Childhood poverty can cause psychological damage during adulthood, says study

New York: A new study has found that childhood poverty can affect adulthood psychologically.

It is said that people with an impoverished lifestyle in childhood are more likely to suffer significant psychological damage during adulthood.

The study revealed that impoverished children had more anti-social conduct such as aggression and bullying and increased feeling of helplessness, than kids from middle-income backgrounds.

These kids also have more chronic physiological stress and more deficits in short-term spatial memory.

Lead author Gary Evans, Professor and child psychologist at the Cornell University in New York, US, 'What this means is, if you're born poor, you're on a trajectory to have more of these kinds of psychological problems'.

The reason is stress, researchers said.

Evans said, "With poverty, you're exposed to lots of stress. Everybody has stress, but low-income families, low-income children, have a lot more of it".

"And the parents are also under a lot of stress. So for kids, there is a cumulative risk exposure", he added.

For the study, Evans tracked 341 participants over a 15-year period, and tested them at ages 9, 13, 17 and 24.

The results revealed that the adults who grew up in poverty had a diminished ability to recall the sequences, tend to be more helpless and had the tendency to give up easily as well as had a higher level of chronic physical stress throughout childhood and into adulthood.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(With IANS inputs)