Greg Duncan, Distinguished Professor, School of Education and Departments of Economics and Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California at Irvine, presents, “The causal impact of poverty reduction on infants and their families”

Greg Duncan, Distinguished Professor, School of Education and Departments of Economics and Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California at Irvine, presents, “The causal impact of poverty reduction on infants and their families”

Early childhood poverty has long been associated with school achievement, educational attainment, adult earnings and, more recently, functional neural development. Two family-process pathways have been proposed – a “what money can buy” path consisting of the child enrichment and other time and money expenditures made by parents on behalf of their children, and a “stress” pathway that operates through parental mental health and parenting sensitivity. Unclear in these mostly correlational studies is whether poverty causes developmental and family process differences early in life. The seminar will describe early results on infant EEG power from a randomized control trial (RCT) of poverty reduction. Participants were 1000 mother-infant dyads who enrolled in Baby’s First Years, the first randomized control study of poverty reduction in early childhood in the United States. Mothers and their infants were recruited in hospital maternity wards in four U.S. metropolitan areas (New York City, the greater New Orleans metropolitan area, the greater Omaha metropolitan area, and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul). Shortly after giving birth, mothers were randomized to either a “high-cash gift group,” receiving $333/month, or a “low-cash gift group,” receiving $20 per month. The presentation will focus on group differences (i.e., treatment effects) on EEG-based outcomes and mediators as well as possible policy implications of these differences.

Coauthors: Sonya V. Troller-Renfree, Kimberly G. Noble, Nathan A. Fox, Katherine A. Magnuson, Lisa A. Gennetian, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Molly Costanzo

Greg DUNCAN holds the title of Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Duncan received his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan and spent the first 35 years of his career at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. Duncan’s recent work has focused on estimating the role of school-entry skills and behaviors on later school achievement and attainment and the effects of increasing income inequality on schools and children’s life chances. He is part of a team conducting a random-assignment trial assessing impacts of income supplements on the cognitive development of infants born to poor mothers in four diverse U.S. communities. Duncan was President of the Population Association of America in 2008 and the Society for Research in Child Development between 2009 and 2011. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, was awarded the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize in 2013 and was selected as the Kenneth Boulding Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2014. In 2015, he received SRCD's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy and Practice in Child Development.

Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.

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Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
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