Scholars@Duke
Lisa A. Gennetian

Lisa A. Gennetian CV

Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies
Sanford School of Public Policy
lisa.gennetian@duke.edu
Box 90312, Durham, NC 27708
212 Rubenstein Hall, 302 Towerview Road, Durham, NC 27708
CV

Scholarly Works - Journal articles

Cash to carrots: Testing food environment mediation of cash transfer effects on children's diet in the Baby's First Years Study.

Journal article Health & place · July 2026 In the US, low-income children have poorer dietary behaviors than high-income children and suffer disproportionately from nutrition-related chronic diseases. A growing literature examines whether food environments contribute to nutritional inequality, give ... Full text Cite

The impact of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on child brain activity: A 4-year follow-up.

Journal article Developmental cognitive neuroscience · April 2026 Early childhood poverty is associated with neurodevelopmental differences, but causal evidence linking income to brain development is sparse. In the present study, we examine whether four years of monthly unconditional cash transfers to mothers experiencin ... Full text Open Access Cite

Net Worth Poverty in Childhood: Duration, Timing, and Educational Outcomes.

Journal article Demography · April 2026 Net worth poverty (NWP) is the modal form of poverty for American children, but how it is experienced across childhood and its associations with human capital accumulation are unknown. Using data from the 1999‒2021 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynami ... Full text Cite

Parental investment across neighborhood contexts: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial of poverty reduction.

Journal article Child development · March 2026 This study investigated how low-income parents with infants and toddlers make differing caregiving investments depending on neighborhood conditions. It leverages a randomized controlled trial in which 1,000 low-income mothers and newborns (Mage = 27; 42% B ... Full text Cite

Net Worth Poverty and Food Insecurity.

Journal article American journal of agricultural economics · August 2025 Food insecurity is a widespread problem faced by American families, particularly those with children. It is clear that poverty contributes to food insecurity, but extant research focuses almost exclusively on income poverty (IP). We move beyond income-cent ... Full text Open Access Cite

Cash Transfers and Their Effect on Maternal and Young Children's Health: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Journal article JAMA pediatrics · August 2025 ImportanceMothers and children in low-income households are more likely to experience worse mental and physical health than those from higher-income households.ObjectiveTo determine the effect of 4 years of monthly unconditional cash tran ... Full text Cite

Effects of unconditional cash transfers on family processes and wellbeing among mothers with low incomes.

Journal article Nature communications · August 2025 This study examines causal impacts of unconditional cash transfers on economic hardship and key family processes that may affect children's development. The study randomized 1000 mothers of newborns, with prior-year household income below the federal pover ... Full text Cite

Education Gradients in Parental Time Investment and Subjective Well-being.

Journal article Review of economics of the household · June 2025 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 Amer ... Full text Cite

A framework and policy case for black reparations to support child well-being in the USA.

Journal article Nature human behaviour · June 2025 Enslavement of African Americans and the legacy of structural racism have led to disproportionate hardship for black people in the USA. Reparations realize unfulfilled promises of financial compensation and redress. Existing US reparations initiatives have ... Full text Cite

A Research Note on Unconditional Cash Transfers and Fertility in the United States: New Causal Evidence.

Journal article Demography · April 2025 As cash transfer policies have gained traction in recent years, interest in how financial resources could impact fertility has also grown. Increasing an individual's purchasing power with additional economic resources, such as those provided in uncondition ... Full text Cite

Unconditional Cash and Intimate Partner Violence

Journal article · February 23, 2025 Cite

Net worth poverty and child Well-being: Black-White differences.

Journal article Children and youth services review · February 2025 Net worth poverty, defined as having wealth (assets minus debts) that is less than one-fourth the federal poverty line, can have negative associations with children's development. Net worth poverty can reflect the lack of assets or the presence of debts, w ... Full text Open Access Cite

Social contexts and black families' engagement in early childhood programs.

Journal article PloS one · January 2025 In the U.S., the federal government and dozens of cities have invested in home visiting programs intended to be universally available at scale to support caregivers of young children. Evaluations find that participation in these programs reduces maternal m ... Full text Cite

The effect of unconditional cash transfers on maternal assessments of children's early language and socioemotional development: Experimental evidence from U.S. families residing in poverty.

