For those on the low end of the financial ladder this article will hit home. For those who are at the top rungs of the same ladder, I hope some eyes will be opened. The psychological impact of poverty can be a vicious and deadly cycle impacting all aspects of life in any community. From poverty often comes poor health, great stress, hopelessness, deadly behaviors, criminal acts and more. It's all about perspectives both real and imagined. Click link for full story.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/status-and-stress/?ref=opinion&_r=2
QuoteAlthough professionals may bemoan their long work hours and high-pressure careers, really, there's stress, and then there's Stress with a capital "S." The former can be considered a manageable if unpleasant part of life; in the right amount, it may even strengthen one's mettle. The latter kills.
What's the difference? Scientists have settled on an oddly subjective explanation: the more helpless one feels when facing a given stressor, they argue, the more toxic that stressor's effects.
That sense of control tends to decline as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, with potentially grave consequences. Those on the bottom are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as those at the top. They're also more likely to suffer from depression, heart disease and diabetes. Perhaps most devastating, the stress of poverty early in life can have consequences that last into adulthood.
Even those who later ascend economically may show persistent effects of early-life hardship. Scientists find them more prone to illness than those who were never poor. Becoming more affluent may lower the risk of disease by lessening the sense of helplessness and allowing greater access to healthful resources like exercise, more nutritious foods and greater social support; people are not absolutely condemned by their upbringing. But the effects of early-life stress also seem to linger, unfavorably molding our nervous systems and possibly even accelerating the rate at which we age.
Even those who become rich are more likely to be ill if they suffered hardship early on.
The British epidemiologist Michael Marmot calls the phenomenon "status syndrome." He's studied British civil servants who work in a rigid hierarchy for decades, and found that accounting for the usual suspects — smoking, diet and access to health care — won't completely abolish the effect. There's a direct relationship among health, well-being and one's place in the greater scheme. "The higher you are in the social hierarchy," he says, "the better your health."
Dr. Marmot blames a particular type of stress. It's not necessarily the strain of a chief executive facing a lengthy to-do list, or a well-to-do parent's agonizing over a child's prospects of acceptance to an elite school. Unlike those of lower rank, both the C.E.O. and the anxious parent have resources with which to address the problem. By definition, the poor have far fewer.
So the stress that kills, Dr. Marmot and others argue, is characterized by a lack of a sense of control over one's fate. Psychologists who study animals call one result of this type of strain "learned helplessness."
How they induce it is instructive. Indiscriminate electric shocks will send an animal into a kind of depression, blunting its ability to learn and remember. But if the animal has some control over how long the shocks last, it remains resilient. Pain and unpleasantness matter less than having some control over their duration.
Biologists explain the particulars as a fight-or-flight response — adrenaline pumping, heart rate elevated, blood pressure increased — that continues indefinitely. This reaction is necessary for escaping from lions, bears and muggers, but when activated chronically it wears the body ragged. And it's especially unhealthy for children, whose nervous systems are, by evolutionary design, malleable.
Scientists can, in fact, see the imprint of early-life stress decades later: there are more markers of inflammation in those who have experienced such hardship. Chronic inflammation increases the risk of degenerative diseases like heart disease and diabetes. Indeed, telomeres — the tips of our chromosomes — appear to be shorter among those who have experienced early-life adversity, which might be an indicator of accelerated aging. And scientists have found links, independent of current income, between early-life poverty and a higher risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and arthritis in adulthood.
"Early-life stress and the scar tissue that it leaves, with every passing bit of aging, gets harder and harder to reverse," says Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford. "You're never out of luck in terms of interventions, but the longer you wait, the more work you've got on your hands."
