usually pretty smart. The problem is that the intelligence is devoted to the practice of politics. This doesn't leave much left over for knowing things about science or economics.
Compared to even the trolls in this forum, politicians are drooling idiots when it comes to IT.
Reverse that and try to out politic one of them, and you'll find yourself outmaneuvered so completely that you won't know what hit you. And when I say "hit", I mean that politics sometimes leaves you quite literally in an alleyway, not knowing how you got there, with pictures of you having sex with someone you don't remember. You will have been woken up by your wife, who was conveniently taxied to where you are so she can get some snaps for the upcoming divorce proceedings.
Political operative classes consist of means by which people are manipulated into believing in your platform through marketing tricks and knowing how to get the right people to the polls. And those classes don't even spend much time on what you're supposed to believe. That's just fluff. The difference between you and a paid special interest operative is that the special interest lobbyist is paid better than you are.
The Amish and Cuban's don't have autistic kids. They also both don't have food that is sprayed with nuerotoxin based pesticides, like here in most of the USA. Rich people can buy organics, whereas poor people can't.
China comes handy if we are to talk about the effect malnutrition on the population
Throughout the 5 thousand years of organized human society of China which ancient bureaucrats had carefully noted down what happened, China had been hit with many periods of mass disasters that often led to epic starvation in China, and every time it happened, China would need to go through at least 3 generations of REGENERATION before the IQ level of the people get back to the 'normal' range, and the time frame is more or less 50-70 years
It seems that the first 2 generations were so seriously affected by the lack of nutrition that the IQ level dropped drastically, and only the third (and subsequent) generations who get to enjoy 'normal intake' of nutrition from the food they ate, that their level of intelligence went back to normal
Another gauge from the Chinese civilization can be had from the result of their 'jin xi' - an exam held by government, often once every 2 years, in which candidates from all over the countries went to take hoping that they could land an official job) ... there was often a lack of suitable candidates from areas which had had disasters/mass starvation, for period up to 50 or more years
"Poverty" and "income inequality" are very different. While the US has a fairly large income inequality, poverty isn't common. (Note that "poverty" to most people means "unable to meet basic needs"). The irony is in our culture that poor people tend to be overweight.
Do you have ESP?
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/mom-apparently-kills-son-2-midtown-restaurant-police-article-1.2167535
"Brian size" sounds impressive, as many people immediately will think bigger=better, but is there any conclusive and reliable evidence that brain size actually matters and what its effects are? Last thing I remember is that most of the human brain is unused.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Parents with relatively small brains tend to get children with relatively small brains and they are more likely to be poor. No wonder there is a correlation.
Even TFA says it very clearly: they find a correlation. However, the title and introduction desperately want to imply causation. However, the causation can run all sorts of ways - and the study itself does not (and, indeed, cannot) say which of these is correct. Just to name three possibilities:
- Poverty hinders brain development (what the SJWs want to hear)
- People with a genetic predisposition for poor brain development tend to be poor (definitely not what the SJWs want to hear)
- Poverty correlates to certain activities (or lack thereof, for example, little reading). The lack of those activities hinders brain development. This can mimic genetics to an extent, since behavior is passed along from parents to children. (Complicated, not news worthy, and therefore likely to be closer to the truth).
So, erase the provocative title, ignore the introduction (that tries to inspire the SJW in all of us), and the study itself is interesting. However, actually determining the causation is the critical part, and that's not done yet...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
why
is
this
so
fucking
hard
to
grasp?
Causation and correlation. What they have here is CORRELATION... not causation. They have nothing that suggests being richer makes your brain bigger. The very idea that they have misinterpreted their data this badly makes me not want to live on this planet in and of itself.
What complete fucking idiots. Seriously. Retards. I suppose they're probably poor, which is why they're stupid.
What their "study" found was some correlation between brain size and wealth. First, brain size doesn't actually correlate with intelligence. There are some people with giant brains that are complete idiots. Literally retarded. And there are some people with abnormally little brains for humans that are quite intelligent. In gross terms having a chipmunk brain is going to require a similarly limited intelligence but small variances in brain size do not infer greater intelligence. Male brains for example are almost all larger than female brains yet we wouldn't say women are less intelligent.
In any case, even if we are talking about intelligence, the issue is correlation and not causation. And in that case, it is possible that the wealthier bloodlines are wealthier because they're more intelligent not more intelligent because they're wealthier.
