Family Income, Parental Education and Brain Structure in Children and Adolescents

By Kimberly G Noble, Suzanne M. Houston, N. Brito, H. Bartsch, E. Kan, J. Kuperman, N. Akshoomoff, D. Amaral, C. Bloss, Ondrej Libiger and 15 more. Nature Neuroscience, 2015

1,261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Socioeconomic disparities are associated with differences in cognitive development. The extent to which this translates to disparities in brain structure is unclear. We investigated relationships between socioeconomic factors and brain morphometry, independently of genetic ancestry, among a cohort of 1,099 typically developing individuals between 3 and 20 years of age. Income was logarithmically associated with brain surface area. Among children from lower income families, small differences in income were associated with relatively large differences in surface area, whereas, among children from higher income families, similar income increments were associated with smaller differences in surface area. These relationships were most prominent in regions supporting language, reading, executive functions and spatial skills; surface area mediated socioeconomic differences in certain neurocognitive abilities. These data imply that income relates most strongly to brain structure among the most disadvantaged children.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/947d29be349352588096a970cc0fb600c4ac4f08

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Polygenic Influence on Educational Attainment: New evidence from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (2015, background): “For example, recent research suggests that chronic poverty plays a role in shaping brain structure (Noble et al., 2015).”
Poverty, depression, and anxiety: Causal evidence and mechanisms (2020, background): “Such shocks can profoundly affect brain development, cognitive ability, andmental health in adolescence and adulthood (58, 59).”
Nurturing Nature: How Brain Development Is Inherently Social and Emotional, and What This Means for Education (2019, background): “Throughout life, and to an extraordinary degree in young people, the brain develops in relation to opportunities to engage actively and safely with rich and meaningful environments, social relationships and emotions, and socially transmitted ideas and information (Chan et al., 2018; Diamond, 2010; F”
Influence of family socioeconomic status on IQ, language, memory and executive functions of Brazilian children (2016, background): “Research in animals and humans show that early malnutrition , stress, lack of stimulation and poor social interaction can affect the structure and functioning of the brain, with long lasting cognitive and emotional effects (Hackman et al. 2010; Noble et al. 2015).”
Recruiting the ABCD sample: Design considerations and procedures (2018, positive): “Similarly, there is evidence that SES can have substantial effects on neurodevelopment (Noble et al., 2015).”
Brain Activity of Young Children in Bangladesh Is Associated With Biopsychosocial Conditions at the Individual‐, Family‐, and Household‐Level (2026, unknown): “Adverse experiences in early life in the form of suboptimal nurturing care have been shown to impact children's development, including long term impacts on brain structure and function (Miguel et al. 2019; Noble et al. 2015; Shonkoff et al. 2017).”
The impact of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on child brain activity: A 4-year follow-up (2026, unknown): “This potential mechanism has been supported by studies showing associations between household income and brain structure and function (McDermott et al., 2019; Noble et al., 2015; Sandre et al., 2024; Tomalski et al., 2013; Troller-Renfree et al., 2022).”