Journal article Developmental psychology · December 2024 Economic disadvantage has often been associated with poorer performance on measures of early childhood development. However, the causal impacts of income on child development remain unclear. The present study uses data from the Baby's First Years randomize ... Full text Cite

Child-directed speech in a large sample of U.S. mothers with low income.

Journal article Child development · November 2024 Research on early language input and socioeconomic status typically relies on correlations in small convenience samples. Using data from Baby's First Years, this paper assesses the causal impact of monthly, unconditional cash transfers on child-directed sp ... Full text Cite

Poverty reduction and childhood opportunity moves: A randomized trial of cash transfers to low-income U.S. families with infants.

Journal article Health & place · September 2024 Black and Hispanic children have a higher likelihood of experiencing neighborhood poverty than white children. This study uses data from the Baby's First Years (BFY) randomized trial to examine whether an unconditional cash transfer causes families to make ... Full text Cite

Unconditional Cash Transfers and Maternal Employment: Evidence from the Baby's First Years Study.

Journal article Journal of public economics · August 2024 How the labor force participation of mothers of young children responds to unconditioned cash support remains an open question in policy debates. Using data from Baby's First Years, a large-scale randomized controlled study, we generate new estimates of th ... Full text Cite

Effects of a monthly unconditional cash transfer starting at birth on family investments among US families with low income.

Journal article Nature human behaviour · August 2024 How does unconditional income for families in poverty affect parental investments for their young children? Mothers in four US metropolitan areas were randomized to receive a monthly unconditional cash transfer of either $333 per month (high) or $20 per mo ... Full text Cite

Unconditional Cash Transfers for Families with Children in the U.S.: A Scoping Review.

Journal article Review of economics of the household · June 2024 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 ... Full text Cite

Unconditional Cash and Breastfeeding, Child Care, and Maternal Employment among Families with Young Children Residing in Poverty.

Journal article The Social service review · June 2024 Poverty interferes with parents' breastfeeding, child-care, and employment options and ability to meet their parenting goals. This study-the first randomized controlled trial of early childhood poverty reduction in the United States-investigates how increa ... Full text Cite

Contraception use and satisfaction among mothers with low income: Evidence from the Baby's First Years study.

Journal article Contraception · January 2024 ObjectivesLow income can lead to limited choice of and access to contraception. We examine whether an unconditional cash transfer (UCT) impacts contraceptive use, including increased satisfaction with and reduced barriers to preferred methods, for ... Full text Cite

Monthly unconditional income supplements starting at birth: Experiences among mothers of young children with low incomes in the U.S.

Journal article Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management] · January 2024 Recently, U.S. advocates and funders have supported direct cash transfers for individuals and families as an efficient, immediate, and non-paternalistic path to poverty alleviation. Open questions remain, however, about their implementation. We address the ... Full text Cite

Associations between maternal stress and infant resting brain activity among families residing in poverty in the U.S.

Journal article Biological psychology · November 2023 Growing evidence suggests that maternal experiences of stress shape children's functional brain activity in the first years of life. Individuals living in poverty are more likely to experience stress from a variety of sources. However, it is unclear how st ... Full text Cite

The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Parents’ Psychological Well-Being

Journal article Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · November 1, 2023 Improving the psychological well-being of parents who received the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) was not an explicit focus of that benefit program, but psychological effects may have been felt, given the positive income shocks generated by the credi ... Full text Cite

Education Gradients in Parental Time Investment and Subjective Well-being

Journal article University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper · September 26, 2023 Cite

Unconditional Cash Transfers and Maternal Assessments of Children's Health, Nutrition, and Sleep: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Journal article JAMA network open · September 2023 ImportanceChildren experiencing poverty are more likely to experience worse health outcomes, including injury, chronic illness, worse nutrition, and poorer sleep. The extent to which poverty reduction improves these outcomes is unknown.Objecti ... Full text Cite

The Effect of a U.S. Poverty Reduction Intervention on Maternal Assessments of Young Children's Health, Nutrition, and Sleep: A Randomized Control Trial.

