Persistent poverty and children's cognitive development: Evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

Authors: Andrew Dickerson and Gurleen Popli

by Andrew Dickerson and Gurleen Popli	United Kingdom
Posted on 07-10-2012	Translate this page

Abstract: Andrew Dickerson and Gurleen Popli, from the Department of Economics at The University of Sheffield, use data from the four sweeps of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) of children born at the turn of the century to document the impact that poverty, and in particular persistent poverty, has on their cognitive development in their early years. We show that children born into poverty have significantly lower test scores at age 3, age 5 and age 7, and that continually living in poverty in their early years has a cumulative negative impact on their cognitive development. For children who are persistently in poverty throughout their early years, their cognitive development test scores at age 7 are more than 10 percentile ranks lower than children who have never experienced poverty, even after controlling for a wide range of background characteristics and parenting investment.

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Andrew Dickerson and Gurleen Popli - Working Paper