Cost of resilience: Childhood poverty, mental health, and chronic physiological stress

Abstract

Childhood poverty is associated with elevated internalizing symptoms. Nevertheless, some children exposed to poverty evince remarkable resilience, demonstrating lower than expected levels of psychological distress. However, recent work suggests that coping with adversity can lead to undesirable physical health consequences. Specifically, successful adaptation in the context of early adversity, including socioeconomic disadvantage, appears to be associated with elevated chronic physiological stress and ill health. The current study adds to this emerging literature by examining in a longitudinal context whether low levels of internalizing symptoms in the face of childhood poverty is accompanied by elevated chronic physiological stress (allostatic load) during childhood, as well as over time from childhood to adulthood. Results (n = 341; M=9.2 years, 49 % female; 94 % Caucasian) show that childhood poverty was prospectively associated with higher allostatic load during adolescence, controlling for baseline allostatic load. Furthermore, greater duration of childhood poverty led to steeper, more elevated allostatic load trajectories from childhood to adulthood, for youth with lower levels of internalizing symptoms. Efforts to manage adverse sequelae of early adversity likely yield a complex array of benefits and costs.

Keywords: Allostatic load; Child development; Mental health; Poverty; Resilience.