Previous research has suggested that prolonged poverty during childhood may lead to numerous psychological and behavioral problems, such as low cognitive achievement, depression and low self-esteem.

However, there are few data on the effect of poverty on non-cognitive outcomes in adolescence.

Ms Bridget Goosby, from Penn State University, Pennsylvania, used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1994 to determine the degree to which differing poverty experiences affect the global self-worth of young adolescents.

Employment, education, training and family experiences were assessed from interviews with mothers between the ages of 14 and 21 beginning in 1979. An oversample of low-income mothers was included.

Regression analysis was carried out on 2,855 African American and white adolescents aged between 10 and 14. Self-esteem was measured using the Self-Perception for Children scale.

Ms Goosby found that poverty in childhood influenced later psychological outcomes in early adolescence. These effects were mediated by the mother’s mental health and behavior.

“Maternal warmth is positively associated with adolescent self-worth, suggesting that, as maternal warmth increases, adolescent self-worth increases as well,” Ms Goosby said.

She believes education also has a role because mothers with more education tended to have children with higher levels of self-worth.

“This may illustrate that mothers with higher levels of education are more likely to have the resources and time to devote to the emotional nurturance of their children because of the correlation of education and income,” she noted.

The study also found that poverty had a greater effect on depression and anxiety in white adolescents than in African American adolescents, possibly because poor white children were more likely to live in socioeconomically mixed areas.

Ms Goosby concluded that maternal mental health and warmth towards their children has an important role in buffering the impact of poverty during early adolescence.

“Not receiving the emotional and developmental resources from parents due to the strain of economic hardship could lead to developmental difficulties in later childhood, such as lower levels of competence and self-esteem, or poor academic performance,” she added.

Source: Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, August 16-19, 2002

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