https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4639-7547
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ABSTRACT
Little is understood about how an unconditional cash transfer might operate and affect behavior among low-income parents of infants in the United States. We investigate these questions using data from a random-assignment pilot study (N = 30) in which unconditional cash transfers were distributed monthly on debit cards to two groups of low-income parents in New York City during the first 12 months of their newborns’ lives. Mothers were randomized to receive either $100 per month or $20 per month. Mothers distinguished spending the cash transfer on essentials vs. extras, such as going out to dinner with family. The monthly cash transfer “tided them over,” even at the lower amount of $20, especially when income from other sources ran short at the end of the month. Some mothers reported saving money for unexpected expenses.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Jacobs Foundation for their support of this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Natalia Rojas, Ph.D. is a National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Dr. Laurie Brotman at NYU Langone Health. Rojas works at the intersection of social policy, practice, and developmental psychology. Her research interests are a direct response to the gap in systems-level conceptualizations of early childhood education. At the foundation of her research is an interest in understanding the factors at the district, program, and classroom levels associated with preschool classroom quality. Her postdoctoral project analyzes the quality of interactions between teachers and immigrant-origin children within classrooms, their associations with school readiness outcomes, and whether specific practices for immigrant-origin children are used in preschool classrooms.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Ph.D. is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, a University Professor at NYU, and Co-Director of the Global TIES for Children center at NYU. He is a core faculty member of the Psychology of Social Intervention and Human Development and Social Intervention programs at Steinhardt. He is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. In 2018 he was elected to the American Academy of Political and Social Science as a James S. Coleman Fellow.
Lisa Gennetian’s, Ph.D. research portfolio straddles a variety of areas concerning American poverty from income security and stability, early care and education, and children’s development, with a lens toward causal mechanisms. Her work with Dr. Eldar Shafir “The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Economic Instability: A Behavioral Perspective,” describes a behavioral framework for poverty programs and policy. In 2015 Dr. Gennetian launched the beELL initiative; applying insights from behavioral economics to design strategies to support parent engagement in, and enhance the impacts of, early childhood interventions. She is co-PI on a large multi-site randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash transfer to low income mothers of infants.
Mayra Lemus Rangel, M.S is interested in the impacts of the social determinants of health as they contribute to health disparities, particularly in child development and maternal mental health. Rangel’s experience is varied, from working in research in child development, to providing school-based mental health counseling services to youth, and working with adults with chronic illnesses leading a psychoeducational monthly group.
Samantha Melvin, M.S. is a doctoral student in Education Policy at Teachers College at Columbia University and a graduate fellow at the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF), focusing on early childhood and family policy. She earned her B.A. in Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Science from Wesleyan University. Prior to NCCF, she was the Lab Manager at the Neurocognition, Early Experience, and Development Lab at TC, where she researched the influences of early home and school Environments on language and neurocognitive development. Her current research interests include policies surrounding early childhood workforce development and infant/toddler care and education.
Kimberly Noble’s, Ph.D., M.D. research aims to better characterize socioeconomic disparities in children’s cognitive and brain development. Ongoing studies in her lab address the timing of neurocognitive disparities in infancy and early childhood, as well as the particular exposures and experiences that account for these disparities, including access to material resources, richness of language exposure, parenting style and exposure to stress. She is honored to be part of a national team of social scientists and neuroscientists planning the first clinical trial of poverty reduction, which aims to estimate the causal impact of income supplementation on children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development in the first three years of life.
Greg Duncan, Ph.D. is distinguished professor of education at the University of California at Irvine. Dr. Duncan spent the first 25 years of his career at the University of Michigan, working on and ultimately directing the Panel Study of Income Dynamics project. Dr. Duncan’s recent work has focused on assessing the role of school-entry skills and behaviors on later school achievement and attainment and the effects that increasing income inequality has on schools and children’s life chances. He was president of the Population Association of America in 2008 and of the Society for Research in Child Development between 2009 and 2011 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010.
Katherine Magnuson’s Ph.D. research focuses on the well-being and development of economically disadvantaged children and their families. She examines how disparities in socioeconomic status (SES) affect children’s development, and how these effects may be altered by policies and programs, especially early childhood education programs. She also investigates how maternal education impacts child development. Specifically, Magnuson blends two streams of research that are often considered separately: (1) research on the influence of parents’ employment, income, and education, as well as welfare policies, on children’s well-being, with a special emphasis on the extent to which differences in SES across racial and ethnic groups explain disparities in children’s school performance; and (2) research on direct child interventions, particularly early education, that may serve a compensatory role for disadvantaged children. The first body of literature illuminates the scope of possible benefits that may accrue to children from interventions that directly improve the well-being of their parents, while the second line of research provides insights regarding how directing services and resources to children, rather than to their parents, may buffer the harmful effects of being raised in a disadvantaged family.
Notes
1 The terminology used to describe these payments to participants was “unconditional cash gifts.” In the manuscript they are referred to as “cash transfers.”