As to these people presuming to suggest social policy on this basis... allow me to laugh derisively in their stupid faces.
*rolls eyes*
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The premise of this summary is false: Inequality != Poverty.
That is self-evident.
Perhaps the behaviors that cause a majority of poverty also cause brain development issues: lack of belief in educational value, dependency, drug abuse etc.
There are no studies that show spanking has any long term positive outcomes. There are plenty of studies that show negative correlation with long term negative outcomes. Just as is the case with this study, it is fair to call into question correlation and causation but if there were some food additive, fertilizer or herbicide that had even 1/10 of the correlative impact on children, the public would be freaking out and protesting around some multinational business but when it is parents damaging their own children we get relative silence.
Studies have shown that poor parents are more likely to spank their children. Studies have shown a correlation in spanking with smaller brain sizes, lower IQs, lack of self control. Studies have shown a high correlation between lack of self control and poverty. Again we don't have great data on cause v.s. effect but there are good indications that the early violence is causative in this chain.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
Childen of poor families have had less than half of the words spoken to them before they start school, and many of those are foul and uncouth. It is no surprise that, on average, development lacks.
Public policy must absolutely NOT be based on logical fallacies!
44% of single mother families are in poverty, who knows how many of those mothers are even around when working more than one job. If no one teaches them the basics, who will? Only 12% of families with both parents at home are in poverty, and in most cases, at least one parent is around (if they were both working 2 jobs, they wouldn't be in poverty). Sounds like the real problem is single mother families...one could argue this is a moral problem, stepping away from traditional families to the lifestyles we live now.
It would be interesting to see the effect of low protein diets amongst the rich on brain development.
The nutrition lacking diet of the poor definitely contributes to lack of brain development.
And of course the idea that someone with a bigger brain becomes rich and passes that on to their children is unacceptable.
It would also be interesting to study the differences between wealthy people of color vs the impoverished.
contrasted with white poor vs white rich. Are the same mechanisms in play?
The study does not look at single parent minors who have given birth.
We give welfare and subsidies to children who have babies, especially when the father cannot be found.
We are paying minors to have sex. They also tend to STAY IN POVERTY their whole live.
You can see multiple generations of unwed mothers staying in poverty.
Break that chain and you cut off the bottom part of that poverty/brain growth chart.
However that would hurt the democrat party and we can't have that.
Every time I see a study like this, I reverse the premise and see if it makes sense. In this case, I would ask this. Instead of poverty cause low brain development, does low brain development cause poverty. I would argue that much of IQ is inherited, either through nature or nurture. To put it bluntly, stupid parents tend to have stupid kids. Its also clear that a lower IQ very much limits your earning potential - thus puts your family in poverty.
So, I think this study is balogne. All it says is poor people tend to be on the lower end of the IQ scale, and so are their kids.
Strange, I read that the cause of this was high amounts of lead in the environment. Why is it that all of a sudden the low tax rate is the cause of it?
Not for the 1930s. It was only till the 60's that lead (in the form of BOTH lead paint and lead gasoline additive) started playing a statistical significant role.
So every child that is born gets 10 million dollars from the government, problem solved! How about democrats get the hell away from the education system, they are the ones keeping kids stupid so they can control them, let the Private sector run the schools. Get rid of Unions at least would improve the education a lot.
Teenage baby immigrant that grew up in the "projects" now earning 100k designing and developing backend from messenger apps to credit card processing.
Shout out to other "ghetto hackers". Keep grinding.
Poverty generally gives a good a idea of what kind of environment the child is growing up in, along with the diet and education available. Environmental effects are massive on a humans development, all the way down to which genes are activated, and which one are not. Effects at this level leave the potential consequences immeasurable. Social Classism is a huge fucking issue, and its unfortunate how blind anyone unaffected by it is.
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Check Your "Brain Privilege".
You undoubtedly discriminate against dumb people without realizing it. And that's wrong because it's not their fault. We should have Affirmative Action that promotes dumb people ahead of smart people so they are proportionally represented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Casteism
How Poverty Taxes the Brain;
Scientists have discovered that being poor actually impairs our cognitive abilities;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Casteism
Joke article. Talk about correlation not being causation. They have it completely backwards.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Another study found that poor people all breathe air. This must be stopped.
Another study found that all people with small brains breathe air. This must be stopped.