Early childhood interventions aim to promote skill acquisition and poverty reduction. While their short-term success is well established, research on longer-term effectiveness is scarce, particularly in LDCs. We present results of a randomized scalable intervention in India, that affected...

We examine the effects of an unconditional cash transfer on the economic wellbeing (material hardship, ability to meet needs, money on hand, use of friends and family for assistance, and employment) of families and children with very low incomes. We use a parameterized difference-in-differences...

This study examines the impact of publicly provided daycare for children aged 0-3 on outcomes of children and their caregivers over the course of seven years after enrollment into daycare. At the end of 2007, the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil used a lottery to assign children to limited...

We develop and estimate a life-cycle consumption savings model in which observed genetic variation is allowed to affect wealth accumulation through several distinct channels. We focus on genetic markers that predict educational attainment, aggregated into a predictive index called a polygenic...

How do parents contend with threats to the health and survival of their children? Can the social safety net mitigate negative economic effects through transfers to affected families? We study these questions by combining the universe of cancer diagnoses among Danish children with register data...

Does the intellectual endowment of children affect parents' fertility choices? The quantity-quality model of fertility predicts that a positive (negative) shock to child endowment increases (decreases) parental demand for children. We test these predictions using Israeli data on intellectually...

Programs that engage young children in movement and song to help them learn are popular but experimental evidence on their impact is sparse. We use an RCT to evaluate the effectiveness of Big Word Club (BWC), a classroom program that uses music and dance videos for 3-5 minutes per day to...

Access to safe and stable housing is important for child and adult wellbeing. Yet many low-income households face severe challenges in maintaining stable housing. In this paper we examine the impact of the 2021 temporary expansion to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) on the living arrangements and...

We use a unique data set of linked birth records from Florida to analyze the intergenerational transmission of health at birth by parental gender. We show that both paternal and maternal birth weights significantly predict the child's birth weight, even after accounting for all genetic and...