Child poverty ‘has more impact on development than parenting skills’

Analysis of pupils test results has found that a strong link between children who have lived in poverty throughout their life and low attainment.

The study is believed to be the first of its kind to examine the impact of persistent poverty on children’s cognitive development.

Its authors, Professor Andy Dickerson and Dr Gurleen Popli of Sheffield University’s Department of Economics analysed data on around 8,000 members of the Millennium Cohort Study, which has been following the lives of children born in 2000-01.

The researchers looked at whether the children were in poverty at the ages of nine months, three, five and seven. Children were said to be in persistent poverty if their families were poor at the current and all previous surveys.

They then estimated the effect of poverty on the children’s scores in tests taken at ages of three, five and seven, which included vocabulary, pattern construction, picture recognition and reading.

The researchers found that poverty – especially persistent poverty – has a greater impact on cognitive development than factors like whether or not parents read to their children, take them to the library, or help them with reading, writing and maths.

The study also shows that being poor can adversely affect parents’ ability to take an active role in their children’s learning, which further affects their scores.

“Much is made of the importance of parenting for children’s cognitive development, and our study supports these claims,” the researchers says.

“But importantly, our analysis shows that low income has a two-fold effect on children’s ability: It has an effect on children regardless of anything their parents do, but it also has an impact on parenting itself.”

Across early childhood, persistent poverty is worse for children’s cognitive development than intermittent poverty. For children who had been poor at only one point since birth, it was being born into poverty that had the most detrimental effects on cognitive development, whereas recent episodes of poverty had the least impact.