Income Struggles Linked to Altered Brain Growth in Infants

TOPLINE:

Infants whose parents reported insufficient income showed delayed brain development in the first year of life.

METHODOLOGY:

Researchers collected parent surveys and recorded infant brain activity using EEG, during routine 4-, 9-, and 12-month well-child visits.
A total of 667 EEG recordings were collected from 293 infants over a 3-year period beginning in February 2022 at an urban hospital-based primary care clinic serving predominantly low-income families.
Surveys were completed primarily by mothers (98.6%) and collected demographic, socioeconomic, and psychological information relevant to infant development.
Researchers used exploratory graph analysis (EGA), a statistical method that shows how factors in a dataset are related, to examine how socioeconomic factors, caregiver stress, and infant EEG readings affected early brain development in the first year of life.
Infants were excluded if they were born before 36 weeks gestation or had prenatal opioid exposure, major NICU or perinatal complications, or a family history of autism spectrum disorder.

TAKEAWAY:

Approximately 72% of parents reported enrollment in public insurance; nearly 60% earned an income below 200% federal poverty line; 68.6% earned less than bachelor’s degrees; and over 50% lived in single-parent households.
EGA results showed that income insufficiency was the key factor linking socioeconomic conditions, caregiver stress, and reduced infant brain development.
Infants whose parents reported their income was never or rarely sufficient showed slower increases in the strength and speed of brain activity and lower brain activity related to attention and processing.

IN PRACTICE:

“Maternal perceptions of income sufficiency may signal heightened risk for neurodevelopmental delays along with increased financial and psychosocial stress,” the study authors wrote. “Our network approach highlights the potential for a screening tool to identify vulnerable infants early and guide pathways for targeted interventions.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Haerin Chung and Carol L. Wilkinson, of the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital in Boston. It was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

LIMITATIONS:

The study excluded proximal, environmental, and biological factors known to influence child health.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors reported having no relevant financial disclosures.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.