Why is breaking the cycle of poverty so incredibly difficult?
If you or your loved ones have ever lived in poverty, you know that getting to a stable financial place can feel impossible.
But did you know there are scientific explanations for why it’s so hard?
Dr Elisabeth Babcock, former CEO of Economic Mobility Pathways (EMpath), conducted a comprehensive study of poverty and how it affects the brain, which was very intriguing to us here at Raise Up Families.
As we work with impoverished people in Houston, TX, our goal is to understand how poverty works so we can give people real, lasting solutions for living a better life on their own terms.
And that includes studying how poverty affects the brain!
If you’re as intrigued by the research as we are, follow along for an overview of Babcock’s fascinating discoveries.
Here’s a simple fact:
Achieving financial stability is never as simple as being willing to work and finding a job.
To acquire and keep a well-paying job, you need a skillset that relies heavily on specific brain functions. For example, you’ll need to be able to identify problems, figure out how to fix them, think through the step-by-step tasks necessary to fix these problems, and execute your plans. These skills are developed in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.
At the same time, to be a competent worker, you’ll need to regulate your emotions to keep yourself from lashing out when you’re frustrated. Emotion regulation is controlled by the brain’s limbic system.
Because these brain skills are crucial for finding and retaining a well-paying job, we need to consider brain function when we work to alleviate poverty in our own lives, the lives of our loved ones, or others in our community.
Why do different people’s brains function differently? Is it all a matter of genetics? Or does one’s environment affect how their brain develops?
Research shows that brain development is heavily influenced by one's environment. This includes things like poor nutrition and exposure to toxins, as well as exposure to violence and high-stress situations. These things negatively impact brain development and are also more prevalent in impoverished communities.
Therefore, poverty can negatively impact brain development.
Babcock’s research focuses on the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. These parts of the brain are crucial for keeping and maintaining a job, but they’re also negatively impacted by poverty.
How Stress and Fear Affect the Limbic System
Babcock’s research explains that when you’re stressed or fearful, your body responds by releasing dozens of hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, which causes a fight-or-flight response.
For example, if you are walking in the woods and see a bear, the fear and stress of the situation triggers you to either run away or fight the bear. In either case, the rush of hormones serves a purpose and acts to preserve the body.
However, our bodies aren’t designed to withstand a constant flood of those hormones. So when people are in situations where they’re constantly stressed and fearful, the adrenalin, cortisol, and other hormones can actually damage their body, including their brain function.
In particular, it has a negative effect on the limbic system, which regulates emotion. It can cause people to be hypersensitive to danger at all times, which can result in exaggerated emotional responses, temper flare-ups, and a reputation as someone who’s “looking for trouble.”
This hypersensitivity can make individuals seem “difficult to work with” and, thus, may result in their inability to keep a job.
How Unpredictability Affects Executive Function Skills
Executive function skills are a set of skills that are necessary for planning and attaining goals. These include:
When children are raised in mentally stimulating, stable environments where they have opportunities to practice executive function skills, their brains develop a rich network of neural pathways, and they go on to have robust executive function skills as adults.
However, if children live in chaotic, unpredictable environments, multiple factors disrupt those neural pathways and keep them from developing good executive function skills. Those factors include:
This is one reason that poverty tends to be generational. For a more detailed look at generational poverty, check out our blog post about generational poverty.
Predicting Poverty and Brain Function
It’s important to note that not everyone who grows up in poverty experiences the same types of brain damage.
First, since everyone is different and no one has the same mixture of environment and genetics, brain function is tough to predict, especially based on income alone.
Second, although things like stress, fear, and unpredictability are highly correlated with poverty, not every impoverished person lives in the same level of chaos. Someone may be very poor, yet have a sense of stability and safety through their church, family, and community that prevents the sorts of brain damage discussed in this article.
It’s also important to note that many people live very successful lives despite struggling with executive function skills.
The good news for anyone suffering from poverty-related brain damage is that our brains are remarkable organs. They can grow, adapt, and change, even in adulthood. This phenomenon is known as “brain plasticity” or “neuroplasticity.”
Our brains are most changeable during childhood, when they’re constantly building robust neural networks, but adult brains are able to adapt as well. Research on how to develop executive function skills in adulthood is still ongoing, but it involves stability and practice, just like in childhood.
If you’re working to alleviate poverty in your community, you may wonder how you can use brain science to facilitate your efforts.
Step 1: Educate your staff
Before you and your staff can implement policies that productively move people out of poverty and into reliable, well-paying jobs, you must understand how poverty affects the brain. That’s why staying up-to-date on the latest research is the first step.
Step 2: Provide clear, straightforward, repetitive communication
Since you’re working with people who may struggle with executive functioning skills, keep communication clear and concise. Deliver information through multiple channels, such as telling them orally, giving them written documents, and working to incorporate pictures, video, and sound into your communication if you can.
Written documents should be easy to follow with no jargon, superfluous information, or complicated charts, graphs, and tables.
Step 3: Cultivate the right environment
Keep your environment warm, inviting, and free of distractions.
Step 4: Meet basic needs
If the person you’re trying to help is in constant fear or stress, they won’t have the emotional bandwidth to complete your program. If they’re in an abusive situation, on the brink of starvation, or getting evicted, do what it takes to get them to a more stable place before you do anything else.
Remember: People in poverty have a lot to juggle, so be extremely mindful of their time. The more of their time you take up, the less likely it is that they’ll be able to continue the program.
Step 5: Instill a sense of agency
You can only help someone out of poverty if they want to escape poverty. If they’ve had a chaotic, out-of-control life with no agency over anything that happened to them, they might not realize they have any power to work toward a different life.
If the person you’re trying to help lacks a sense of agency, focus on empowerment and giving them choices because that’s what will develop that crucial sense of agency.
Step 6: Help with organization and multi-step processes
If you’re helping people with executive function challenges, they’ll likely struggle to complete a program involving organization, deadlines, schedules, and multi-step processes.
Do as much as you can to keep the process simple and to help participants by giving reminders, prompts, and organizational tools. Help participants break complex processes into easy, measurable tasks and provide support and constructive feedback at every step.
Step 7: Allow participants to fail and try again
If you’re trying to help people with limited executive functioning skills, there’s a high possibility that they won’t complete your program on the first try.
But research shows that it’s good for our brains to try multiple times before succeeding. Design your program so that participants can restart and complete it even if they’ve failed or dropped out in the past.
Step 8: Coach clients to improve executive functions
Finally, if participants have enough stability and sense of agency to move forward, work on coaching them and developing their executive function skills. Participants should regularly practice new routines, habits, and behaviors to develop neural connections.
At Raise Up Families, our goal is to help families achieve a more stable life. That’s why we work to understand how poverty affects the brain—so we can design programs that work with the real limitations that people in poverty experience.
If you or your loved ones are living in the Houston area and experiencing financial hardship, we’re here for you. Check out our programs and resources to see what we offer and how we can effectively partner with you for a better life for you and your children. We’ve also written a detailed blog post about how our intervention model works.
To support Raise Up Families, you can donate on our website. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email us!
Together, let’s work to help families in poverty achieve a brighter future for their children.
