Childhood poverty: causes, effects, and interventions

Childhood Poverty

There has been a correlation established between childhood poverty and social economic status and adult health problems (Miller & Chen, 2013). Despite there being evidence for the correlation, the mechanisms that contribute to the association is not entirely clear. Scientists have previously believed that late in life diseases could be attributable to simply aging. However, a new paradigm is emerging that has begun to view these conditions as more of a cumulative process that can begin early in life. Yet to view this as more of a cumulative process that begins at an early age there must be some kind of biological explanation of how the effects of poverty or low socio-economic status is transmitted through the body. Furthermore, the effects of childhood poverty seem independent of future socioeconomic attainment which seems to indicate that they effects of low socioeconomic status are not reversible in some aspects.

Some have argued that these findings can be attributed to "risky genes." That is those with low socio economic status is the products of a genetic composition that predisposes them to their conditions. Others have speculated that childhood illnesses can place a heavy financial burden on the family which makes it difficult for them to improve their living conditions financially or otherwise. The authors of this article suggest that a mechanistic understanding of the correlation is possible through the biological embedding model. The model articulates how these conditions enable disadvantage to become embedded in the function of immune cells (Miller & Chen, 2013). There is some evidence to suggest that social and physical pollutants can be programmed into cells that persist across a person's entire lifespan. These traits are the starting points for a self-promoting cycle of social difficulties, marked by conflictual, unsupportive interactions which all have a cumulative effect.

The authors conclude that an early socio economic disadvantage can work, through a variety of mechanisms, to program a pro-inflammatory phenotype that manifests through monocytes and macrophages and their response to certain external signals. There was a study conduct that involved individuals that were adults which were currently at about the same economic status. However, half of these individuals were raised in a low socio economic statuses while the other half development in a higher bracket. The test showed that the bodies of the two categories responded to various microbial products; with the lower SES responding more aggressively and the high SES lower.