Associations of family income with cognition and brain structure in USA children: prevention implications

Abstract

Poverty, as assessed by several socioeconomic (SES) factors, has been linked to worse cognitive performance and reduced cortical brain volumes in children. However, the relative contributions of the various SES factors on brain development and the mediating effects between cognition and brain morphometry have not been investigated. Here we used cross-sectional data from the ABCD Study to evaluate associations among various SES and demographic factors, brain morphometrics, and cognition and their reproducibility in two independent subsamples of 3892 children. Among the SES factors, family income (FI) best explained individual differences in cognitive test scores (stronger for crystallized than for fluid cognition), cortical volume (CV), and thickness (CT). Other SES factors that showed significant associations with cognition and brain morphometrics included parental education and neighborhood deprivation, but when controlling for FI, their effect sizes were negligible and their regional brain patterns were not reproducible. Mediation analyses showed that cognitive scores, which we used as surrogate markers of the children’s level of cognitive stimulation, partially mediated the association of FI and CT, whereas the mediations of brain morphometrics on the association of FI and cognition were not significant. These results suggest that lack of supportive/educational stimulation in children from low-income families might drive the reduced CV and CT. Thus, strategies to enhance parental supportive stimulation and the quality of education for children in low-income families could help counteract the negative effects of poverty on children’s brain development.

The Exposome and its Associations with Broad Mental and Physical Health Measures in Early Adolescence

“…Recent ABCD studies have provided proof-of-concept for brain-behavior-environment analyses that map neural parameters to multiple exposures 75, 76 , and for the potential to use a subset of environmental risk factors to explain variance in mental health outcomes 77 . In addition, several studies have reported associations of specific exposures with cognition and neuroimaging parameters in ABCD data (e.g., household income 42 , neighborhood disadvantage 78 , lead exposure 41 ). The studies mentioned above all used baseline ABCD data, which does not include key environmental exposures.…”

“…For example, since parental factors play a major role in childhood development, we included parental psychopathology in our analyses, even though we acknowledge that genetic contributions of parental psychopathology also exist in the child. Furthermore, because we wanted to investigate the utility of applying an exposome framework, we excluded two pivotal measures commonly used to estimate environment, including in previous ABCD Study research: household income 40,41 and parental education 42 . This choice allowed us (1) to test the "added value" of the exposome scores to explain variance in health outcomes over and above commonly used proxies of environment known to associate with developmental outcomes 43 , including in ABCD Study 41 ; and (2) to validate the exposome scores using "classic" indicators of socioeconomic environment.…”

Racism-Related Diminished Returns of Socioeconomic Status on Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development

“…In a cross-sectional study examining 11,875 children aged 9 to 10 years old, Taylor et al found that neighborhood poverty was linked to differences in the volume of prefrontal and hippocampal areas, and also affected performance on cognitive tests (R. L. Taylor, Cooper, Jackson, & Barch, 2020) (Amso, 2020). Tomasi and Volkow found cognitive family SES and health behavior variables significantly correlates with family income, cortical volume, and cortical thickness, suggesting that the lack of emotional and educational support/education children from low-income families might experience may result in reduced cortical volume and cortical thickness (Tomasi & Volkow, 2021). Interestingly, Krogsrud et al found cortex thickness was not mediated by genetics nor socioeconomic status (Krogsrud et al, 2021).…”

The Effect of Socioeconomic Disparities on Prefrontal Activation in Initiating Joint Attention: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Evidence From Two Socioeconomic Status Groups

“…Measurement of childhood SES is complex, and the most common indicators are family income, parental education, and parental occupation (McLoyd, 1998). Some scientists have just investigated the association between SES measures and brain development recently (Judd et al, 2020;Noble and Giebler, 2020;Tomasi and Volkow, 2021). Typical results include that: (i) Children from low income families may have a lower frontal, temporal, and hippocampal volume, as well as smaller brain surface area; (ii) Children from family with low parental education may have a lower cortical thickness in frontal areas; and (iii) Higher parental education level may be associated with significantly increased volume in the fetal white matter, deep gray matter, and brainstem.…”