The Rural Blog reports on a study that ties poverty to difficulties in learning:
A new theory, based on studies matching stress-hormone levels to behavioral and school readiness among children living in poverty, holds that such children have impaired learning abilities partly because of the “stresses of poverty,” including crowded conditions, financial worry and lack of adequate child care.
This is an interesting premise. I wonder how they segregate poverty as the cause of the discounted abilities or is poverty a symptom of something else that lessens abilities. For instance, you are much more likely to be in poverty if you are in a single parent home. Are you more likely to struggle in your studies if you live in a one-parent family? I’m sure there exceptions to every generalization.