Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

But what if the threat continues, day after day? Poor children tend to live with chronic stress. They have greater exposure to violence, hunger, sleep deprivation, and illness. A child like Dasani can get stuck in “fight or flight” mode, leading to an overproduction of cortisol and a surge in blood sugar. This can make her resistant to insulin, causing diabetes or obesity. It can accelerate atherosclerosis, the heart disease that killed Dasani’s grandmother at age fifty-four. And it can leave lasting “wear and tear” effects on a growing brain. When poor children fall behind in school, with low test scores or behavioral setbacks, they are presumed to lack character, or to suffer from “bad genes.” A new frontier of research, known as the “neuroscience of poverty,” tells another story.