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The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

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UW community engages in poverty seminar

Members of the University of Wisconsin community gathered Wednesday evening to gain insight on a UW professor’s research into the impact social classes have on children during their youngest years.

Professor Thomas Boyce, co-director of Child and Family Research Institute’s Experience-Based Brain and Biological Development Program, presented his research on the effects of social stratification during early development at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Wednesday evening.

The presentation, titled “A Biology of Misfortune: How Social Stratification, Sensitivity and Stress Diminish Early Health and Development,” focused on studies by Boyce and his colleagues on kindergarten students and their development of social hierarchies in the classroom.

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“We find that subordinate rank diminishes pro-social behavior in low socioeconomic status,” Boyce said. “The lowest levels of pro-social behavior were from children in lower levels of the hierarchy and from a low socioeconomic status.”

Within the classes and hierarchies, Boyce also studied the exhibition of behaviors such as physical attacks on other children, imitation and directing of other students, threats given, and relational aggression by each rank in the hierarchy.

According to Boyce, a similar hierarchical study was completed involving the use of rats in a parallel scarce resource paradigm. He said the results of the study were similar to those done on the kindergarteners, displaying a linear relationship between subordinate rank and depression as well as levels of cognition.

Boyce presented evidence linking different levels of salivary cortisol, a stress hormone, in young children to their relative socioeconomic status. His findings concluded that children with higher level of cortisol production came from lower socioeconomic status.

In his studies Boyce also found a relationship between socioeconomic status, stress and oral health among children. He stated of the 95 teeth donated, nearly half had fillings or decay and were from children of low socioeconomic status.

“I thought the use of tooth decay as a result of stressors was really novel and interesting and starting to push back against misconceptions and stereotypes about people living in poverty,” UW graduate student Jamie Hanson said.

Boyce also presented evidence of the long-term effects of socioeconomic status in affecting pubertal development.

According to his research, children of lower socioeconomic status and sympathetic nervous system reactivity were exposed to the “morbidities” of society earlier than children of high socioeconomic status and sympathetic nervous system reactivity.

Boyce said the goal of his research is to create a “more egalitarian, more supportive and more protected” environment for children.

To accomplish this goal, Boyce suggested looking at the little things children, namely kindergartners, are exposed to both in the classroom and home.

Boyce concluded his presentation by reasserting adult societies and childhood groups self-organize into hierarchies, resulting in early exposure to subordination, coercion and scapegoating.

“I think it speaks to a lot of emerging health and behavioral differences that happen across society and can be used to alleviate many of the issues and minimizing disparities as much as possible,” Hanson said.

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