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 provide causal estimates of financial and time investments...

Although non-experimental studies find robust neighborhood effects on adults, such findings have been challenged by results from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) residential mobility experiment. Using a within-study comparison design, this paper compares experimental and non-experimental...

Household time and money allocations in response to income support programs vary across diverse family circumstances and preferences, yet such heterogeneous responses are not well understood. Using data from a large-scale, multisite, U.S.-based randomized controlled study, we examine...

Developmental differences between children growing up in poverty and their higher-income peers are frequently reported. However, the extent to which such differences are caused by differences in family income is unclear. To study the causal role of income on children's development, the Baby's...

The foundations for successful child development are established in early childhood. Two main policy approaches for strengthening these foundations have been subsidized preschool programs and programs targeting the home environment. Our chapter reviews a large body of empirical work...

We examine long-term neighborhood effects on low-income families using data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing-mobility experiment, which offered some public-housing families but not others the chance to move to less-disadvantaged neighborhoods. We show that 10-15 years...

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. Using data from the 2010-2013 and 2021 waves of the Well-being Module of the American Time Use Survey, we investigate...

Although improving psychological well-being was not the explicit focus of the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), psychological health outcomes may have been affected by the positive income shocks generated by the credit. In this chapter we ask: How did the 2021 expanded CTC affect parents'...

We offer a child-centric framework for reparations with considerations for policy and implications for child descendants of enslaved African Americans. We apply economic theory of human capital integrated with the theories of bioecological developmental systems to illustrate the multilayered...

Children represent the largest indirect beneficiaries of the U.S. social welfare system. Yet, many questions remain about the direct benefits of cash aid to children. The current understanding of the impacts of cash aid in the U.S. is drawn primarily from studies of in-kind benefits, tax...