How does the financial situation of the family affect the fate of the child
'13.11.2021'
Source: RIA News
If earlier in the domestic culture poverty was perceived as a virtue, today more than half of Russians do not feel sympathy for people with low incomes, believing that they themselves have created problems for themselves. And this is a predominantly "Western" style of attitude towards money and its absence. Does the financial situation really depend on the character of the person or innate personality traits - in the material RIA News.
Poverty is inherited
In 1967, the American psychologist Martin Seligman suggested that poverty can be inherited, since the successes and failures of an adult are highly dependent on the experience experienced in childhood. He cited the results of an experiment in which dogs, for a long time exposed to light but sensitive current shocks, did not leave the cage, even if the door was left open. Animals that did not experience the effects of electricity or learned to turn it off by pressing their noses on a special panel, escaped from a dangerous enclosure at the first opportunity.
The scientist called it the phenomenon of acquired helplessness and argued that people also have it, so children of poor parents often cannot boast of high incomes themselves. Half a century later, his assumptions were confirmed by Canadian physiologists. After examining the 103 data of subjects aged from 25 to 40 years, the researchers found that the level of well-being in the first five years of life is able to determine the future fate of a person.
The fact is that those who grew up in poor families had a lot of stress hormone in the body - cortisol, which is involved in the formation of protective reactions in response to external threats.
Normally, a sharp increase in the content of this hormone mobilizes the resources of the body to save lives, when it is necessary to run away from the pursuers or fight with the enemy. However, if a high concentration of cortisol is maintained at all times, the person becomes more cautious. Therefore, the poor are less inclined to take risks than their rich peers.
In addition, according to a study of neurogenetics from Duke University (USA), people from poor families have changed the expression of the SLC6A4 gene, which is responsible for the distribution of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. This, in turn, increases the activity of the amygdala, which is involved in responding to stressful situations. Scientists have found that the special activity of this area of the brain is associated with the risk of developing depression and a number of other mental disorders.
The rich are smarter, the poor are kinder
People from affluent families also have slight changes in the structure of the brain. Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have shown that rich children have a thicker cortex in the parietal and temporal areas responsible for visual perception and participating in thinking processes as well as long-term memory. Both factors directly correlate with high performance and incomes of parents. Moreover, scientists have calculated that differences in the structure of the brain begin with more than 44-percent gap in household income.
This is confirmed by numerous studies that demonstrate that the performance of schoolchildren and students from poor families is lower on average than that of people from the middle class and the offspring of wealthy parents.
It is believed that such differences in the anatomy of the brain are mainly associated with environmental factors. In animals it is shown that the environment that promotes the intellectual development and training of the calf affects brain development.
On the other hand, children from wealthy families have less developed parasympathetic nervous system, the high activity of which indicates a tendency to altruism and self-sacrifice. In an experiment by American psychologists, four-year-old kids who received coins from 20 scientists were asked to share them with their sick peers. Children from families with low socioeconomic status were more willing to donate money to those in need, and at all stages of the experiment they had an increased level of parasympathetic nervous system tone. Children of wealthy parents preferred not to share with anyone - the higher the family income, the less coins they gave to their peers in need.
Poverty and longevity
Influence of income and life expectancy. In the US, wealthy men live on average about 15 for longer, women for nearly a decade. The situation is similar in England, where the average life expectancy of rich men and women is 83,6 and 86,7, respectively, and the poor are 74 and 78,8, respectively.
And this gap will only widen, the international group of scientists is sure.
In the United States over the past 14 years, life expectancy has increased by 2,34 for men and 2,91 for women, representing five percent of the richest people in the country. For five percent of the poorest Americans, these figures are just 0,32 and 0,4.
In most of these studies, life expectancy is correlated with poor nutrition and a person's attitude to their own health. So, British researchers found that the poor often die from lung cancer, coronary heart disease and respiratory infections. Mortality for these reasons in the poor and rich areas of England differs 2,5-3,3 times. At the same time, people with high incomes and those who live below the poverty line equally often die from breast, prostate and blood cancer.
