Early-childhood poverty and adult attainment, behavior, and health

This article assesses the consequences of poverty between a child’s prenatal year and 5th birthday for several adult achievement, health, and behavior outcomes, measured as late as age 37. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1,589) and controlling for economic conditions in middle childhood and adoles-cence, as well as demographic conditions at the time of the birth, findings indicate statistically significant and, in some cases, quantitatively large detrimental effects of early poverty on a number of attainment-related out-comes (adult earnings and work hours). Early-childhood poverty was not associated with such behavioral measures as out-of-wedlock childbearing and arrests. Most of the adult earnings effects appear to operate through early poverty’s association with adult work hours. Some 4.2 million infants, toddlers, and preschoolers lived in poverty in the United States in 2007. For a single mother with two children, this meant that total income was less than $16,705; many poor families had income well below that amount (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). Poverty and its attendant stressors have the potential to shape the neuro