(Press-News.org) Athens, Ga. – Decades of research show people born into poverty are likely to continue to live that way as adults. But one University of Georgia researcher has found a way out—education.
Children reared in disadvantaged communities and poor families earn less money and experience more health problems as adults than do children raised without adversity, according to Kandauda Wickrama, a professor of human development and life science in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
"Early adverse life experiences, such as community or family poverty, have a detrimental effect on young adults' social economy attainment—income, assets and job quality," said Wickrama. "Living in an adverse environment during childhood has a persistent, long-term affect on young adults. Although you can change the place where you live, clearly early adverse experiences are under your skin."
Wickrama's research, published in the April issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, found the level of educational achievement moderates the persistent influences of earlier life experiences on young adults' socioeconomic attainment.
According to the research, community poverty, African-American and Mexican-American ethnic status and being female negatively influenced the level of young adults' assets significantly, while Asian and Cuban ethnic status, family income, consistently married parents and self-esteem positively influenced the level of young adults' earnings significantly.
Results show Asian and Cuban youth achieve higher levels of income, assets and job quality in young adulthood than Caucasian youth regardless of their community and family characteristics.
"Our results show that not all racial/ethnic minority groups are disadvantaged when compared to Caucasians," he said.
Using the proportion of families living below the poverty line as a measurement for community poverty, the research showed less than a $10,000 decrease in asset value for each doubling in percentage of people living below the poverty line. But, this negative effect for lower educated younger adults is large, a $141,000 reduction in asset value. Similar results were found in relation to income and job quality.
Using a nationally representative sample of more than 12,000 adolescents from a longitudinal study by AddHealth, the research shows that minority race/ethnicity status also adversely impacts young adults' socioeconomic attainment. On average, African-Americans earn $5,330 less per year than Caucasians from the same community. Mexican-Americans earn $3,960 less yearly when compared to similar Caucasians.
The research also shows this gap can be lessened with education. For African Americans, average annual income increases $6,700 for each gain in education, from high school graduation through college.
"In general, early community poverty has a negative influence on young adults' assets, income and job quality," said Wickrama. "However, this negative influence is not significant for highly educated young adults."
Historically, research shows that poverty in a person's community and family causes irreversible early developmental damages that affect social attainment for young adults.
"The literature shows that these are irreversible damages, but our findings show you can reverse some of this," he said, "specifically through education."
Poor communities lack educational and health services, social organizations and recreational facilities. Community stress, he said, means the communities are "full of drugs, violence and crime—the people who live in those communities experience community stress. Exposure to a threatening community environment is a powerful stressor. It can have a persistent influence over the life course of the individual.
"Education doesn't erase the influence of early community adversity," Wickrama said. "It can buffer it substantially if educational attainment is high enough, but it doesn't erase it."
In a previous study, published in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Community Health, Wickrama used the same data set from AddHealth to examine the impact that early adversity has on cardiovascular disease. His research showed African-Americans and Mexican-Americans are disproportionality disadvantaged in health as well.
The findings show a 4.80-unit increase in diastolic blood pressure for each unit increase in community adversity, as defined by a 100 percent increase in the proportion of families living below the poverty line. Again, education appears to be the key. The findings show a 4.16-unit decrease in this effect for each incremental gain in education.
"Regardless of where they are now, if they have lived in adverse communities in their young life, they have higher levels of blood pressure and arterial pressure," he said about the study.
Results show early community adversity and African-American racial status place young adults at risk for heart disease.
INFORMATION:
An abstract of the article, "The Influence of Ethnicity and Adverse Life Experiences During Adolescence on Young Adult Socioeconomic Attainment: The Moderating Role of Education," is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22528370. An abstract of the article, "Early Community Contexts, Race/Ethnicity and Young Adult CVD Risk Factors: The Protective Role of Education," is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22101680.
Writer: April Sorrow, 706/542-7991, aprilr@uga.edu
Contact: Kandauda Wickrama, 706/542-4926, wickrama@uga.edu
END
Montreal, May 18, 2012 – The surgical team at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) achieved a North American surgical milestone on May 1st with a sutureless aortic valve replacement through a thoracic incision just five centimetres long. The two patients in their seventies who underwent this innovative procedure, which was performed by cardiac surgeons Denis Bouchard and Michel Carrier, were doing well only one week after their operations.
