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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 poverty threshold, to receive unconditional cash transfers of $333 or $20 per month (Clinical Trial Registry number NCT03593356). Data collected approximately 12, 24 and 36 months after the child’s birth show a moderate increase in household income and reductions in poverty; no statistically significant improvements in subjective economic hardship reports or quality of play with infants; and small, mostly statistically non-significant, increases in parental psychological distress and declines in mothers’ relationship quality. However, mothers receiving the higher amount reported more frequently engaging in enriching child activities than mothers receiving the lower amount. Cash support may provide other benefits for families and children, but moderate support levels do not appear to address self-reported economic hardship or standard survey measures of maternal well-being. However, these results do not rule out the possibility of very small effects. The authors examine the impact of monthly unconditional cash transfers starting at childbirth on families with low incomes. Transfers had minimal effects on family processes and maternal wellbeing, but improved family incomes and time mothers spent doing enriching activities with their child.

This study explores the extent to which differences in research design explain variation in Head Start program impacts. We employ meta-analytic techniques to predict effect sizes for cognitive and achievement outcomes as a function of the type and rigor of research design, quality and type of outcome measure, activity level of control group, and attrition. Across program evaluations, the average program-level effect size was 0.27 standard deviations. About 41% of the variation in estimates across evaluations can be explained by research design features, including the extent to which the control group experienced other forms of early care or education, and 11% of the variation within programs can be explained by the quality and type of the outcome measures.

This study uses data from a comprehensive database of U.S. early childhood education program evaluations published between 1960 and 2007 to evaluate the relationship between class size, child-teacher ratio, and program effect sizes for cognitive, achievement, and socioemotional outcomes. Both class size and child–teacher ratio showed nonlinear relationships with cognitive and achievement effect sizes. For child–teacher ratios 7.5:1 and lower, the reduction of this ratio by one child per teacher predicted an effect size of 0.22 standard deviations greater. For class sizes 15 and smaller, one child fewer predicted an effect size of 0.10 standard deviations larger. No discernible relationship was found for larger class sizes and child–teacher ratios. Results were less clear for socioemotional outcomes due to a small sample.

This article examines what we know about how low-income fathers matter for children. The authors first provide a theoretical background about how parents generally (and fathers more specifically) are expected to influence children's development and well-being. The authors note the importance of considering differences across children's age, gender, and race/ethnicity; and they identify key methodological challenges in this area. Then, they summarize the literature on residential fathers and child well-being, finding that greater involvement has been linked to better outcomes for children; however, much of this research has been conducted on more socioeconomically advantaged samples. For fathers who live away from their children, child support payments appear to improve children's outcomes, but the benefits of father-child interaction are much less clear and likely depend on the quality of the interaction and the characteristics of fathers. Overall, the authors conclude that low-income fathers can have a positive influence on children's well-being, but the evidence about the population overall is rather weak.

The authors examine black, white, and Hispanic children's differing experiences in early childhood care and education and explore links between these experiences and racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness. Children who attend center care or preschool programs enter school more ready to learn, but both the share of children enrolled in these programs and the quality of care they receive differ by race and ethnicity. Black children are more likely to attend preschool than white children, but may experience lower-quality care. Hispanic children are much less likely than white children to attend preschool. The types of preschool that children attend also differ. Both black and Hispanic children are more likely than white children to attend Head Start. Public funding of early childhood care and education, particularly Head Start, is already reducing ethnic and racial gaps in preschool attendance. The authors consider whether further increases in enrollment and improvements in quality would reduce school readiness gaps. They conclude that incremental changes in enrollment or quality will do little to narrow gaps. But substantial increases in Hispanic and black children's enrollment in preschool, alone or in combination with increases in preschool quality, have the potential to decrease school readiness gaps. Boosting enrollment of Hispanic children may be especially beneficial given their current low rates of enrollment. Policies that target low-income families (who are more likely to be black or Hispanic) also look promising. For example, making preschool enrollment universal for three- and four- year-old children in poverty and increasing the quality of care could close up to 20 percent of the black-white school readiness gap and up to 36 percent of the Hispanic-white gap.

