Study: Stress of poverty hurts kids' learning ability

A new theory, based on studies matching stress-hormone levels to behavioral and school readiness among children living in poverty, holds that such children have impaired learning abilities partly because of the "stresses of poverty," including crowded conditions, financial worry and lack of adequate child care. The theory is discussed in the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind.

New York University researcher Clancy Blair found that high levels of stress hormones "influence the developing circuity of children's brains, inhibiting such higher cognitive functions such as planning, impulse and emotional control and attention." Those abilities are "important for academic success." Finding ways to reduce poverty stressors in home and school environments could improve children's well being and help them be more academically successful, Blair says in a press release issued by the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study.