Research

Inequalities in the distribution of wealth among families with children may have deleterious health consequences, especially for adolescent children. This review discusses what is known about wealth-related inequalities in adolescent physical health and proposes four psychosocial mechanisms that may explain how wealth shapes adolescent physical health.

This study examines how net worth poverty and its subcomponents of asset and debt poverty relate to Black and White children’s academic and behavioral outcomes.

Using data on families who received cash transfers as part of a casino-funded family transfer program introduced in a Southeastern American Indian Tribe in the late 1990s, the authors find that large cash transfers have the potential to reduce intergenerational cycles of poverty-related educational outcomes.

This study uses data from the Baby’s First Years randomized control trial to identify the causal impact of unconditional cash transfers on maternal reports of early childhood development.

This brief summarizes findings from The Baby’s First Years study, examining the design and delivery of the BFY cash gift and how families experience and use the BFY cash gift. The BFY cash gift design provides an example of how cash transfers can be delivered in a way that can center families and entrust them with using the money as they see fit to support their families.

Examination of the impact of the Child Tax Credit on families’ food security by family size and participation in other federal programs. Results suggest that the effectiveness of cash payments like the CTC in reducing economic hardships may depend on family characteristics like receipt of other federal benefits and household size.

This study uses data from the Baby’s First Years (BFY) randomized trial to examine whether an unconditional cash transfer causes families to make opportunity moves to better quality neighborhoods.

Using data from Baby’s First Years, this paper assesses the causal impact of monthly, unconditional cash transfers on child-directed speech and child vocalizations among a large, racially diverse sample of low-income U.S. mothers and their 1-year-olds.

This brief summarizes findings from The Baby’s First Years study, examining the ways in which a monthly unconditional high-cash gift has been used to support children’s learning and development. Results from the study highlight that such aid resulted in investments in children by increasing parents’ spending on child-specific goods and time spent on early learning activities.

How does unconditional income for families in poverty affect parental investments for their young children? During the first 3 years of this study, high-cash gift households spent more money on child-specific goods and more time on child-specific early learning activities than the low-cash gift group.

This study—the first randomized controlled trial of early childhood poverty reduction in the United States—investigates how increased economic resources affect 1,000 low-income US mothers’ breastfeeding, child-care, and employment practices and the ability to meet their intentions for these practices in the first year of their infant’s life.

Young adulthood encompasses a number of decision points around education, employment, and fertility. To capture this complexity, this study examines how multigenerational wealth is related to four outcomes: college attendance, steady employment, early nonmarital birth, and idleness.

Project Description The North Carolina Community Schools Coalition aims to improve the academic, mental, and physical health of North Carolina students through the development of Full-Service Community Schools across the state. Full-Service Community Schools prioritize partnerships between schools and the community to promote the overall success and well-being of children and families. The community schools model…

New data from the Baby’s First Years study provide a look at family food security and how families with low incomes allocate additional funds, including spending on food.

This paper summarizes previously published findings coupled with new analyses of data through the third year of follow-up on the effects of a monthly unconditional cash gift on outcomes related to food security, spending, and consumption from the Baby’s First Years study.

Recently, U.S. advocates and funders have supported direct cash transfers for individuals and families as an efficient, immediate, and non-paternalistic path to poverty alleviation. This article address questions and concerns about how such programs are implemented.

Using data from a quasi-random natural experiment of a large family cash transfer among an American Indian tribe in rural North Carolina, this paper examines whether a positive disruption in socioeconomic status during childhood improves birthing person/perinatal outcomes when they become parents themselves.

This study considers the multigenerational consequences of wealth transmission for the transition to young adulthood.

Low income can lead to limited choice of and access to contraception. This study examined whether an unconditional cash transfer (UCT) impacts contraceptive use, including increased satisfaction with and reduced barriers to preferred methods, for individuals with low income. Receipt of monthly UCTs did not impact contraception methods, perceived barriers to use, or satisfaction.

Among children experiencing poverty, a monthly cash gift affected healthy food intake, but not health or sleep.

College-educated mothers spend substantially more time in intensive childcare than less educated mothers despite their higher opportunity cost of time and working more hours. This study looks at one reason this may be by testing the hypothesis that college-educated mothers enjoy childcare more.

