Childhood poverty and psychological well-being: The mediating role of cumulative risk exposure

Abstract

The current study assessed whether the proportion of childhood (age 0–9 years) in poverty altered the developmental trajectories (ages 9–24) of multimethodological indicators of psychological well-being. In addition, we tested whether exposure to cumulative risk over time mediated the association between poverty exposure and psychological well-being. Measures of psychological well-being included internalizing and externalizing symptoms, a behavioral index of learned helplessness (task persistence), and chronic physiological stress (allostatic load). Exposure to poverty during childhood predicted the trajectory of each development outcome: individuals with more poverty exposure during childhood showed (a) relatively high levels of internalizing symptoms that diminished more slowly with maturation, (b) relatively high levels of externalizing symptoms that increased faster over time, (c) less task persistence indicative of greater learned helplessness, and (d) higher levels of chronic physiological stress which increased faster over time relative to persons with less childhood poverty exposure. Trajectories of cumulative risk exposure from physical and psychosocial surroundings from 9–24 years accounted for the association between childhood poverty and the growth curves of internalizing and externalizing symptoms but not for learned helplessness or chronic physiological stress. Additional sensitivity analyses indicate that early childhood disadvantage is particularly problematic for each outcome, except for internalizing symptoms which seem sensitive to the combination of early and lifetime poverty exposure. We also explored whether domains of cumulative risk as well as two alternatives, maternal sensitivity or family cohesion, functioned as mediators. Little evidence emerged for any of these alternative mediating constructs.

The role of executive functions, social cognition and intelligence in predicting social adaptation of vulnerable populations

“…This population lives in social risk neighborhoods and lacks the social resources necessary to withstand the impacts of external stressors 2 – 5 ; this thwarts SA. The number and magnitude of stressors experienced by these persons combined with their insufficient access to resources to manage stress create conditions for poor mental health and chronic stress 6 , 7 . Furthermore, living in vulnerable conditions, particularly as a child, may be a driver for a reduction in the performance of functions or processes associated with the prefrontal cortex—that have been independently associated with SA—such as social cognition (SC) (includes decision-making, emotional processing, Theory of Mind (ToM), and empathy), fluid intelligence (FI), crystallized intelligence (CI), and executive functions (EF) 7 – 12 .…”

Associations between early poverty exposure and adolescent well-being: The role of childhood negative emotionality

“…Finally, childhood poverty is predictive of adolescent and adult physical health outcomes, such as levels of allostatic load (Schulz et al, 2012), body mass index (Wells et al, 2010), and general physical health (Wen et al, 2003). It is imperative to note that the associations between childhood poverty and these outcome indices are often maintained regardless of whether individuals remain in poverty after they enter into adolescence or adulthood, signifying that childhood poverty may have disruptive impacts on the entire trajectory of an individual's development (e.g., Evans & De France, 2021;Najman et al, 2010).…”

“…Many of these models, including the Ecological Systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1992;Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998;Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000), the Family Stress Model (Conger, Ge, Elder, Lorenz, & Simons 1994), the Context of Stress model (McLoyd, 1990), and the Family Investment Model (Conger & Donnellan, 2007) center on the impacts of poverty on family-level variables, particularly increased parental stress, parental relationship quality, and overall parenting quality (Landers-Potts et al, 2015;Neppl, Senia, & Donnellan, 2016). Indeed, heightened exposure to stressors is endemic to life in poverty (Evans, 2004;Evans & Schamberg, 2009;McEwen & McEwen, 2017;Repetti, Taylor & Seeman, 2002), and exposure to heightened levels of poverty-related stress has been found to mediate the links between poverty status and various indices of development (Evans & De France, 2021).…”

Poverty and pessimism: relations of attributional style to childhood socioeconomic status, adverse experience and mental health

“…We measured persistent pervasive adversity, of the kind hypothesized by Rose and Abrahms (1992) to cause pessimistic attributional styles in abused children, by assessing physical and psychosocial adversities from an index of cumulative risk (Evans, 2003;Evans & De France, 2022). Home visits were used to assess three physical adversities linked to the home environment: crowding, noise and housing quality.…”