Decades of scientific research have suggested that a child’s early life experience has the power to profoundly affect their learning. One of the most predictive factors is socioeconomic status (SES), which recent research has honed in on, especially as it pertains to literacy. Numerous studies have shown that children who grow up in more impoverished environments are more likely to have problems with focus, control, memory, and language skills — all issues that can make it harder for a child to learn how to read.

To date, it’s been difficult for researchers to suss out exactly why or how these observed differences in academic performance came to be. Houston says that children from lower SES backgrounds may be exposed to a variety of factors that can get in the way of learning: more stress, less quality time with parents, fewer opportunities for educational enrichment, poor nutrition, and less sleep, just to name a few. Not to mention, the majority of low-income homes — a staggering 61% — don’t have any books for their children.

In scanning the brains of 60 typically developing children from a variety of backgrounds, Houston and colleagues found that children who hailed from lower SES environments showed dramatic changes in cortical volume for the amygdala, a region linked to stress and emotional processing, as well as the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. Moreover, the group discovered that the different components that make up SES had different effects on the different brain changes.

Read the full article about growing up in poverty by Kayt Sukel at GOOD Magazine.