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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   4231 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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There are some peer reviewed publications that poverty increases cortisol levels which stunts developing of brains which makes the poor do poorly on tests. I understand I probably would not get a good faith discussion with these people about this, but high cortisol also does stunt height, fat mass, muscle mass (often simply measured by grip strength). Why would we see only the brain stunted but none of the latter? What do the authors even think? p.s. I mean the poor in USA and other first world countries p.p.s ("opression by poverty")

If I had to guess I would say you are right that it stunts everything and that it does limit intelligence. Like ulyssessword said, funding probably limited how many studies have been done on this subject. Just hypothesizing, but maybe there are people that are more psychologically and physically resilient (genetically) so that they are not affected as much or at all by the stress of poverty, making the data messy. It could be there is no effect for certain people.

But I can't imagine why it wouldn't be true on average that, if you had twins where you had one live in poverty and had the other live a middle class life, the wealthier one should be bigger, stronger, and smarter. Unless they're both resilient, then I guess the outcomes could be the same.

But if you have many examples of such cases of twins and take an average, maybe you could see the overall effect poverty has, eliminating the effect of some pairs being resilient/robust to the effects of poverty. Not sure if this has been done, assessing IQ AND health markers of many pairs of twins living at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. It would be interesting to see if pairs with larger differences in IQ had larger differences in health markers as well.

...but none of the latter?

Are you sure about that? A study associating poverty, cortisol, and low muscle mass is boring, which sounds like a fatal flaw when searching for funding. Maybe we aren't seeing it because nobody has bothered to look.

Well I found at least one publication on fat&muscles vs cortisol, but it is from.... Poland: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34452601/

it's certainly more boring, but also much less politically sensitive.

It is also known that USA Black children have slightly stronger grip strength than USA Whites.

Please link the studies.

Don't we see that? Throughout history rich people tend to be taller, stronger and more attractive than comparably selected poor people.

comparing between-countries, yes, inside-country no.

I mean, the US poor are short and fat compared to the rich.

How much of that is because the poor have disproportionately included relatively more first gen immigrants from places with relative food scarcity and stunted growth? The tradition of second gen immigrants being a head taller than their parents in the US is a long running one.

The white and black poor are mildly taller than the Hispanic poor but even fatter, so I don’t think that’s what it is.

The latter are stunted compared to wealthier cohorts?

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