Although the share of all 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children enrolled in center‐based care and early education has grown steadily in recent decades, rates of enrollment for children from low‐income families still lag behind those for children from families with high incomes. During the 1990s, growing public funding for compensatory preschool education and means‐tested child‐care assistance had the potential to increase the availability of free or low‐cost formal child‐care arrangements and thus the attendance of low‐income children. This article analyzes repeated cross‐sectional data on formal child‐care attendance from the October Current Population Survey as well as data on state‐level funding. The results indicate that increases in public funding are positively associated with the probability that low‐income young children attended formal care. These results also suggest that gaps in formal care between low‐ and high‐income families would have widened in the absence of public investments.

This article considers whether the disparate socioeconomic circumstances of families in which white, black, and Hispanic children grow up account for the racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness among American preschoolers. It first reviews why family socioeconomic resources might matter for children's school readiness. The authors concentrate on four key components of parent socioeconomic status that are particularly relevant for children's well-being--income, education, family structure, and neighborhood conditions. They survey a range of relevant policies and programs that might help to close socioeconomic gaps, for example, by increasing family incomes or maternal educational attainment, strengthening families, and improving poor neighborhoods. Their survey of links between socioeconomic resources and test score gaps indicates that resource differences account for about half of the standard deviation--about 8 points on a test with a standard deviation of 15--of the differences. Yet, the policy implications of this are far from clear. They note that although policies are designed to improve aspects of \"socioeconomic status\" (for example, income, education, family structure), no policy improves \"socioeconomic status\" directly. Second, they caution that good policy is based on an understanding of causal relationships between family background and children outcomes, as well as cost-effectiveness. They conclude that boosting the family incomes of preschool children may be a promising intervention to reduce racial and ethnic school readiness gaps. However, given the lack of successful large-scale interventions, the authors suggest giving only a modest role to programs that address parents' socioeconomic resources. They suggest that policies that directly target children may be the most efficient way to narrow school readiness gaps.

Despite increases in public funding for early care and education (ECE) programs in recent decades, low-income children ages 0–5 years are less likely to be enrolled in center-based ECE programs compared with higher-income children. Low-income working parents are also more likely to work jobs with nonstandard schedules, which are associated with lower rates of center-based ECE. This study examines whether parents' work hours and nonstandard schedules explain incomebased gaps in center-based ECE using detailed measures of parental work hours and schedules based on calendar data from the National Survey of Early Care and Education. We find that mothers' work hours and schedules are predictive of 0–5-year-old children's enrollment in center-based ECE, and accounting for mothers' work hours and schedules significantly reduces income-based gaps in center-based ECE, particularly among infants and toddlers.

Attendance in U.S. preschools has risen substantially in recent decades, but gaps in enrolment between children from advantaged and disadvantaged families remain. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, the authors analyze the effect of participation in child care and early education on children's school readiness as measured by early reading and math skills in kindergarten and first grade. They find that children who attended a center or school-based preschool program in the year before school entry perform better on assessments of reading and math skills upon beginning kindergarten, after controlling for a host of family background and other factors that might be associated with selection into early education programs and relatively high academic skills. This advantage persists when children's skills are measured in the spring of kindergarten and first grade, and children who attended early education programs are also less likely to be retained in kindergarten. In most instances, the effects are largest for disadvantaged groups, raising the possibility that policies promoting preschool enrolment of children from disadvantaged families might help to narrow the school gap. (DIPF/Orig.).

Maternal education is a strong correlate of children's language, cognitive, and academic development. In most prior research, mothers' education has been treated as a fixed characteristic, yet many mothers, particularly economically and educationally disadvantaged mothers, attend school after the birth of their children. In the present study, we use longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to consider whether increases in maternal education are associated with concurrent improvements in children's school readiness, language skills, and the quality of home environments at age 3. Increases in mothers' education are linked to young children's expressive and receptive language skills but only among mothers with initially low levels of education. Increases in education are also associated with improvements in some aspects of children's home environments, particularly mothers' responsiveness and the provision of learning materials. Mediation analyses provide some evidence that improvements in children's language associated with increased maternal education are due in part to changes in the quality of home environments.