This working paper provides a child-centric framework for reparations and the resulting
policy considerations and implications for child descendants of enslaved African Americans.

Findings from this study suggest that, among families experiencing low economic resources, maternal reports of stress are associated with differences in patterns of infant resting brain activity during the first year of life.

A family cash transfer in childhood that had long-term effects on individual functioning did not impact the home environment of participants who became parents. Rather, parents in both groups were providing home environments generally conducive to their children’s growth and development.

Health care systems are increasingly prioritizing food insecurity interventions to improve health, but it is unclear how health systems collaborate with other sectors that are addressing food insecurity. This study evaluated existing collaborations and explore opportunities for further cross-sector engagement.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred an economic downturn that may have eroded population mental health, especially for renters and homeowners at risk of housing loss. Findings show that individuals who reported difficulty keeping up with rent or mortgage had increased anxiety and depression risks but that state eviction/foreclosure bans weakened these associations.

This project aims to advance research on the relationship between economic well-being, wealth, adolescent functioning and mental health.

“Backpack” food programs administered through public schools send non-perishable foods home with children to supplement school meals. Power Packs Project (PPP) is a unique backpack program, in that it provides fresh food. This study is the first to examine the effect of picking up a Power Pack in a given week on parent and child food insecurity and meal routines.

Food insecurity among adolescents is not static but varies from day to day. This daily variation is greater for economically disadvantaged youth.

This paper reviews the economic research on U.S. safety net programs and cash aid to families with children and what existing studies reveal about its impacts on family investment mechanisms and children’s outcomes.

Research characterizes public assistance programs as stigmatizing and stressful (e.g., psychological costs) but obscures differences across programs or the features of policy design that contribute to varied bureaucratic encounters.

This study broadens the traditional focus on income as the primary measure of economic deprivation by providing the first analysis of wealth deprivation, or net worth poverty (NWP), and adult health.

This brief is part of a series to examine state-level policies that relate to social service and safety net programs and the ways in which state and federal policy implementation at the local level may affect the reach of program benefits among Latino families.

In this study, researchers found that states’ granting of drivers’ licenses to undocumented people, availability of government information in Spanish, and employer mandates to inform employees were associated with higher EITC receipt among Hispanic families. These findings showcase ways in which information and outreach at the state level can support the equitable receipt of tax refunds and similar types of benefits distributed through the tax system.

Lisa Gennetian and Anna Gassman-Pines’ chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Parenting focuses on families with young children age 0-5 and considers the context of work and employment for parents, the role of child care and early education as supports for working parents, and the theoretical and empirical linkages between parents’ work contexts and parenting.

In this policy memo, Ladd argues that charter schools disrupt four core goals of education policy in the United States, namely: 1) establishing coherent systems of schools, 2) attending to child poverty and disadvantage, 3) limiting racial segregation and isolation, and 4) ensuring that public funds are spent wisely. Ladd offers policy recommendations to better meet these challenges.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers not identifying as White non-Hispanic in our sample were more likely to get laid off than White workers. However, these workers were less likely than White workers to receive unemployment insurance at all. Among those who were laid off, these workers and White workers experienced similar increases in material and mental health difficulties and similar gains when they received unemployment insurance.

Scholars have focused on administrative burden or the costs of claiming public benefits. Learning, psychological, and compliance costs can discourage program participation and benefit redemption. Although policy changes during COVID-19 were poised to reduce compliance costs and ease conditions that create redemption costs in each program, the learning costs of policy changes prevented many program participants from experiencing the benefits of these policy transformations.

Project Description Durham Choice is a partnership between the Durham Housing Authority (DHA) and the City of Durham to expand affordable housing opportunities in Durham and ensure that low-income residents have the opportunity to live in high quality housing in great neighborhoods. The focus of Durham Choice is on the redevelopment of two aging public…

The author investigates the effects of a multiyear program, StudentU, on the early high school outcomes of participating students by exploiting data from oversubscribed admissions lotteries. Results suggest that comprehensive services delivered outside of the regular school day have the potential to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged students.

