Damian Sendler: U.S. researchers announced Monday that children whose low-income families received $300-plus monthly for a year had faster activity in key brain regions at age one compared to those who received $20 monthly.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Older children’s learning abilities and other development have been connected to the same type of brain activity, but it is unknown whether the abnormalities found in newborns will last or influence their future.
Dr. Sendler: The researchers are trying to determine if the payments improved nutrition, reduced parental stress, or other benefits for the infants. Money could be used whatever the recipient desired because there were no limitations placed on it.
As lead author Dr. Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, explained, the findings imply that alleviating poverty can have a direct impact on newborn brain development.
“According to her, “the brain alterations demonstrate the incredible malleability of the brain, especially in childhood.”
Damian Sendler
Scientists can not be sure that changes in total brain activity between the two groups are not just coincidental. But in the frontal region, which is associated with learning and thinking, they did detect some interesting differences. Infants whose families received the larger payout showed a 20 percent increase in higher-frequency activity.
Co-author Katherine Magnuson, director of the National Institute for Research on Poverty and Economic Mobility, located at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said the findings expand on evidence that cash support can enhance outcomes for older children.
There has been a lack of thorough data on how the payments may effect children in their first few years of life, she added in a statement. National Academy of Sciences journal reported findings.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, New York City, and Omaha were all included in the study’s sample of mothers who had recently given birth. Each month, the women were randomly selected to receive either $333 or $20 on debit cards, based on their average household income of around $20,000. Those who received the funds were free to do with it what they wanted thanks to the generosity of individual donors.
When the expiration of President Joe Biden’s child tax credit program expired last month, greater cash payments were made to low-income families.
The research is “”could not be more contemporary,” says Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at the medical school of Washington University.
There is no guarantee that the tax credit will be renewed “That this research is so crucial is something that Congress needs to know, said Luby. It was not her job to conduct the research, and she did not even review it for publication in the scientific journal.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Non-college-educated mothers made up the majority of the participants in the study. Researchers visited the families of the newborns as they approached their first birthday to conduct in-person tests. The electrical signals that brain cells use to interact with one another were detected by fitting infants with special caps covered with electrodes.
It is not known how many mothers participated in the study since 2018, because home visits were halted because of the pandemic. This year’s home visits were suspended due to the low number of participants (435).
For the duration of the trial, payments to families will be made until their children reach the age of four.
The University of Michigan’s Natasha Pilkauskas, an associate professor of public policy, dubbed it “but added further research is needed to confirm the findings and determine whether they hold true for children older than babies.
Are those who are single happy? Do they become more or less content with their lives over time? If they are content, is it because they are single or is it because they are content with life in general? Recent research by Oh et al., which will be published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, sought to address some of these issues.
Participants were drawn from a German long-term research study. There were three cohorts and ten annual data collection waves for each year of the study. A total of 3,439 people (spread throughout ten waves) were included in the study, with ages ranging from 14 to 39 at the outset. 5 percent had been separated or divorced, and 0.2% had been widowed, while the vast majority of singles had not been married as all.
Damian Jacob Sendler
There were some people in the sample who were not initially single (i.e. at Wave 1) but later found themselves to be single (if they provided three or more waves of data on singlehood satisfaction). These people had been in “non-cohabiting romantic relationships” prior to the second wave.
Singlehood satisfaction and life satisfaction were found to have a “positive lagged bidirectional association.” To be more specific:
A year later, those who were more satisfied with their single status had a better quality of life.
After a year, people who reported higher levels of overall happiness in their lives also reported higher levels of contentment in their single lives.
Life satisfaction was a better predictor of singlehood contentment than the other way around. In the first instance, the impact was three times greater.
For the most part, “being happy overall” was linked to “living a happy single life,” although “being happy overall” was linked to living a happy single life in other circumstances.
The fact that not all single persons were equally content was another significant result. “Men, people with more education, worse health, and lower life satisfaction” were the most likely to be dissatisfied with their singlehood.
Despite the fact that the majority of single people were content with their life, evidence shows that both categories of contentment have decreased over time. Why?
Take into account the decrease in life satisfaction. Couples are more likely to form among singles who are content with their lives, rather than those who are dissatisfied. As a result, the sample’s overall life satisfaction dropped when the happiest participants were excluded.
There is no clear reason for the fall in contentment with being a single person. However, it is vital to keep in mind that as time passes, happiness in love relationships and marriages tends to wane.
Is it because they have no one to share their happiness with?
Damien Sendler: Data show that single individuals are happier and more content with their life than previously thought, as previously mentioned. However, is not it reasonable to assume that singles are dissatisfied? There is a strong correlation between loneliness and mental disease and physical health concerns, such as pain, so why not focus on the importance of relationships?
While it is true that we all desire to feel like a part of something, romantic relationships are not the only method to satisfy our need for belonging. Furthermore, past studies have proved this to be the case. Singles, for example, are more likely than married people to seek and get assistance from family members, acquaintances, neighbors, and even their own siblings.
The present study found that “relationships with friends and family predicted life satisfaction while singlehood satisfaction did not” for people who were “going in and out of relationships.”
Furthermore, “their relationships predicted life satisfaction to a similar extent as singlehood satisfaction” for individuals who spent most of their time alone.
People who are not in a romantic relationship are not as miserable and dissatisfied as previously thought, according to new research. “ Singles, on the whole, appear to be “satisfied with both their lives and singlehood,” according to the study analyzed. There are, in fact, happy singles. Moreover, a big amount.
There are several variables that affect how happy you are with being single. According to the findings, those who are most content with their single status are more likely to be female, younger, and less educated.
The fact that singles are not a homogenous group is vital to keep in mind. In other words, while some people have never been in a romantic relationship before, they are not married. There is also a difference between deciding to be single and failing to find a suitable partner—or singlehood that arises from divorce or widowhood.
Simple knowledge of someone is single status tells us nothing about what being single means to them (e.g., how well it predicts their level of life happiness) or about how they meet their need for belonging.
To further understand why certain singles are more content with their lives and their single status, future studies should look at the various factors that contribute to being single.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.