1-157 - Baby’s First Years: The First Randomized Controlled Trial of Poverty Reduction in the United States

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

Growing up in poverty is associated with detrimental effects on children’s cognitive development, brain development, health and achievement. Yet, the extent to which the most straightforward anti-poverty intervention – giving families money – improves early childhood development has never been tested. Launched in May, 2018, the Baby’s First Years (BFY) study is the first randomized controlled trial of poverty reduction in early childhood in the United States. In this session, the interdisciplinary team of investigators leading this work – experts in the neuroscience, economics, social policy and psychology of early childhood – will discuss the design and development of this landmark study, moderated by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, whose work has been foundational in understanding the role of poverty in child development. The premise is simple: One thousand low-income mothers are being recruited shortly after giving birth, from ten hospitals across the US. Mothers are randomized to receive either a large monthly cash gift or a nominal monthly cash gift for the first 40 months of their children’s lives. Mothers may spend the cash gift, administered via debit card, however they choose. Families will be followed annually from birth through age three, in order to estimate impacts on a host of child cognitive, socio-emotional, neural and health outcomes, as well as maternal health and family functioning. Based on past work, the cash gifts are expected to be large enough to produce meaningful differences in child development in the first three years of life, when the developing brain is thought to be most malleable to experience.

Sub Unit

• Social Policy

Moderator

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University Teachers College

Panelists

• Kimberly G. Noble, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Greg Duncan, University of California, Irvine

• Katherine Magnuson, University of Wisconsin

• Lisa Gennetian, Institute for Human Development and Social Change, NYU