Poverty and the Development of Psychopathology
Poverty and low socioeconomic status (SES) play a profound role in the etiology and trajectories of child psychopathology. In order to better understand how poverty/SES can influence child psychopathology, we first describe the individual and social costs of SES related psychopathology before summarizing the internalizing and externalizing symptoms associated with childhood deprivation across the life stages of early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Next, underlying mediating processes that help explain how deprivation leads to psychopathology as well as moderating factors that alter the course of SES impacts on child and youth psychopathology are discussed. Primary mediators include parenting, stress, executive functioning and coping, as well as the brain. Moderators discussed include gender, ethnicity, social support, coping, and social context (e.g. school, community) Implications for intervention science and policy are presented and an outline of future directions is presented. Keywords: poverty; internalizing; externalizing, socioeconomic status (SES) mediators; moderators