We knew that the economic situation of the family in which one grows up affects brain development. Now a study published on Nature Mental Health discovered that it would not only be the poverty of the individual that would have a lasting impact, but also the inequalities present in the society in which they live: the brains of children raised in areas with greater social inequalities in fact show structural changes linked to worse mental health.
WHERE INEQUALITIES ARE CONCENTRATED. The study analyzed data from more than 10,000 9- and 10-year-old US children. The researchers measured the fairness of the distribution of wealth in different areas, giving a score from 0 to 10. Most of the areas involved in the research were rated with a 5: the states with greater inequality in the distribution of wealth were New York, Connecticut, California and Florida, while the most equal were Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont.
Stress and reduced cortex. Brain scans showed that children living in areas with higher levels of social inequality had a smaller surface area of the cortex (the outer part of the brain that plays a key role in controlling major cognitive abilities) and altered connections between different regions of the brain.
According to scientists, living in an unequal society would amplify anxiety and comparison with others, altering levels of cortisol, a hormone linked to stress. All this would put pressure on the brain and other organs, and could explain alterations in neurocognitive development.
Long-term impact. To understand whether these alterations in neurological development affected the future mental health of the children, they subjected them to questionnaires aimed at identifying symptoms such as depression and anxiety six and eighteen months after the brain scans, noting that those who had lived in societies with an unequal distribution of wealth had far worse mental health than those who had grown up in more equal societies.
What was discovered is interesting above all because, for the first time, it highlights the responsibilities of society, and not just of the family: “Both children from wealthy families and those from low-income families showed altered neurological development, and we found that this has a lasting impact on well-being”, comments Divyangana Rakesh, one of the authors. “Reducing inequalities is not just an economic issue, but a public health imperative,” concludes Kate Picket, another of the authors.
