Human Development in the Context of Poverty

1. Human Development in the Context of Poverty Myriads of Mechanisms, A Multitude of Mysteries

2. What Does It Mean To Be Poor? “For ye have the poor always with you…” Mathew 26:11

3. The Poor Have… Limited access to financial resources - income - wealth Limited access to other kinds of resources or capital (Coleman) - material resources (e.g., housing, clean water) - human resources (e.g., health care, education) - social resources (e.g., powerful networks)

4. The Poor Lack… Protection from environmental hazards • teratogens • blighted neighborhoods • natural disasters Protection from social hazards • predation • violence • enforced servitude in demeaning or dangerous activities • daily hassles and unstable circumstances

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6. What Are the Outcomes of Poverty? Poor physical health – from damaged genes to premature death and all manner of injuries and illnesses along the way Poor mental health – nowhere to run, no place to hide, little chance to dodge the stressors Diminished competence – building with scraps on a shaky foundation in scattered moments with half a blueprint

7. Physical Health • born premature & low birth weight • birth defects • inadequate neurobehavioral development in utero • malnutrition • short stature • impaired endocrine and metabolic functioning • obesity • asthma & respiratory illnesses • increased blood lead levels

8. Physical Health • dental carries & oral health problems • sensory impairment • iron deficiency • injuries 1. Health problems more likely to have co-morbid features 2. Health problems in childhood set the ground for a full range of adult health problems

9. Social & Emotional Adjustment • problems with self-regulation • low effectance/competence motivation • external locus of control - helplessness • anxiety disorders, somatic complaints & depression • aggression, conduct problems, delinquency • relationship difficulties Socio-emotional problems in childhood initiate long-standing patterns of psychopathology & troubled social relationships

10. Competence & Achievement • inadequate prenatal brain development • attention difficulties - ADHD • meta-cognitive and executive function limitations • mental retardation • slower language and literacy development • learning disabilities • poor grades and low scores on achievement tests

11. Competence & Achievement • higher absenteeism & retention in grade • greater likelihood of school drop-out • lower college attendance • lower participation in school and community organizations Poor school success sets the stage for poor job success, family instability, and low involvement in community activities and organizations

12. Well-Beinga holistic view SES – Health Gradient The relation between income and human well-being is essentially linear. Good News – Most poor children will not have every bad outcome associated with poverty and not all bad outcomes will be permanent. Bad News – Very few poor children will escape all bad outcomes and many difficulties that emerge early in life will persist in some form into adulthood.

13. What Accounts for the Ubiquitous “Effects” of Poverty? A Tale of the “Haves and Have Nots” Theories, data, and a bucket of wild guesses Economists’ Perspective: a case of underfunded mandates Biologists’ Perspective: stressors, stressors everywhere and not a….. Psychologists’ Perspective: let me get back to you on that

14. Allostatic Load McEwen - The “cost” or “wear and tear” on the body produced by repeated activation of stress-responsive (normally adaptive) mediators such as glucocorticoids and catecholamines. Leads to structural and functional changes in the brain, especially hippocampus and amygdala, with implications for numerous behavioral and biological systems.

15. Interactionist Perspective Conger & Donnellan – The association between poverty and human development involves a dynamic interplay between social causation and social selection.

16. Social Causation via Stress Induction Stress resulting from low access to the material resources required to meet basic needs can give rise to negative mood and motivational states. These in turn can lead to poor health and negative patterns of behavior which can spiral in ways that lead to reduced social and human capital and to further behavior and health problems – (see generic model).

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18. Social Causation via Increased Investment People with access to resources are able to make investments in the well being of members of their social group or offspring using a long-term investment strategy, whereas poor people tend to focus on immediate needs – (see generic model).

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20. Social Selection The observed association between poverty and well-being (SES – health gradient) is partly spurious. People’s characteristics (low IQ, psychopathology, certain health conditions) may increase the likelihood they will gravitate to lower SES. Those characteristics may help determine their behavior, interactions with others, etc. in ways the increase the likelihood of poor outcomes for themselves and/or their children (intergenerational drift).

