Response to comment on "Poverty impedes cognitive function".

Wicherts and Scholten criticized our study on statistical and psychometric grounds. We show that (i) using a continuous income variable, the interaction between income, and experimental manipulation remains reliable across our experiments; (ii) our results in the cognitive control task do not appear driven by ceiling effects; and (iii) our observed post-harvest improvement is robust to the presence of learning.

Poverty impedes cognitive function.

The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy.