By reducing poverty, cash allowances can have positive impacts on families with children. However, their distribution and uptake depend on successful implementation, the ease of receiving the money, and whether the intended near-universal reach to all eligible families is achieved. The U.S....

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 the impact of an unconditional monthly...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 disciplines in adopting open science...

Studies document large differences in the amount of time mothers spend in childcare by maternal education, even when controlling for characteristics such as income, employment hours, and work schedules. One possible explanation for this observed difference is that highly educated mothers find...