21. Interactionist Model The interactionist sees reality as a combination of social causation and social selection playing out through individual lives and often across generations so that poverty and non-optimal development tend to co-occur in most groups. Caveat: Other contextual factors can change the magnitude of the association for particular persons, families or groups (discrimination, dislocation, economic collapse, traumatic events)

23. Poverty Co-Factors Living in poverty, especially chronic poverty, often means being exposed to a variety of other conditions that are inimical to well being (i.e., co-factors). Accordingly, • It can be difficult to isolate what is due to low-income per se, and • It can be difficult to fashion effective interventions for low-income families

24. Examples of Poverty Co-Factors • Unstable housing • Crime-ridden neighborhoods ruled by gangs • Poor quality schools • Discrimination based on race/ethnicity • Recent immigration • Parental incarceration • Spending time in foster care • Limited access to high-quality social networks • Exposure to toxins

25. What Processes Account for the Negative Impacts of Poverty? • Numerous mechanisms have been invoked • Sometimes elaborate causal chains have been identified • Sometimes the same mechanism seems implicated in several bad outcomes (multifinality) • Sometimes a variety of different mechanisms seem implicated in the same outcome (equifinality) • Sometimes different mechanisms hold for different groups (moderated-mediation) • Research support for most hypothesized mechanisms is weak

26. The Role of Parenting in SES – Child Development Relations 50 years of attention to the role of parents in promoting or hindering child development Evans (2004) identified several aspects of parenting associated with poverty • Increased harshness/violence • Less warmth/sensitivity • Less emotional support • Less structure • Low stimulation/teaching • Poor monitoring • Less time spent with child (especially adolescents)

27. Comprehensive Model of Caregivingthe7 Ss • Safety • Sustenance • Stimulation (a.k.a., enrichment, teaching) • Socio-emotional Support • Structure • Surveillance (a.k.a., monitoring) • Social-connection (to people and institutions) Poverty interferes with or degrades all of them.

28. Characteristics of Strong Familiesthe 5 Cs • Coherence at each level of function and across levels of function in terms of goals and means for achieving them • Consistency and constancy of input to members • Capacity to fill gaps or increase effort to meet challenges • Control over disturbances • Cohesive connections with other components of the environment (meso-system relations)

29. Can It Be Fixed?OR “will the cycle be unbroken”? Oh, the recalcitrance of real living systems It ain’t easy to improve life in a 3-dimensional world with 2-dimensional information and small amounts of cash.

30. The Effectiveness of Interventions Numerous efforts to address the problems of poverty • Income transfers and jobs programs • WIC and CHIP • Early education (including parent education) • Violence prevention • Residential relocations • Public health campaigns Mixed Results: Some successes (mostly limited) and many failures

31. Why Can’t We Do Any Better? • Complex systems are composed of many inter-linked components. It’s hard to find ways to leverage systems so that productive change is made in enough components for a new system set-point to be established – systems tend to revert to old set points • Paradoxical (sometimes antagonistic) effects are more likely when dealing with highly perturbed or stressed systems

32. Why Can’t We Do Any Better? • Our theories of change tend not to be as inclusive or as dynamic as needs be to serve as a base for effective interventions. (Sometimes it ain’t enough to lock the door when the floods a comin’.) • We have very little research on dose-response relations for most of the models of intervention we use. (Too much, like too little, may lead to undesirable outcomes.) • For some processes, bad early experience can be extraordinarily difficult to undo (“a stitch in time”).

33. Three Happy End Notes • The research on resilience holds promise of helping identify leverage points for effective interventions • Improvements in theory, research design, and statistical analyses hold promise for upgrading the quality of information available on poverty and human development • Persistence in implementing and refining interventions is showing some positive impacts

34. When you live in poverty, you spend your life chasing troubles. When you have enough resources, material and social, you can spend some time chasing bubbles.

35. When you live in poverty, you spend your life chasing troubles When you have enough resources, material and social, you can some time chasing bubbles