Journal article medRxiv · May 26, 2023 IMPORTANCE: Children experiencing poverty are more likely to experience worse health outcomes during the first few years of life, including injury, chronic illness, worse nutrition, and poorer sleep. The extent to which a poverty reduction intervention imp ... Full text Link to item Cite

Unconditional Cash and Family Investments in Infants: Evidence from a Large-Scale Cash Transfer Experiment in the U.S.

Journal article Res Sq · February 7, 2023 Economists have limited causal evidence on how families receiving unconditional income would spend those funds. We examine financial and time investments in infants among families living in poverty from a large-scale, multi-site randomized controlled study ... Full text Link to item Cite

EVALUATING CONTRADICTORY EXPERIMENTAL AND NON-EXPERIMENTAL ESTIMATES OF NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS ON ECONOMIC OUTCOMES FOR ADULTS.

Journal article Housing policy debate · January 2023 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 ex ... Full text Cite

Earned Income Tax Credit Receipt By Hispanic Families With Children: State Outreach And Demographic Factors.

Journal article Health affairs (Project Hope) · December 2022 The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the largest refundable tax credit for low-to-middle-income US families with children, has been shown to improve maternal and child health and reduce public spending on health. However, many eligible families do not rece ... Full text Cite

Reply to Assari and Lantz: Heterogeneity in BFY impacts.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · August 2022 Full text Cite

The impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activity.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · February 2022 Early childhood poverty is a risk factor for lower school achievement, reduced earnings, and poorer health, and has been associated with differences in brain structure and function. Whether poverty causes differences in neurodevelopment, or is merely assoc ... Full text Cite

Harnessing a behavioral economic framework for supporting providers in improving early childhood care

Journal article Early Years · January 1, 2022 High-quality early care and education is increasingly viewed as a path toward narrowing socioeconomic gaps in children’s school readiness and development. Features of early childhood education environments such as pedagogical practices and provider-child i ... Full text Cite

Net Worth Poverty and Child Development.

Journal article Socius : sociological research for a dynamic world · January 2022 The authors investigate whether net worth poverty (NWP) reduces children's well-being. NWP-having wealth (assets minus debts) less than one fourth of the federal poverty line-is both theoretically and empirically distinct from income poverty (IP) and is th ... Full text Cite

Open Science in Developmental Science

Journal article Annual Review of Developmental Psychology · January 1, 2022 Open science policies have proliferated in the social and behavioral sciences in recent years, including practices around sharing study designs, protocols, and data and preregistering hypotheses. Developmental research has moved more slowly than some other ... Full text Cite

Corrigendum to “Net Worth Poverty and Child Development”

Journal article Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · January 2022 Full text Cite

Behavioral Economics and Parent Participation in an Evidence-Based Parenting Program at Scale.

Journal article Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · October 2021 Evidence-based and culturally relevant parenting programs strengthen adults' capacity to support children's health and development. Optimizing parent participation in programs implemented at scale is a prevailing challenge. Our collaborative team of progra ... Full text Cite

Baby's First Years: Design of a Randomized Controlled Trial of Poverty Reduction in the United States.

Journal article Pediatrics · October 2021 Childhood economic disadvantage is associated with lower 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 differen ... Full text Open Access Cite

A Strength-Based Framework for Realizing Latino Young Children’s Potential

Journal article Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences · October 1, 2021 Hispanic children experience poverty at rates two to three times higher than white children. Latino households with children, in general, have high parental employment coupled with low levels of parental education and stagnant parental earnings relative to ... Full text Open Access Cite

Light-touch design enhancements can boost parent engagement in math activities

Journal article Children and Youth Services Review · September 1, 2021 Early proficiency in math skills is increasingly being seen as an independent area worthy of early curriculum development and policy investment to reduce socioeconomic disparities in children's school readiness. However, scalable approaches for parents to ... Full text Cite

Investing in Latino Children and Youth: Volume Introduction and Overview

Journal article Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · July 1, 2021 Full text Cite

Means-Tested Safety Net Programs and Hispanic Families: Evidence from Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC.

Journal article The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · July 2021 Hispanic families have historically used means-tested assistance less than high-poverty peers, and one explanation for this may be that anti-immigrant politics and policies are a barrier to program participation. We document the participation of Hispanic c ... Full text Cite

Net Worth Poverty in Child Households by Race and Ethnicity, 1989-2019.

Journal article Journal of marriage and the family · June 2021 ObjectiveThis study is the first to examine net worth poverty, and its intersection with income poverty, by race and ethnicity among child households in the United States.BackgroundScholarship on economic scarcity for children has largely ... Full text Cite

Evaluating Contradictory Experimental and Non-Experimental Estimates of Neighborhood Effects on Economic Outcomes for Adults

Journal article University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper · February 15, 2021 Cite

Experiences of Hispanic Families with Social Services in the Racially Segregated Southeast: Views from Administrators and Workers in North Carolina.

Journal article Race and social problems · January 2021 North Carolina-as a state in the racially segregated Southeast-offers a unique context to understand access to social services for Hispanic families and children. Theories of administrative burden posit that Hispanic families likely face high learning, com ... Full text Cite

Behavioral insights into cash transfers to families with children

Journal article Behavioral Science and Policy · January 1, 2021 Cash transfer programs aim to lessen the harmful effects of economic deprivation by giving cash or its equivalent directly to people in need. In this article, we combine insights from three areas of behavioral science-economics, child development, and cogn ... Full text Cite

The Impact of Default Options for Parent Participation in an Early Language Intervention.

Journal article Journal of child and family studies · December 2020 In this study we tested, via a randomized control study design, different enrollment options for a scaled city-wide text-based early learning program among 405 mothers who were receiving newborn home visiting services. We found that when automatically enro ... Full text Cite

Advancing Transparency and Openness in Child Development Research: Opportunities.

Journal article Child development perspectives · March 2020 Transparency and openness are basic scientific values. They lie at the heart of practices that accelerate discovery and broaden access to scientific knowledge. In this article, we argue that these values are essential to ensure the enduring influence of re ... Full text Cite

Exploring the experiences and dynamics of an unconditional cash transfer for low-income mothers: A mixed-methods study

Journal article Journal of Children and Poverty · January 2, 2020 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 uncon ... Full text Cite

Pride-Based Self-Affirmations and Parenting Programs.

Journal article Frontiers in psychology · January 2020 We newly apply the concept of self-affirmation typically used in the domain of health and education to the domain of parenting. Recruiting parents of children age 13 or younger (n = 1,044), we test how eliciting positive self-concept affects interes ... Full text Cite

A housing mobility program's impacts on teen and young adult parenting.

Journal article SSM - population health · December 2019 ObjectiveTo assess the impact of Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program (MTO) implemented in 1994 in five U.S. cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City) on teen births.MethodsWe analyzed bas ... Full text Open Access Cite

Supporting parent engagement in a school readiness program: Experimental evidence applying insights from behavioral economics

Journal article Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology · May 1, 2019 Early childhood interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic disparities hinge on parent engagement. However, sparking parents’ engagement and sustaining it throughout the course of interventions has historically been challenging. We designed program enha ... Full text Cite

A descriptive profile of state Child Care and Development Fund policies in states with high populations of low-income Hispanic children

Journal article Early Childhood Research Quarterly · April 1, 2019 The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) serves dual goals of promoting low-income parents’ employment, education, and training, and supporting parents’ use of high quality child care and education. While changes in CCDF policies have aimed to improve th ... Full text Cite

Income Level and Volatility by Children's Race and Hispanic Ethnicity

Journal article Journal of Marriage and Family · February 1, 2019 Objective: This study documents how income dynamics during childhood differ across racial/ethnic groups and among Hispanics by nativity, citizenship, and the English-language proficiency of households. Background: Income volatility has emerged as a distinc ... Full text Cite

How Much of Children’s Time in Nonparental Care Coincides with Their Parents’ Time at Work?