These findings provide evidence that net worth poverty has negative associations with children’s development. Net worth poverty predicts lower reading and applied problem scores and increased behavioral problems.

This study provides evidence that net worth poverty has negative associations with children’s development.

This study demonstrates that a universal approach to early family intervention can have positive population impact while also reducing disparities in outcomes.

Project Description Safety net policies are intended to provide some level of basic income support and economic security to eligible families, in turn improving developmental outcomes and life course trajectories for children. Yet, despite high rates of poverty, Latinx families are less likely than other groups to utilize these benefits. Project Goals The team will…

This research brief examines two measures of educational opportunity in North Carolina public school districts, average achievement and achievement growth. The first measure— average achievement—indexes the average level of student achievement at a single point in time. The second measure—achievement growth—indexes the rate of growth in student achievement over time.

This paper analyzed how housing, neighborhood, and health insurance explain disparities in case positivity between and within racial-ethnic groups in Durham County, North Carolina, finding that housing, neighborhood, and health insurance had a significant role in producing racial-ethnic disparities in COVID-19 case positivity.

This study examines how net worth poverty – or household’s whose wealth levels fall below one-quarter of the federal poverty line – is associated with children’s cognitive and behavioral development. Most children who are net worth poor are not income poor, meaning that these economically vulnerable group of children have been conventionally overlooked in conversations about poverty.

A key policy question in evaluating social programs to address childhood poverty is how families receiving unconditional financial support would spend those funds. Economists have limited empirical evidence on this topic in the U.S. We find that the cash transfers increased spending on child-specific goods and mothers’ early-learning activities with their infants.

Emeryville, California’s Fair Workweek Ordinance (FWO) aimed to reduce service workers’ schedule unpredictability by requiring large retail and food service employers to provide advanced notice of schedules and to compensate workers for last-minute schedule changes. The FWO decreased working parents’ schedule unpredictability and improved their well-being, decreased parents’ days worked while increasing hours per work day, and parent well-being improved.

This paper, co-authored by Lisa Gennetian, provides three reasons why giving cash to families with low incomes is a sound policy investment for families and children. (It focuses on why cash is important, not which policy option is the optimal mechanism for distributing cash to families.)

Researchers examine net worth by the intersection of gender, parental, and relationship status during a period of increasing wealth inequality and family diversification using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 through 2019. Despite changing social selection into marriage and parenthood, married parents consistently held a wealth advantage over demographically similar adults in other household types.

This research will provide an in-depth view of variation in state-level policy rules and program administration across WIC and Medicaid in three states and illuminate the consequences for policy beneficiaries’ ability to access benefits, engage with programs, and function as democratic citizens.

This study is evaluating a local program in Durham, NC, that waives the fees of those who have a suspended license due to failure to pay, in order to discover how reinstating drivers’ licenses can reduce barriers to employment and self-sufficiency.

Data from the Baby’s First Years study, a randomized control trial, show that a predictable, monthly unconditional cash transfer given to low-income families may have a causal impact on infant brain activity.

Home visiting is a popular approach to improving the health and well-being of families with infants and young children in the United States; but, to date, no home visiting program has achieved population impact for families in rural communities. The current report includes evaluation results from the dissemination of a brief, universal postpartum home visiting program to four high-poverty rural counties.

Investigate the barriers and facilitators of applying for, receiving, and redeeming safety net program benefits, including the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in North Carolina. Including before and during COVID-19.

Thia study draws from quantitative and ethnographic data across three rural counties to examine how the distinct features of rural southern communities inform organizational practices of public welfare agencies in ways that reinforce racial inequality and negatively influences family processes and adolescent development outcomes. This study examines how rural contexts shape access to four prominent safety net programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, the Child Care Subsidy, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

Baby’s First Years is a pathbreaking study of the causal impact of monthly, unconditional cash gifts to low-income mothers and their children in the first three years of the child’s life. The cash gifts are funded through charitable foundations. The study will identify whether reducing poverty can affect early childhood development and the family processes that support children’s development.

