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Baby’s First Years: Early Findings from a Poverty Reduction Intervention in Early Childhood

Fri, March 24, 8:30 to 10:00am, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 1, Meeting Room 150 G

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Childhood poverty has long been associated with less favorable cognitive and social-emotional skills, reduced educational attainment, and lower earnings in adulthood. Despite these robust correlations, it is unclear whether family income is the cause of differences observed between children growing up in poverty and their peers from higher-income homes, or whether these differences are due to the many other correlates of growing up in poverty. Baby’s First Years (BFY, www.babysfirstyears.com; Noble et al., 2021) is the first randomized controlled trial in the United States designed to identify the causal impact of poverty reduction on children’s early development and family life. A total of 1000 mothers living with low income were recruited from postpartum wards shortly after giving birth, and were offered a monthly unconditional cash gift for the first several years of their children’s lives. Mothers were randomly assigned to receive either a high-cash gift ($333/month) or a low-cash gift ($20/month). All monthly cash gifts are administered via debit card and can be spent without restrictions. This symposium features four early scholar-led papers. The first two papers focus on the impact of the monthly unconditional cash gifts on parenting practices in the first year of life, including breastfeeding practices through infancy, and maternal-infant talk during a free-play session. The second two papers focus on the impact of the monthly unconditional cash gifts on early childhood outcomes through age three, including children’s health and sleep, and language and socioemotional development, as reported by mothers across three waves of surveys.

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