The Effects of Poverty: How Boys and Girls Experience New Beginnings

A recent study shows that moving out of impoverished neighborhoods has a different effect on the mental health of both boys and girls.

In fact, study results showed that boys showed higher rates of mental health problems years following when their families received help compared to those who did not receive assistance. However, moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods was linked to lower rates of depression and behavior problems among girls.

"The girls seemed like they were helped a lot by moving and the boys were hurt a lot," said lead study author Ronald Kessler from Harvard Medical School in Boston, via Reuters Health.

The results are based on a follow-up long-term analysis of families that participated in the Moving to Opportunity residential-mobility demonstration sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This analysis was designed to use housing vouchers to move families out of distressed public housing situations and into less disadvantaged neighborhoods with lower poverty and crime rates, along with the goal of improving economic self-sufficiency and educational opportunities.

For this, researchers recruited over 4,500 families with young children living in high-poverty areas. These families were randomized to either receive vouchers or move their family to a less impoverished community. Other families did not receive any type of assistance. The initial review of the experiment, which lasted four to seven years, found that families who received vouchers moved to better neighborhoods. They also discovered that stress and depression were lower among girls with these families. Yet this was not the case for boys. For them, behavior problems were higher.

A new study followed up with 2,872 of those children 10 to 15 years following their families recruitment in the experiment. Results were similar to the previous findings, with boys from the families who received vouchers showing higher signs of depression or greater rates of PTSD than those who did not receive additional assistance. For girls, as the findings stated previously, the outcomes were reversed.

"Future governmental decisions regarding widespread implementation of changes in public housing policy will have to grapple with this complexity based on the realization that no policy decision will have benign effects on both boys and girls," said the researchers, via Medical News Today. "Better understanding of interactions among individual, family, and neighborhood risk factors is needed to guide future public housing policy changes in light of these sex differences."

What do you think?