LINDSAY MITCHELL: Study results baffle researchers

Fascinating news out of the US this week. The prevailing ideology - mirrored in NZ - is that poverty in and of itself harms children's development. That's the thesis behind welfare for poor mothers and more specifically, Ardern's impetus for her Best Start payments.

The US is a far more sensible country than NZ. It actually tests theories. Try to do this kind of research in NZ and academic ethics committees would be all over it like a rash. It'd never happen.

The National Bureau of Economic Research published the combined efforts of private and public institutes which conducted the following study:

"Between May 2018 and June 2019, 1,000 mothers were recruited shortly after giving birth in 12 postpartum wards across 4 U.S. metropolitan areas: New York, the greater Omaha Metropolitan area, New Orleans, and Minneapolis/St. Paul."

400 of the mothers were given $333 monthly unconditional cash; the other 600, just $20. The mothers needed to be below the federal poverty line to qualify. The cash was initially promised for 40 months and has been extended to 76. 

" Forty-one percent of mothers self-identified as Hispanic, and 40% self-identified as non-Hispanic Black. Approximately 9% of the sample self-identified as White. On average, mothers were about 27 years old, had completed close to 12 years of schooling, and had between 1 and 2 older children at the time of the birth. Thirty-eight percent reported living with the biological father of the baby at the time of the birth."

The results reported are at 48 months - when the child turned four.

"The Baby’s First Years study tests whether monthly unconditional cash transfers to low income mothers beginning shortly after birth affect children’s development. This paper reports results after the first 4 years of the planned 6-year RCT [Randomized Controlled Trial], at a point when mothers in the high-cash gift group had received about $16,000 in cash gifts and mothers in the low-cash gift group had received less than $1,000. We found no evidence of group differences on preregistered primary (language, executive function, social-emotional development, composite of high-frequency brain activity) or secondary (visual processing/spatial perception, pre-literacy skills, diagnosis of developmental conditions) outcomes."

Holy heck.

Ensuing discussions in the paper include questions like: Was the payment high enough to affect child outcomes?  Is it too early to expect to see a positive result? Did the pandemic interfere with the results?

The authors add, "...the lack of impacts on age-4 child outcomes raises the possibility that income alone may not affect children’s early development."

The "possibility"??

A report about the study from the New York Times states:

"It has long been clear that children from affluent families exhibit stronger cognitive development and fewer behavioral problems, on average, than their low-income counterparts. The question is whether their advantage comes from money itself or from related forces like parental health and education, neighborhood influences or the likelihood of having two parents in the home." (my emphasis)

As someone who takes a particular interest in welfare, the paper frustrates in providing no data about the mother's dependency status (preventing any within-group analysis on my part). However, according to the aforementioned NY Times report:

"While opponents say income guarantees could erode the work ethic, mothers in the two groups showed no differences across four years in hours worked, wages earned or the likelihood of having jobs."

The NY Times writer must be privy to further undisclosed data because employment status does not feature in the primary paper. The test participants were not qualified by source of household income so it can only be assumed that they were a mix of employed and unemployed mothers.

Typically, proponents of welfare from the Left are raising objections to the results (aided by the paper's authors.) Even one of the lead researchers said, “I was very surprised — we were all very surprised [that] the money did not make a difference.”

Disappointed perhaps?

But this is science, and while scientific evidence inevitably develops and may change over time, right now the theory that unconditional cash improves child development amongst the poor has been dealt a significant blow.

Lindsay Mitchell blogs here