Question

Research consistently shows that living in poverty negatively influences language development. Locate and summarize information that would support this assumption (e.g., journal articles, Centers for Disease Control [CDC], and/or World Health Organization [WHO]). What types of experiences or resources do you feel that children who live in poverty do not experience or receive but children from higher economic statuses benefit from?

Answer 1

Poverty is a state in which income is insufficient to provide the basic need required to sustain life. (Katz et al., 2007, p. 3). This includes everything ranging from dietary needs, basic sanitary measures, health management measures to affording basic amenities in today's generation such as education. It's a multi-factor construct which is measured via the socio-economic status. The main three factors that go into measuring the socio-economic status are - Education, Income and Occupational/Social Prestige. It is a global measure of standing in a socially stratified system and access to resources.

Child development involves the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. In the course of development, the individual human progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. Many factors act together affecting the development of the child, the most important one out of them is the parental investments in children. Differences in parental investment are mainly influenced by Family Economic Resources, Parent Education and Parental Occupational Status which leads to differences in Developmental support and material and care support.

Language development is the process by which children come to understand and communicate language during early childhood.
Many types of research have been conducted to understand the cause of lower language development in families from low economic backgrounds.
In a paper published by Rowe & Goldin-Meadow (2009) & Hart & Risley (1995), they found out that language development differs in children from low economic backgrounds and high economic backgrounds as well as within the children from low economic backgrounds. This is because learning was dependent on the quality and quantity of input, which is measured via gesture types and word types. They concluded that fewer different gestures were produced by parents in low-SES homes, which subdued the creativity and expression in the children and less diverse verbal lexicon led to their limited vocabulary adaptation, which consequently degraded and slowed down their language development process.
Hart & Risley (1995) also concluded that learning is also affected due to responsive parental practices. There was a pattern in the families of low socioeconomic status to be more prohibitive and give less encouragement to their children. And as it has been proved in the past by various researches, unconditional positive regard, and a positive environment are two of the most crucial factors to enhance development.
In another research finding by Huttenlocher et al. (2002), he found out that most of the language development of children happen at home. The complexity of care-givers speech depends mainly on the educational level of the parent. He concluded that the majority share of the language development depended on the maternal education level, which in low SES houses is not very much. This is another contributing factor to poor language development in kids from low SES.
Rowe (2008) tried to correlate the other related factors in parenting to the development of language in children. He found out that parenting knowledge in low SES is not very profound. The parents' knowledge of child development mediates their use of child-direction speech, which contributes to growth in language development in children. In low SES families, child-directed speech is not very common. He also concluded that the teaching agendas for language development are not given importance in low SES families. Low-SES mothers incorporated fewer language goals into play.

There are plenty of differences in the upbringing of children from HES and LES which lead to these developmental changes in the children. To point out a few -
- Very few children from low SES have the privilege of getting educated. It's the main propeller for inculcating higher levels of language and inculcate diversity in vocabulary and learning. The families of HES on the other hand, give the utmost value to education.
- The parents in LES are toiling throughout the day to earn daily wages and are not able to spare as much time for their child, as compared to the rich. Even when the parents from HES have a packed schedule, they have the privilege of appointing a caretaker who stays with the child and aids their development in various aspects. Hence, the child always has someone to give advice to them and learn from.
- Children from LES mainly spend time around people whose vocabulary isn't as enhanced, thus it doesn't give them many opportunities to learn, including their parents. Whereas, the children from HES stay in a society where the individuals have a stronghold on their vocabulary.
- Even if children from LES want to study by themselves, they can't spare so much time for it as they have to contribute to the family by stating part-time work at a young age itself due to the financial conditions of the family. Thus, they do not get a lot of spare time to indulge in pleasurable activities right from a young age. In contrast, children from HES have a lot of time and resources to focus on the development of their language, consciously or automatically by doing some other activity.
- Nowadays, most of the learning is happening through online classes and sources, owing to technological advancements. Sadly, children from low SES do not have access to them whereas children from high SES have a plethora of resources at their disposal to learn from.  
- Children from low SES do not even have the money to rent or buy books to help them with their vocabulary.

In conclusion, children from LES have difficulty with their language development owing to a multitude of reasons ranging from their upbringing, parental involvement and attitude, the society they live in, socio-economic background, level of education in their family and plenty of others.
Their low level of language development can also be owed to their difficult lifestyle and inaccessibility to resources.
It is a struggle for them to break the barriers and reach out for amenities which might be considered basic for most others.
Despite all these factors, the scope for language development is not subdued in the children from LES, as established by various other researches. If provided with appropriate resources and an appropriate learning environment, everybody has the potential to grow and flourish.