Welfare policies and very young children: experimental data on stage-environment fit.
The authors examined the effects of welfare programs that increased maternal employment and family income on the development of very young children using data from 5 random-assignment experiments. The children were 6 months to 3 years old when their mothers entered the programs; cognitive and behavioral outcomes were measured 2-5 years later. While there were no overall program impacts, positive or negative, on the development of children in this age group, there was a pair of domain- and age-specific effects: The programs decreased positive social behavior among 1-year-olds and increased school achievement among 2-year-olds. After exploring several explanations for these results, the authors suggest that the contextual changes engendered by the programs, including children's exposure to center-based child care, interacted differentially with specific developmental transitions.
Hill
Heather D
HD
School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. hhill@uchicago.edu
Morris
Pamela
P
D000124:Achievement; D002170:Canada; D002648:Child; D002656:Child Day Care Centers; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004651:Employment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D007223:Infant; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology; D010553:Personality Development; D011203:Poverty / Q000523:psychology; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012919:Social Behavior; D012931:Social Environment; D012946:Social Welfare; D014481:United States