Promoting the Positive Development of Boys in High-Poverty Neighborhoods: Evidence From Four Anti-Poverty Experiments.

This study uses geocoded address data and information about parent's 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 anti-poverty programs on boys' and girls' developmental outcomes during the transition to early adolescence differ as a function of neighborhood poverty levels. The strongest positive impacts of these programs are among boys who lived in high-poverty neighborhoods at the time their parents enrolled in the studies, with smaller or non-statistically significant effects for boys in lower poverty neighborhoods and for girls across all neighborhoods.

Getting a Job is Only Half the Battle: Maternal Job Loss and Child Classroom Behavior in Low-Income Families.

This study uses data from an experimental employment program and instrumental variables (IV) estimation to examine the effects of maternal job loss on child classroom behavior. Random assignment to the treatment at one of three program sites is an exogenous predictor of employment patterns. Cross-site variation in treatment-control differences is used to identify the effects of employment levels and transitions.

Meeting the Basic Needs of Children: Does Income Matter?

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 scientists have made great methodological strides in establishing whether income has independent effects on the cognitive development of low-income children. Our review of that research suggests that a $1,000 increase in income has positive, but small, effects on children, rarely exceeding 1/10(th) of a standard deviation change in outcomes for children.