Influence of Poverty on Human Development

One of the issues debated on about human development is the nature versus nurture debate. Nature is when our behaviors are determined by our inherited genetic material structure while Nurture is when our behavior is determined by our surroundings, our life experiences, our upbringings, and other environmental factors. The environment of each individual plays a very impactful role in their physical, cognitive, and emotional development. Poverty is the deprivation of common necessities of life thus people in this kind of environment will be affected physically, cognitively, and emotionally during the individual’s development.

Poverty deprives children in many ways. According to annualreviews.org, poverty has been shown to negatively influence child health and development, to which I agree to because poverty means that the parents cannot afford the proper resources to raise the child. The necessities, such as food, milk, diapers, clothing, shelter and etc. to raise the child and for the child to survive healthily is difficult for the parents to provide. Personally, being from a third world country, I have seen families in poverty living under bridges, next to lakes and next to the highway, and walking around begging for food while carrying their baby or babies on their back. Families in poverty always need to beg for some food in order to survive and feed their babies. Even if they feed the child with a piece of something, that does not mean they have gotten the nutrients they need. Additionally, our bodies are mostly made up of water therefore it is important that we drink tons of water. Unfortunately, just like how it is with finding food, it’s also tough to look for drinking water that has not been contaminated or that is clean enough to drink. The child is not eating enough and its health is at risk. Lack of food and milk means lack of vitamins vital for the baby’s physical growth and strength. Poverty also affects a child’s cognitive development. According to psychologicalscience.org, “People who deal with stressors such as low family income, discrimination, limited access to health care, exposure to crime, and other conditions of low SES are highly susceptible to physical and mental disorders, low educational attainment, and low IQ scores”, to which I totally agree with because being in a low to no income family means no programs that can help the child with developing cognitive skills. Also, growing up with such situations make the child feel inferior, they will most likely have low self-esteem compared to other kids. They are also more exposed to crimes and I believe this will cause them to think violently especially because all they know is about surviving so they will most likely use violence in order to survive. However, even though poverty affects physical and cognitive developments negatively, it’s a different story for the child’s emotional development. I believe that poverty’s hardships bring the child close to the parents - it makes both parents focus on child. Everything they do and they decide to do is for the child. The child and its health are always their number one priority, everything else comes after the child. I say this because I have always noticed that rich parents tend to focus with their jobs to make more money and leaves their children to their nanny. Unlike rich families, families living in poverty are much closer to the child emotionally.

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Even though indirectly, poverty still affects the individual during conception through the mother. During pregnancy, it is best if the mother stays healthy by eating healthy, by being stress free, by staying somewhat physically active. However, for people in poverty, those are extremely hard to achieve due to all the stress and worries they have caused by their unfortunate situation. The mother and the family usually have to go through a lot of walking, trying to beg people for some money or for their leftovers so they could feed the baby inside the mother. They are usually homeless or live somewhere that does not really provide them the protection or shelter they need. These set of circumstances lead to a lot of stress. They are constantly worrying about survival and for providing. An individual in such situation lives a difficult life thus an individual in conception is affected by poverty.

Living in poverty means that you do not have all the necessities you need as a child and you do not have access to all the resources to learn. Poverty is correlated to malnutrition because as a child living in poverty, it is challenging to be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner or even just a meal. It takes a lot of their time and effort just to have someone else’s leftover or to be able to find food that are still edible. They have to beg around for very little to no food and food is not always guaranteed. There will be days in which they have food for all three meals, there will be days in which they barely have food for all of them in the family, and days in which they have nothing at all - it’s tough. In addition to that, even with the little food they got, they are never fulfilled with the nutrients they need specifically the child’s needs especially at this stage, they need much more nutrients to be able to develop. A child’s development is very similar to a flower blooming. Just like how a flower needs to be watered and some sunlight, a child needs food and water to develop healthily. Similarly, it is also difficult to obtain some kind of education level. Some has little to no access to an education program and some don’t have the time as they have to focus on their survival. When I was still in the Philippines, I attended a private Catholic school and it cost my parents tons of money but I’ve seen public schools that the government puts money into. The tuition fees and books would be free but unlike how it is in the United States and maybe other countries, public schools in the Philippines still require students to follow their rules with uniforms thus even if it is free to get in the school, some people living in poverty would choose not to as they cannot afford such uniforms when they are already stressing with feeding their children. Furthermore, even with attending a public school, they still are more likely to do poorly in school because schools as such often lack resources and are not academically challenging.

Living in poverty means being extremely poor and lacking all resources an individual may need in life. Living in such an environment will affect a child’s development physically, cognitively and emotionally. A child needs nutrient-dense food, vitamins, as well as water to physically develop strongly and healthily. Cognitively, a child will be learning differently compared to children in prosperous families. A child in poverty might catch on to being violent as they grow exposed to crimes and discrimination while a child in a rich family will be in kid programs that will teach them learning skills such as attention, memory, and thinking. Physically and cognitively, poverty affects a child’s development negatively however, emotionally, poverty affects children positively, especially in relations with family relatives because all their sufferings bring them together unlike rich parents who live their children to their nannies all the time to work and bring money. Poverty affects an individual’s development both negatively and positively but there is no doubt that an individual’s environment growing up is a big factor if not the main, for an individual’s behavior.

References

1. Aber, J. Lawrence. ‘The Effects of Poverty on Child Health and Development’. Annual Reviews, May 1997, https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.18.1.463
2. Sleek, Scott. ‘How Poverty Affects the Brain and Behavior’. Association For Psychological Science, 31 August 2015, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/how-poverty-affects-the-brain-and-behavior