Poverty saps the brain: US-India study
From a shopping mall in New Jersey to the farm fields of India,
experiments show that poverty saps people’s brainpower and may lower IQ
by 13 points, scientists said.
The findings in the US journal Science suggest that being poor can drain
a person’s mental resources, leaving him or her less capable of
focusing on other things, like solving problems and controlling
impulses.
“Because you have all these other things on your mind, you have less
mind to give to everything else,” said co-author Sendhil Mullainathan, a
Harvard University economist.
Rather than blaming poverty on the individual or the environment, the
study suggests that the state of being poor exerts the same effect as
losing a full night’s sleep or having lower intelligence.
“We’re arguing that being poor can impact cognitive functioning, which
hinders individuals’ ability to make good decisions and can cause
further poverty,” said co-author Jiaying Zhao, a professor at the
University of British Columbia.
Researchers sampled some 400 people with incomes ranging from $ 20,000 to $ 70,000 at a shopping mall in New Jersey.
The shoppers were asked how they would respond to a hypothetical
scenario in which their car had broken down and would cost a certain
amount to fix.
The question was meant to evoke thoughts of a person’s own monetary
condition. Some shoppers were told the fix would cost $ 150, others were
told $ 1,500.
Then they were given a series of cognitive and impulse control exercises
to complete, such as putting shapes in order or clicking on the correct
side of a computer screen.
The people whose incomes were on the lower end of the scale did the
worst when they were told the cost of the hypothetical repair was
higher.
When they were thinking about a cheaper, $ 150 repair, they performed as well as the people with higher incomes.
“These pressures create a salient concern in the mind and draw mental
resources to the problem itself. This means we are unable to focus on
other things in life that need our attention,” said Zhao.
Researchers also gave tests to 464 sugar cane farmers in India, both
before their once-yearly harvest when they were short on money and after
the harvest when they had moresource :
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