This paper investigates economic and psychological hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic among a diverse sample of socioeconomically disadvantaged parents and their elementary school-aged children. Longitudinal models revealed that food insecurity, negative parent and child mood, and child misbehavior significantly increased when schools closed; only food insecurity and parent depression later decreased.

Anna Gassman Pines, Elizabeth Ananat, and Yulya Trushinovsky wrote a chapter in the book Who Gets What? The New Politics of Insecurity. In the chapter, they identify how recent trends combine to increase instability and uncertainty among low-wage workers, discuss the effects of instability and uncertainty on workers and families, and consider potential policy solutions.

Studies identify one element of compliance costs—quarterly appointments—as a barrier to continued WIC participation. This article draws on 44 in-depth qualitative interviews with participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to examine how WIC participants perceived the reduction of compliance costs following the implementation of remote appointments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. WIC participants reported satisfaction with remote appointments and a reduction in the compliance costs of accessing and maintaining benefits.

Wealth inequality—the unequal distribution of assets and debts across a population—has reached historic levels in the United States, particularly for households with children.

Many childhood interventions target low-income and high-risk children, with evidence that some early interventions improve adult health and wellbeing. This study asks whether children who benefit from early interventions grow up to become better parents and, subsequently, have children who experience fewer health problems, educational challenges, and emotional problems.

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families is a collaboration between Child Trends and three university based research partners and serves as a hub of research-based information on low-income Hispanic children and families.

Around 1,000 hourly service workers with young children in a large US city were sampled with an initial focus on work schedule unpredictability and worker and family well-being. The data collection then shifted with the emergence of COVID-19 to reflect pandemic-related concerns such as food insecurity, job loss, income, and access to pandemic-specific and broader social safety net policy supports.

Project Description Hispanic youth represent a growing proportion of America’s future workforce. The vast majority are U.S.-born and raised in income-poor households, yet little is understood about the influence of social and income security policy on their well-being. Despite eligibility, Hispanic families are less likely to receive income assistance than their peers. Resulting differences in…

Project Description The Building Strong Families (BSF) project, a randomized control trial to enhance relationships among new parents, had few effects on the families involved. The treatment, which consisted of counseling, relationship skill training, and other family support services, had little impact on relationship outcomes, parenting measures, or child well-being. Three years after randomization, the…

Project Description Foster a global network for human development intervention research in low- and middle-income countries. Project Goals The goal of this project is to foster the development of a new global network for human development intervention research in low- and middle-income countries. Using the new global network, a researcher or interventionist would be able…

Project Description This study is a collaboration between Dr. Gennetian and co-PI Dana Thomson from Child Trends and aims to advance the understanding of how Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) policies and practices may vary by race/ethnicity and differentially affect use among eligible Hispanic families with young children. Project Goals The study will examine (1)…

Project Description To examine how children’s experiences with household net worth poverty and income poverty influence their well-being as measured through cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes.  The sample of children aged 0-18 and their household characteristics will be constructed from existing Prospective Study of Child Development–Child Development Study (PSID-CDS) data.  Descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analyses…

Project Description This project represents the first efforts to ascertain the extent and potential repercussions of wealth and net worth poverty among minority youth. Project Goals 1. Analyze racial and ethnic disparities in wealth among households with children, and identify potential mechanisms that explain such disparities.2. Estimate levels and trends in net worth poverty for…

Project Description An important part of the U.S. safety net, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides cash-like benefits to low-income people that can only be used to purchase food. My proposed project will investigate relationships between the timing of SNAP benefit receipt and children’s achievement test scores in North Carolina (NC), using a unique…

Project Description We combined the quasi-experimental data we have constructed on mass job losses by month in every county in North Carolina and by quarter in every state in the US (Ananat, Gassman-Pines, and Gibson-Davis 2013) with local area statistics on mobility by cohort (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, and Turner 2014) to identify how changing local…

Project Description Policymakers fear that the gap in marriage between low- and high-income parents may exacerbate inequality by increasing disparities in children’s academic achievement. Whether it does, however, depends on whether marriage causes improved child outcomes or merely reflects other advantages. We revisit this question by identifying quasi-experimental variation in whether parents who conceive non-maritally…

