Past research shows that attending schools in low-income areas hurts learning even when teaching does not suffer. Now, research from Harvard University shows that children who grow up in disadvantaged neighborhoods experience declines in verbal IQ equivalent to missing one year of school.
Researchers followed more than 2000 lower, middle and upper class children aged 6 to twelve for seven years, conducting extensive interviews with both children and caretakers at three intervals. Concentrating on African-American children, who were most frequently exposed to severely disadvantaged neighborhoods, they discovered that living in highly concentrated disadvantage for even a short time lowered children's verbal IQs by four points. This decrease in ability persisted even once children left disadvantaged neighborhoods.
FULL TEXT: Durable effects of concentrated disadvantage on verbal ability among African-American children
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