Recognizing the child in child poverty

Abstract

In the past few decades, a particular need for a child-centered perspective has emerged, based on evidence that children are more susceptible to environmental and social risks, and that they have different needs than adults do. This article examines issues affecting children in existing measurements and presents conceptual considerations for future work toward defining and measuring child poverty. Current definitions and measures of poverty are generally circumscribed to levels of income, satisfaction of basic needs, and issues of basic human rights; in a few cases, some well-being measures include child health, nutrition, and education. These limitations likely impede the chances that researchers will be able to capture and understand the effects of other important aspects of this phenomenon. Measures need to address the diversity of issues and dimensions that current child developmental frameworks define as the most important. A broader approach to definition and measurement that includes these developmental issues would not only affect the way we understand poverty but also inform the design of future research, social programs, and policies.

Cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and education: Interdisciplinary development of an intervention for low socioeconomic status kindergarten children

“…Beyond all debates about the definition of poverty and the different ways of measuring it [46,47], children with a low socio-economic status (SES) tend to have poorer EF and poorer school achievement, compared with middle or high SES children [48,49]. Psychometric and educational studies [50,51], and also studies that are part of a cognitive neuroscience paradigm [49,[52][53][54][55], have largely verified the impact of poverty in EF.…”

Socioeconomic status and structural brain development

“…Further work will be necessary to explore the generalizability of findings across different countries and cultures (Minujin et al, 2006; Lipina et al, 2011). …”

State of the Art Review: Poverty and the Developing Brain

“…This review builds on previous reviews 11,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] to summarize the neuroscience of poverty for pediatric practitioners. We focus on poverty rather than other forms of adversity (eg, abuse/neglect, institutionalization) and on stateof-the-art studies published in the last 5 years.…”

“…11 Neuroscience research on poverty and brain development in humans is relatively new. The first studies examined socioeconomic disparities in behavior and cognition using tasks intended to localize to specific brain systems.…”