This research has cast new light on racial differences in longevity. In the United States, whites live longer on average by about five years than African-Americans. But a 2012 study by a Princeton researcher calculated that socioeconomic and demographic factors, not genetics, accounted for 70 to 80 percent of that difference. The single greatest contributor was income, which explained more than half the disparity. Other studies, meanwhile, suggest that the subjective experience of racism by African-Americans — a major stressor — appears to have effects on health. Reports of discrimination correlate with visceral fat accumulation in women, which increases the risk of metabolic syndrome (and thus the risk of heart disease and diabetes). In men, they correlate with high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch
Race aside, Bruce McEwen, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York, describes these relationships as one way that "poverty gets under the skin." He and others talk about the "biological embedding" of social status. Your parents' social standing and your stress level during early life change how your brain and body work, affecting your vulnerability to degenerative disease decades later. They may even alter your vulnerability to infection. In one study, scientists at Carnegie Mellon exposed volunteers to a common cold virus. Those who'd grown up poorer (measured by parental homeownership) not only resisted the virus less effectively, but also suffered more severe cold symptoms.
Peter Gianaros, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh, is interested in heart disease. He found that college students who viewed their parents as having low social status reacted more strongly to images of angry faces, as measured by the reactivity of the amygdala — an almond-shaped area of the brain that coordinates the fear response. Over a lifetime, he suspects, a harder, faster response to threats may contribute to the formation of arterial plaques. Dr. Gianaros also found that, among a group of 48 women followed for about 20 years, higher reports of stress correlated with a reduction in the volume of the hippocampus, a brain region important for learning and memory. In animals, chronic stress shrinks this area, and also hinders the ability to learn.
These associations raise profound questions about stress's role in hindering life achievement. Educational attainment and school performance have long been linked to socioeconomic class, and a divergence in skills is evident quite early in life. One oft-cited study suggests that 3-year-olds from professional families have more than twice the vocabulary of children from families on welfare. The disparity may stem in part from different intensities of parental stimulation; poorer parents may simply speak less with their children.
But Martha Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, has also noted differences not just in the words absorbed but in the abilities that may help youngsters learn. Among children, she's found, socioeconomic status correlates with the ability to pay attention and ignore distractions. Others have observed differences in the function of the prefrontal cortex, a region associated with planning and self-control, in poorer children.
"You don't need a neuroscientist to tell you that less stress, more education, more support of all types for young families are needed," Dr. Farah told me in an e-mail. "But seeing an image of the brain with specific regions highlighted where financial disadvantage results in less growth reframes the problems of childhood poverty as a public health issue, not just an equal opportunity issue."
Animal studies help dispel doubts that we're really seeing sickly and anxiety-prone individuals filter to the bottom of the socioeconomic heap. In primate experiments females of low standing are more likely to develop heart disease compared with their counterparts of higher standing. When eating junk food, they more rapidly progress toward heart disease. The lower a macaque is in her troop, the higher her genes involved in inflammation are cranked. High-ranking males even heal faster than their lower-ranking counterparts. Behavioral tendencies change as well. Low-ranking males are more likely to choose cocaine over food than higher-ranking individuals
Makes you wonder if the better health and longer life spans enjoyed by the so-called socialist countries of Northern Europe are due to the reduced stress in their lives. No worries about not being able to get health care. No worries about paying for education. No worries about retirement. No worries about becoming homeless.
Being poor is stressful but having developed coping skills early on is a must to survive being poor without addiction depression and psychological decay. I was raised very poor but mother instilled a great sense of self and taught me the fact that every day you have to get up and put your boots on and blame noone for your own ills. i would love to see a movement to assist new young parents...so many can fuck up a child because they themselves have no coping skills.
I agree on the Coping Skills.
For people who go from security to poverty (insecurity) I see the coping process as being a thousand times more difficult, than for people who are brought up poor.
When you are brought up poor, you learn from your parents how to get by. You learn HOW to survive with very little.
If poverty is an adult onset occurrence, there is no one to model behaviors on, or provide personal guidance on how to get by in those circumstances.
Though, since the Internet, it is easier to find ideas and methods to help make very little go farther.
Quote from: GoldenEst82 on July 30, 2013, 12:26:01 PM
I agree on the Coping Skills.
For people who go from security to poverty (insecurity) I see the coping process as being a thousand times more difficult, than for people who are brought up poor.
When you are brought up poor, you learn from your parents how to get by. You learn HOW to survive with very little.
If poverty is an adult onset occurrence, there is no one to model behaviors on, or provide personal guidance on how to get by in those circumstances.
