By David K. Shipler
Let’s
assume that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are decent people, not callous
to children in poverty. That would mean that they’re merely clueless. They are
not connecting the dots. As they insist
on slashing President Biden’s proposed $322 billion in housing
subsidies, they cannot possibly understand how much lifelong damage that will
do to kids.
Biden and the Democratic leaders are trying to
break a key link in the chain reaction of poverty. Housing is that link. Without
government aid, high rents leave less money for food, leading to malnutrition,
parental stress, and disrupted living, all of which can impair brain
development in young children. The scientific and social research has been
clear on this for decades. Yet the connections are rarely recognized by
legislators and officials—and journalists as well—who persistently treat each problem
and government program as separate and distinct, with little regard for the web
of interactions among the hardships that struggling families face.
In many
parts of the country, the private housing market is brutal for low-wage
workers. Nationwide, households in the bottom 20 percent spend
a median 56 percent of their income on rent. The rest of their monthly funds are committed
to paying for electricity, water, phone, heat, car loans, and the like. What
they can shrink is the part of their budget for food. And without proper
nutrition during critical periods of early life, children suffer cognitive
impairment that is not undone even if food security is later restored. [See A
Hungry Child’s First Thousand Days in Washington Monthly.]
Stress
is also a factor in brain development, researchers have found. Even if a family
doesn’t become homeless but lives with constant tension over paying the rent
and other bills, the anxiety can be absorbed by children, both in
utero and after birth. Imagine—if you can—the anxiety of parents who
have too little food for their children, for feeding offspring is a most
elemental instinct and duty.
Furthermore, children’s biological
and mental health is damaged when families have to move repeatedly or reside in
poor housing with lead in the water from old pipes, roaches and mold that trigger asthma
attacks, and overcrowding that causes household friction.
The study of stress has been a significant addition to the understanding of the environmental impacts on the brain, to the point where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) devotes an entire website to updating research on risks and prevention. In its list of what scientists in a seminal study call Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the CDC includes housing issues along with more obvious traumas such as suffering neglect and witnessing violence or suicide.
