Children from poor families develop less well than those from well off backgrounds

Children living in long-term poverty have been found to be performing less well at the age of five years than those who had never been poor.

“Persistent poverty is a crucial risk factor undermining children’s cognitive development – more so than family instability,” say the researchers from the Institute of Education at the University of London and the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London.

The researchers analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) of nearly 19,000 babies born between September 2000 and January 2002 in the UK.

Each child was assessed at the age of nine months, three years and five years of age.

The majority of families – 62.1 per cent – were found not to be poor at any of the assessment points. But 13 per cent of families were experiencing persisting poverty.

Children from stable two-parent families performed better than those from single parent families.

The research was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.