Toxic stress and children’s outcomes

"Stress” is a commonplace term for hormonal changes that occur in response to frightening or threatening events or conditions. When severe, these changes are termed “toxic” stress and can impede children’s behavior, cognitive capacity, and emotional and physical health.

Frightening or threatening situations are more sustained and are experienced more frequently by African American and socially and economically disadvantaged children, who also have less access to protective resources that can mitigate their stress to tolerable levels.

This report describes the relative frequency of toxic stress by race and social class, and shows how it depresses children’s outcomes and contributes to the “achievement gap.”

Key findings

• Social class and childhood stress. Beginning in infancy, lower social class children are more likely to have strong, frequent, or prolonged exposure to major traumatic events, the frightening or threatening conditions that induce a stress response.
• Income and childhood stress. The lowest-income children are more likely to be exposed to frightening or threatening experiences than other children.
• Race and childhood stress. Black children are more likely than white children to be exposed to frightening or threatening experiences.
• Childhood stress and depressed outcomes. Independent of other characteristics, children exposed to more frightening and threatening events are more likely to suffer from academic problems, behavioral problems, and health problems.

These attributes present challenges to children’s school and life trajectories.