Mothers who received substantial monthly cash transfers as part of a study of low-income households spent more time and money on their children than those who didn’t. This finding is reported in a new article out in Nature Human Behavior by a group of authors headed by DUPRI's Lisa Gennetian. The article is titled
Most government-funded poverty-alleviation programmes target specific needs, such as housing or food. But some governments have started experimenting with simply giving people money with no conditions attached.
Lisa Gennetian at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and her colleagues selected 1,000 mothers living below the federal poverty threshold in 4 US cities to receive a monthly cash transfer for several years after childbirth. Some received US$333 a month; others received $20 a month.
After three years, mothers in the high-cash-transfer group were up to 8.2% less likely to live in poverty than were those in the low-cash-transfer group. The high-transfer mothers also spent around $68 more per month on toys, books and activities for their children, as well as an average of 11 more minutes per week on early-learning activities. High-transfer families’ spending on alcohol and cigarettes was similar to — or less than — that of low-transfer families.
The results suggest that cash infusions to parents can directly benefit children’s early environments.