Journal article Socius · January 1, 2019 Nonparental care (NPC) for children before they enter kindergarten has had two primary purposes for American families since the start of the twentieth century: supporting parental employment and providing children developmentally enriching out-of-home expe ... Full text Open Access Cite

Stability of income and school attendance among NYC students of low-income families

Journal article Economics of Education Review · April 1, 2018 School attendance problems among low-income children present a considerable challenge to educators and may be associated with the economic circumstances of families. Using longitudinal administrative data from the Opportunity New York City-Family Rewards s ... Full text Cite

Supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) benefit cycles and student disciplinary infractions

Journal article Social Service Review · January 1, 2016 Does the timing and frequency of program benefits influence student school outcomes? The poor may be especially vulnerable to income scarcity at the end of welfare programbenefit cycles. Such scarcity may strain other aspects of family life and exacerbate ... Full text Cite

Behavioral economics & developmental science: A new framework to support early childhood interventions

Journal article Journal of Applied Research on Children · January 1, 2016 Cite

Neighborhood effects on use of African-American Vernacular English.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · September 2015 African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is systematic, rooted in history, and important as an identity marker and expressive resource for its speakers. In these respects, it resembles other vernacular or nonstandard varieties, like Cockney or Appalachia ... Full text Cite

The persistence of poverty in the context of financial instability: A behavioral perspective

Journal article Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · September 1, 2015 We review recent findings regarding the psychology of decisionmaking in contexts of poverty, and consider their application to public policy. Of particular interest are the oft-neglected psychological and behavioral consequences of economic scarcity couple ... Full text Cite

Intrayear household income dynamics and adolescent school behavior.

Journal article Demography · April 2015 Economic life for most American households is quite dynamic. Such income instability is an understudied aspect of households' economic contexts that may have distinct consequences for children. We examine the empirical relationship between household income ... Full text Cite

Associations of housing mobility interventions for children in high-poverty neighborhoods with subsequent mental disorders during adolescence.

Journal article JAMA · March 2014 ImportanceYouth in high-poverty neighborhoods have high rates of emotional problems. Understanding neighborhood influences on mental health is crucial for designing neighborhood-level interventions.ObjectiveTo perform an exploratory analy ... Full text Cite

Patterns of income instability among low- and middle-income households with children

Journal article Family Relations · January 1, 2014 Concern about the effects of income and child poverty in the United States has spurred decades of research documenting the relationships between income level, family functioning, and children's development. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program ... Full text Cite

Long-term effects of the Moving to Opportunity residential mobility experiment on crime and delinquency.

Journal article Journal of experimental criminology · December 2013 ObjectivesUsing data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.MethodsWe draw on new administrative d ... Full text Cite

Why Concentrated Poverty Matters

Journal article · July 1, 2013 Cite

The Consequences of Income Instability for Children's Well-Being.

Journal article Child development perspectives · June 2013 Income instability is an important and under-studied dimension of the established empirical relation between family income and children's healthy development. Frequent fluctuations in income may influence daily processes and routines of family life, but th ... Full text Cite

Promoting the positive development of boys in high-poverty neighborhoods: Evidence from four anti-poverty experiments

Journal article Journal of Research on Adolescence · June 1, 2013 This study uses geocoded address data and information about parents' economic behavior and children's development from four random-assignment welfare and anti-poverty experiments conducted during the 1990s. We find that the impacts of these welfare and ant ... Full text Cite

Neighborhood effects on the long-term well-being of low-income adults.

Journal article Science (New York, N.Y.) · September 2012 Nearly 9 million Americans live in extreme-poverty neighborhoods, places that also tend to be racially segregated and dangerous. Yet, the effects on the well-being of residents of moving out of such communities into less distressed areas remain uncertain. ... Full text Cite

Welfare policies and adolescents: exploring the roles of sibling care, maternal work schedules, and economic resources.

