# Household Income and Child Development in the First Years of Life

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE · 2024 · $1,216,835

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Poverty puts children at risk for developmental delays, lower school achievement and educational attainment,
and unfavorable labor market and health outcomes. The Baby’s First Years (BFY) project is the first large-scale
randomized controlled trial in the U.S. to estimate the impact of poverty reduction on children’s development
and health. Launched in 2018 (NICHD R01HD087384), BFY recruited 1,000 low-income mothers and their
newborn infants in four metropolitan areas. Mothers were randomized to receive a monthly unconditional cash
transfer of either $333 (“high-cash gift group”) or $20 (“low-cash gift group”) for the first 4 years and 4 months
(52 months) of the child’s life. Participants have been followed up annually around the children’s birthdays to
measure child development and family life. In this renewal, with funding already in hand for a two-year
extension of the cash gifts, BFY has the opportunity to study the impact of poverty reduction for an
unparalleled duration, across the first six years of life. The continuation of the project is driven by a need to
understand whether continuous monthly cash transfers will improve low-income children’s development at the
start of formal schooling. To accomplish this, we will collect two lab-based waves of data, at ages 6 and 8. We
will assess high-cash/low-cash group differences at age 6 on measures of academic achievement skills as well
as cognitive, self-regulation, and socio-emotional development. We will additionally assess high-cash/low-cash
group differences in measures of brain activity and stress physiology. At age 8, we will investigate whether
children’s learning and developmental trajectories have been altered in ways that generate persistent impacts,
20 months after the cessation of the payments. The study will also measure family contexts based on two
pathways by which poverty is theorized to affect children: an investment pathway (household expenditures;
maternal work; activities with children, early care and education arrangements) and a stress pathway
(economic hardship; parental relationship quality, maternal mental health, stress, and parenting quality). At
both ages 6 and 8, we will assess high-cash/low-cash group differences in these investment and stress
pathways.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10933416
- **Project number:** 5R01HD087384-07
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
- **Principal Investigator:** Greg John Duncan
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $1,216,835
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-15 → 2028-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10933416

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10933416, Household Income and Child Development in the First Years of Life (5R01HD087384-07). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10933416. Licensed CC0.

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