Project Description This project analyzes economic inequality among families with children in the contemporary American landscape. Our goal is to ascertain whether family structure per se has become more important over time in explaining economic inequality, or whether it is the constellation of factors associated with family structure that have grown in importance. To achieve…

Project Description This project brings together an interdisciplinary research team from Duke University, SRI International, Teachers College, and the Association of American Geographers to explore relationships between the socioeconomic status (SES) of students and their STEM learning outcomes. The motivations for this project are twofold (1) identify the links between SES and STEM Learning and…

Project Description The overall goal of this project is to develop an understanding of the effects of housing insecurity on families in Durham County and the conditions and policies that contribute to housing insecurity. We will work with our community partners to identify policies and services that influence the impact of housing insecurity in our community….

This brief summarizes the findings from Net Worth Poverty in Child Households by Race and Ethnicity, 1989–2019 in the Journal of Marriage and the Family and offers historical context for U.S. policies that have contributed to racial and ethnic differences in net worth poverty in child households.

Beth Gifford, Megan Golonka and Kelly Evans wrote a chapter of the book, Children with Incarceratead Mothers Separation, Loss, and Reunification. The chapter summarized findings of their study that examined the timing of mother’s incarceration in relation to her children’s involvement with social services, contributory factors leading to foster care placement, and foster care discharge outcomes.

Participants of the study pointed to a number of actionable recommendations to increase program participation and enhance the participant experience in the nutrition assistance programs SNAP and WIC: Federal and state WIC programs should strengthen vendor management to improve the shopping experience. State and local agencies should develop peer programs to educate WIC participants on…

Women face unique logistical and financial barriers to health care access.

Scholars have examined how administrative burden creates barriers to accessing public benefits but have primarily focused on the challenges of claiming benefits. Less is known about the difficulties beneficiaries face when using public benefits, especially voucher-based public assistance programs. Examining redemption costs can help clarify when and where beneficiaries experience burdens, reasons behind discontinuity in program participation, and why public programs fail to meet objectives.

Lower family income during childhood is related to increased rates of adolescent depression, though the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood.

While we expected to find that Hispanic families may be disadvantaged by decentralized service delivery in a manner that is similar to the experiences of African American families, workers instead note significant resources that help facilitate Hispanic families’ access to programs.

Family science has long considered the ways in which parents’ experiences in the workplace can affect families.

Project Description The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (Center) is a research hub to generate evidence and support programs and policy to better serve low-income Hispanic children and families. Areas of research focus include poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency; family stability; and early care and education. A key part of the Center’s mission…

In response to police killings of Black people and the ensuing protests that took place in communities across the country in 2020, media coverage in North Carolina and in much of the nation this past year has focused heavily on instances of police violence and the protests and counterprotests that have since occurred throughout the…

This study is the first to examine net worth poverty, and its intersection with income poverty, by race and ethnicity among child households in the United States.

Key Takeaways: Economic instability remains high among hourly service workers — from both job and household income loss. Food insecurity has increased significantly among working families. Safety net programs can help families maintain their incomes and reduce food insecurity, however benefits are not reaching everyone. Keeping vulnerable families afloat during the pandemic will require policymakers…

This brief provides an overview of the various channels through which COVID-19 has affected the lives of children and families, and proposes 4 key actions to help communities heal and build stronger, equitable systems: Create a “new” public health system centered upon a universal approach to care with a focus on equity. Invest in early…

Key Takeaways: Government officials halted housing evictions in North Carolina as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. We analyze administrative data on evictions from the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts and on public school children in Durham to identify characteristics of children who experience eviction. Our analysis shows that an additional benefit of the…

Carolyn Barnes uses ethnographic accounts of three organizations to reveal how interacting with government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.

Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we examine the empirically underexplored ways in which racial and ethnic identity shapes parental time use.

Policy makers, practitioners, and researchers have emphasized the importance of supportive relationships between staff and parents in early childhood education settings and schools.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program is an important intervention for prevention and treatment of obesity and food insecurity, but participation has dropped among eligible populations from 2009 to 2015.

We study the evolution of a campus-based aid program for low-income students that began with grant-heavy financial aid and later added a suite of nonfinancial supports.