Journal article American journal of community psychology · December 2011 This study uses data from three longitudinal experimental evaluations of US state welfare reform programs to examine whether program-induced changes in families' reliance on sibling care are linked with the effects of welfare programs on selected schooling ... Full text Cite

Neighborhoods, obesity, and diabetes - A randomized social experiment

Journal article New England Journal of Medicine · October 20, 2011 BACKGROUND: The question of whether neighborhood environment contributes directly to the development of obesity and diabetes remains unresolved. The study reported on here uses data from a social experiment to assess the association of randomly assigned va ... Full text Cite

Meeting children's basic needs: Introduction

Journal article Children and Youth Services Review · September 1, 2010 Full text Cite

A tale of two methods: comparing regression and instrumental variables estimates of the effects of preschool child care type on the subsequent externalizing behavior of children in low-income families.

Journal article Developmental psychology · September 2010 We apply instrumental variables (IV) techniques to a pooled data set of employment-focused experiments to examine the relation between type of preschool childcare and subsequent externalizing problem behavior for a large sample of low-income children. To a ... Full text Cite

Meeting the Basic Needs of Children: Does Income Matter?

Journal article Children and youth services review · September 2010 We review existing research and policy evidence about income as an essential component to meeting children's basic needs-that is, income represented as the purest monetary transfer for increasing the purchasing power of low income families. Social scientis ... Full text Cite

Maternal employment and the health of low-income young children.

Journal article Journal of health economics · May 2010 This study examines whether maternal employment affects the health status of low-income, elementary-school-aged children using instrumental variables estimation and experimental data from a welfare-to-work program implemented in the early 1990s. Maternal r ... Full text Cite

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Effects of Welfare Policies on Early School Readiness and Later Achievement.

Journal article Applied developmental science · January 2010 This study examined whether the effects of employment-based policies on children's math and reading achievement differed for African American, Latino and Caucasian children of welfare receiving parents, and if so, why. Two kinds of employment policies were ... Full text Cite

New Hope: A Thoughtful and Effective Approach to "Make Work Pay"

Journal article Northwestern journal of law and social policy · January 2009 Cite

Effects of Employment-Based Programs on Families by Prior Levels of Disadvantage.

Journal article The Social service review · September 2008 This study examines how welfare and employment policies affect subpopulations of low-income families that have different levels of initial disadvantage. Education, prior earnings, and welfare receipt are used to measure disadvantage. The analysis of data f ... Full text Cite

From statistical associations to causation: what developmentalists can learn from instrumental variables techniques coupled with experimental data.

Journal article Developmental psychology · March 2008 In this article, the authors aim to make accessible the careful application of a method called instrumental variables (IV). Under the right analytic conditions, IV is one promising strategy for answering questions about the causal nature of associations an ... Full text Cite

Structural and process features in three types of child care for children from high and low income families

Journal article Early Childhood Research Quarterly · March 1, 2008 We use observations from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and, Youth Development (SECCYD) to compare structural and process characteristics of child care centers, family child care homes (nonrelative care in a home setting) and care by relatives for 2-, ... Full text Cite

Maternal work hours and adolescents' school outcomes among low-income families in four urban counties.

Journal article Demography · February 2008 We examine how changes in maternal work hours affect adolescent children's school participation and performance outcomes using data from interviews in 1998 and 2001 with approximately 1700 women who, in May 1995, were welfare-reliant, single mothers of ado ... Full text Cite

The effects of welfare and employment programs on children's participation in Head Start

Journal article Economics of Education Review · February 1, 2007 We examine the effects of 10 welfare and employment programs on single mothers' use of Head Start for their 3- to 4-year-old children, considering concurrent program effects on employment, income, and the use of other types of childcare settings. In genera ... Full text Cite

Child care subsidies and employment behavior among very-low-income populations in three states

Journal article Review of Policy Research · May 1, 2006 Using merged administrative data from welfare reform evaluations in three states, we estimate the effects of child care subsidy use on the length of time it takes for a welfare applicant to move into substantial employment. Findings show that the use of a ... Full text Cite

Employment and the risk of domestic abuse among low-income women

Journal article Journal of Marriage and Family · December 1, 2005 This paper uses data from 2 randomized evaluations of welfare-to-work programs - the Minnesota Family Investment Program and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies - to estimate the effect of employment on domestic abuse among low-income sin ... Full text Cite

