Money given to low-income mothers affects their infants’ brain activity, a study shows
“Infants in low-income families demonstrated elevated levels of brain activity after their mothers were given infusions of cash that made life easier, a national study shows.
The work, conducted by scholars from six universities across the United States, is ‘an important finding,’ according to Martha Farah, director of the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a peer reviewer of the study. ‘This is the first time that changing family income has been shown to impact child brain activity.’
The study comes at a time when the federal government’s expansion of the child tax credit (CTC), which kept millions of families out of poverty, has expired with Congress showing little interest in allowing it to continue.”