Though, since the Internet, it is easier to find ideas and methods to help make very little go farther.
I think that a good deal of the problem is that some parents of poverty just don't have the ability to raise kids in poverty and show them how to "manage". The same can be said of wealthy parents who just don't have the ability to teach their kids that life is not just fancy cars and expensive drugs. There are extremes in all cases I do believe, but extreme poverty without the light of a way out and up is certainly a thing that impacts ones life in a powerful and stressful way. Unless someone has been "without" and I means really "without" they will never understand the struggle and hopelessness of that condition.
The struggle is not hopeless, until you start talking about "social mobility" from the very bottom, to the very top. (which is a rare thing indeed)
I grew up in Green Cove, (long enough ago to remember hwy17 as a two lane rd) and there is quite a lot of poverty out there, both generational and rural in causation.
I have personal experience with a variety of peers that came out of poor households, and some achieve more for themselves, and some don't.
The difference was not income, but the parents being willing to go out of their way to provide opportunities for their children. To break barriers to their being able to develop themselves, whether artistically, scholastically or physically.
In my experience- there was also another indicative difference- whether or not the kids were raised in an atmosphere of victimization. If their parents have a victim mentality, resilience or perseverance are not modeled, just big vocab words.
I think that last one is the most pernicious reason for poverty, And it seems to be the one least talked about.
I can see that victim mentality vs not having one. I'm not wealthy, but have not so far had to deal with being homeless or hungry. So I count myself fortunate and can't know what it would be like. Thank goodness indeed.
That said, I have a friend who can be counted among the poor. She currently lives on a Social Security check of about $300, some food stamps, and the occassional odd job that brings in $20 or $30. Yet, she is grateful. That's right, grateful. She humbles me. She has so little, and she's thankful for having a roof over her head and food. She said God has always taken care of her. Since I have known her the last few years, she at one point was living in a borrowed garage/workshop while looking for a place she could afford. And yet, while she was glad to find an apartment with a working bathroom and kitchen, she was at the time grateful for the garage to keep her out of the rain.
So, no attitude of entitlement or victimization. She carries with her an "attitude of gratitude" that is inspiring and humbling.
Quote from: Cheshire Cat on July 30, 2013, 05:06:49 PM
Quote from: GoldenEst82 on July 30, 2013, 12:26:01 PM
I agree on the Coping Skills.
For people who go from security to poverty (insecurity) I see the coping process as being a thousand times more difficult, than for people who are brought up poor.
When you are brought up poor, you learn from your parents how to get by. You learn HOW to survive with very little.
If poverty is an adult onset occurrence, there is no one to model behaviors on, or provide personal guidance on how to get by in those circumstances.
Though, since the Internet, it is easier to find ideas and methods to help make very little go farther.
I think that a good deal of the problem is that some parents of poverty just don't have the ability to raise kids in poverty and show them how to "manage". The same can be said of wealthy parents who just don't have the ability to teach their kids that life is not just fancy cars and expensive drugs. There are extremes in all cases I do believe, but extreme poverty without the light of a way out and up is certainly a thing that impacts ones life in a powerful and stressful way. Unless someone has been "without" and I means really "without" they will never understand the struggle and hopelessness of that condition.
+1000
Quote from: Debbie Thompson on July 31, 2013, 01:50:47 PM
I can see that victim mentality vs not having one. I'm not wealthy, but have not so far had to deal with being homeless or hungry. So I count myself fortunate and can't know what it would be like. Thank goodness indeed.
That said, I have a friend who can be counted among the poor. She currently lives on a Social Security check of about $300, some food stamps, and the occassional odd job that brings in $20 or $30. Yet, she is grateful. That's right, grateful. She humbles me. She has so little, and she's thankful for having a roof over her head and food. She said God has always taken care of her. Since I have known her the last few years, she at one point was living in a borrowed garage/workshop while looking for a place she could afford. And yet, while she was glad to find an apartment with a working bathroom and kitchen, she was at the time grateful for the garage to keep her out of the rain.
So, no attitude of entitlement or victimization. She carries with her an "attitude of gratitude" that is inspiring and humbling.
+1001 ;)