Unsealing Fate: Policy Practices Aimed at Reducing the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty

Enabling children born into poverty to transcend the circumstances of their birth requires ensuring that they develop the cognitive, intellectual, and behavioral skills needed to succeed at school, and eventually the workplace. Research in developmental neuroscience highlights how brain systems that support these skills are already influenced by risk factors associated with poverty during prenatal development, indicating the potential value of programs targeted at this developmental stage. Such interventions could include programs that support maternal physical and psychological health, as well as efforts to eliminate known neurotoxins from the environment, all of which are disproportionately represented among low-income families. Maternal stress, environmental nicotine, and lead exposure all represent risk factors that not only directly impact child development, but cascade to translate risk into subsequent generations.