[DanielBMarkham]

I got the part about not seeing a relationship between crack usage and mental functioning. It's a very interesting result. What I don't understand is "Hurt and her team began to think the "something else" was poverty."

Is there any data referenced in the article to actually support that claim? It's the central thesis here, and I don't see any supporting argument. I see some text around seeing people arrested, dead bodies, and so on, but there are lots of poor rural kids who never see that. This is much more a function of urban poverty.

Maybe I missed it.

[undoware]

It wasn't in the article -- the past few years have been disruptive in the social sciences because of multiple replicated studies that show stress, including poverty stress (which is a well-quantified phenomenon) have a profound impact on working memory ("how much RAM your brain has").

Google it. I first read about it in the Economist, but really, it's where the conversation starts these days.

Brain damage is one of the main mechanisms by which poverty passes itself down to subsequent generations.

[mischanix]

>It was amid that climate that Hurt organized a study of 224 near-term or full-term babies born at Einstein between 1989 and 1992 - half with mothers who used cocaine during pregnancy and half who were not exposed to the drug in utero.

>All the babies came from low-income families, and nearly all were African Americans.