Poverty, Cumulative Risk, and Chronic Stress

Early childhood poverty appears to set individuals on trajecto-ries of physical (Adler & Rehkopf, 2008; Shonkoff, Boyce, & McEwen, 2009) and psychological disorder (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Grant et al., 2003). In the study reported here, we examined whether poverty from birth to age 9 predicted elevated allostatic load, a marker of chronic physiological stress, in 17-year-olds. Finding that it did, we then tested whether this poverty-related allostatic load was mediated by elevated cumulative risk exposure at age 13