Paternal child care and children's development

Journal article Journal of Population Economics · September 1, 2005 This paper uses the NLSY-Child data to assess the effects on cognitive and social-emotional development of father care as a child care arrangement among children in two-parent families with working mothers. Our results show that father care for infants is ... Full text Cite

One or two parents? Half or step siblings? The effect of family structure on young children's achievement

Journal article Journal of Population Economics · September 1, 2005 Do children who live with both biological parents fare better than children in other types of family structures? Does the presence of step or half-siblings affect child well-being? This study examines the effect of family structure on young children's achi ... Full text Cite

Child care assistance policies can affect the use of center-based care for children in low-income families

Journal article Applied Developmental Science · April 1, 2005 This article examines the effects of 13 experimental welfare and employment programs on single parents’ use of different types of child care for toddlers, preschool-age, and young school-age children. Policies designed to increase employment (e.g., earning ... Full text Cite

The effects of a Minnesota Welfare Reform Program on marital stability six years later

Journal article Population Research and Policy Review · December 2004 Full text Cite

Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low-income families?

Journal article Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · September 1, 2004 Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low-income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment-related policies and implemented as part of severa ... Full text Cite

How welfare policies affect adolescents' school outcomes: A synthesis of evidence from experimental studies

Journal article Journal of Research on Adolescence · January 1, 2004 Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta-analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low-income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ... Full text Cite

Welfare Policies and Domestic Abuse Among Single Mothers: Experimental Evidence from Minnesota

Journal article Violence Against Woman · October 1, 2003 This article examines the effects on domestic abuse of a pilot welfare program that took place in urban and rural counties of Minnesota from 1994 to 1998. Like many other random assignment evaluations of welfare programs, this pilot program was not designe ... Full text Cite

Identifying the Effects of Income on Children's Development Using Experimental Data

Journal article Journal of Marriage and Family · August 1, 2003 Prior research suggests that poverty can be detrimental to low-income children's development. Is this relation capturing the effects of poverty or the effects of other characteristics of low-income families associated with poverty? Can low-income children ... Full text Cite

How an earnings supplement can affect union formation among low-income single mothers.

Journal article Demography · August 2003 Using data from an experimental evaluation in two Canadian provinces, we found that offering an earnings supplement to single mothers in place of welfare altered rates of marriage and cohabitation, but that the direction of the effects varied by province. ... Full text Cite

Children and welfare reform: a view from an experimental welfare program in Minnesota.

Journal article Child development · March 2002 Little is known about the effects of the most recent welfare reform initiatives--which include work mandates, time limits, and enhanced earnings disregards--on children's outcomes. This is partly because the ways in which maternal employment and income aff ... Full text Cite

Family and individual predictors of child care use by low-income families in different policy contexts

Journal article Early Childhood Research Quarterly · January 1, 2002 We examine family and individual characteristics that predict low-income parents' child care use, problems with child care, and receipt of public subsidies using data from three demonstration studies testing policies to promote employment for low-income pa ... Full text Cite

How an Earnings Supplement Can Affect the Marital Behaviour of welfare Recipients: Evidence from the Self-Sufficiency Project.

Journal article · 2001 This paper uses data from the experimental evaluation of SSP to examine the effect on marriage of an alternative to the mainstream cash welfare system, an alternative that is contingent on work and removes the usual welfare marriage disincentive on marital ... Cite

Patterns and determinants of paternal child care during a child's first three years of life

Journal article Marriage and Family Review · May 23, 2000 This paper uses retrospective child care data from the NLSY79 to examine the patterns and determinants of paternal child care during a child's first three years of life. We focus on two-parent families with children whose mothers worked sometime between th ... Full text Cite

The supply of infants relinquished for adoption: Did access to abortion make a difference?

Journal article Economic Inquiry · January 1, 1999 Motivated by a theory of desired fertility I use three years of aggregate state level data to examine the impact of abortion access on the supply of infants relinquished for adoption. I show evidence that abortion access affected the supply of infants reli ... Full text Cite