Search Results

Title: Does Money Matter? A Comparison of the Effect of Income on Child Development in the United States and Great Britain
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Aughinbaugh, Alison Aileen
Gittleman, Maury
Does Money Matter? A Comparison of the Effect of Income on Child Development in the United States and Great Britain
Presented: Washington, DC, Population Association of America Meetings, March 2001
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Britain, British; Child Development; Cross-national Analysis; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Motor and Social Development (MSD); NCDS - National Child Development Study (British); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Verbal Memory (McCarthy Scale)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

An earlier version of this paper was presented in Ann Arbor, MI, Conference on "Cross-National Comparative Research Using Panel Surveys", October 2000

In this paper, we examine the effect of income on child development, as measured by scores on cognitive, behavior, and social assessments. Children's scores on various cognitive assessments have been shown to be related to success as adults. For instance, Currie and Thomas (1999) find that children's test scores at age seven are positively related to their employment and earnings as adults - even when a rich set of controls are included in the regressions. Consequently, addressing the question of whether higher levels of financial resources help children perform better on achievement tests may inform policies that aim to help children succeed as adults...Our results indicate that the relationship between income and test scores is, in fact, stronger in the US than in Great Britain when no other characteristics of the child or her family are taken into account. However, once controls for background characteristics and the mother's ability are included, the impact of income on child outcomes is very similar in the two countries. Our estimates of the effect of income on child outcomes are in line with those from previous studies that use US data: income has a positive and significant, but small effect on child development.

Bibliography Citation
Aughinbaugh, Alison Aileen and Maury Gittleman. "Does Money Matter? A Comparison of the Effect of Income on Child Development in the United States and Great Britain." Presented: Washington, DC, Population Association of America Meetings, March 2001.