A novel combination
"This innovative combination of implanting a Perceval™ S valve through a minimally invasive thoracotomy signals ...
It was used to help Apollo astronauts navigate in space, and has since been applied to problems as diverse as economics and weather forecasting, but Harvard scientists are now using a powerful statistical tool to not only track sea level rise over time, but to determine where the water causing the rise is coming from.
As described in an April 23 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), graduate students Eric Morrow and Carling Hay demonstrate the use of a statistical tool called a Kalman smoother to identify "sea level fingerprints" – tell-tale ...
Vacuum tubes have been retro for decades. They almost completely disappeared from the electronics scene when consumers exchanged their old cathode ray tube monitors for flat screen TVs. Their replacement – the semiconductor – is generally the cheaper, lighter, more efficient, and easier to manufacture of the two technologies. But vacuum tubes are more robust in high-radiation environments such as outer space. And since electrons travel faster in a vacuum than through a semiconductor, vacuum tubes are an intrinsically better medium for electricity.
An international team ...
Quantum physics promises faster and more powerful computers, but quantum versions of basic logic functions are still needed to bring this technology to fruition. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Toshiba Research Europe Ltd. have taken one step toward this goal by creating an all-semiconductor quantum logic gate, a controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate. They achieved this breakthrough by coaxing nanodots to emit single photons of light on demand.
"The ability to produce a photon in a very precise state is of central importance," said Matthew Pooley of Cambridge ...
Ed Randall's Fans for the Cure (www.fans4thecure.org) today launched its "Stadium of Champions" membership drive, designed to increase awareness of prostate cancer treatment, prevention and detection. The Stadium of Champions is the charity's VIP membership club. It offers advocates an easy opportunity to support the charity, while also enjoying unique benefits reserved exclusively for these Champions. Buy your tickets today before the stadium is sold out.
"Every prostate cancer survivor, loved ones who supported the men in their life fighting prostate ...
Cell cultures need glucose for energy, but too much sugar can create a diabetic-like environment in which cell proteins undergo unwanted structural changes. Standard methods to monitor glucose levels require invasive and time-consuming handling of the cell culture. A team of engineers at the National University of Singapore and Singapore's Institute of Microelectronics is developing an alternative approach that takes advantage of new microfluidic techniques. In a continuous and controlled process, the researchers created small droplets of polymer that encapsulated pairs ...
Urologic conditions like urinary tract infections, kidney stones, and prostate cancer are a major economic burden on Americans, resulting in health care costs of close to $40 billion annually, according to a newly released national report that charts the demographic and economic impact of urologic diseases in the U.S.
Urologic Diseases in America (UDA), last published in 2007, has been revised and updated for 2012 and includes a wealth of new, detailed information on the utilization of resources and the costs associated with urologic diseases among men, women and children. ...
VIDEO:
This video shows active Cdc42 oscillating through yeast cells.
Click here for more information.
A collaboration between Lehigh University physicists and University of Miami biologists addresses an important fundamental question in basic cell biology: How do living cells figure out when and where to grow?
The teams of Assistant Professor Dimitrios Vavylonis and Associate Professor Fulvia Verde discovered that protein Cdc42 oscillates throughout yeast cells, precipitating ...
Now reaching an unheard of total of 199 awards for TV commercial production, the world's first internet-based discount TV advertising agency, Cheap TV Spots, is proud to claim the Gold Remi, presented by the prestigious Worldfest competition of 2012.
Worldfest is the one of the longest running international film and TV festivals in North America, and Cheap-TV-Spots.com is the longest-operating producer of original, discount-priced TV commercials for the U.S. and international markets.
Cheap TV Spots offers two rare advantages for advertisers. One, the experienced ...
Los Angeles, CA (May 18, 2012) More than 5,000 people die each year in vehicle crashes caused by distracted driving, many who were texting and talking on cellphones behind the wheel, according to the May 4 issue of CQ Researcher (published by CQ Press, an imprint of SAGE). Teen drivers appear to be especially susceptible to distraction.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 16 percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were believed to be distracted – "the highest proportion of any age group," according to David Hosansky, ...
