TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activity
AU - Troller-Renfree, Sonya V.
AU - Costanzo, Molly A.
AU - Duncan, Greg J.
AU - Magnuson, Katherine
AU - Gennetian, Lisa A.
AU - Yoshikawa, Hirokazu
AU - Halpern-Meekin, Sarah
AU - Fox, Nathan A.
AU - Noble, Kimberly G.
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Ranjan Debnath, Pooja Desai, Dorothy Duncan, Greg Hancock, Andrea Karsh, Stephanie Leach, Lauren Meyer, and Aaron Sojourner for their consultation and support; Paul Youngmin Yoo, Maria Sauval, Liz Premo, and Michelle Spiegel for their help with cleaning and coding the baseline data, age-1 data, and impact shell; and the Baby’s First Years families for their participation. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the NIH under Awards R01HD087384 and K99HD104923. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. This research was additionally supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation; the Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund; the Annie E. Casey Foundation; Arrow Impact; the Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation; the Bezos Family Foundation; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill Hammack and Janice Parmelee, the Brady Education Fund; the Chan Zucker-berg Initiative (Silicon Valley Community Foundation); Charles and Lynn Schus-terman Family Philanthropies; the Child Welfare Fund; the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund; the Ford Foundation; the Greater New Orleans Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the Jacobs Foundation; the JPB Foundation; J-PAL North America; the New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity; the Perigee Fund; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the Sherwood Foundation; the Valhalla Foundation; the Weitz Family Foundation; and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation; and by three anonymous donors.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/2/1
Y1 - 2022/2/1
N2 - Early childhood poverty is a risk factor for lower school achievement, reduced earnings, and poorer health, and has been associated with differences in brain structure and function. Whether poverty causes differences in neurodevelopment, or is merely associated with factors that cause such differences, remains unclear. Here, we report estimates of the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on brain activity in the first year of life.We draw data from a subsample of the Baby's First Years study, which recruited 1,000 diverse lowincome mother-infant dyads. Shortly after giving birth, mothers were randomized to receive either a large or nominal monthly unconditional cash gift. Infant brain activity was assessed at approximately 1 y of age in the child's home, using resting electroencephalography (EEG; n = 435). We hypothesized that infants in the high-cash gift group would have greater EEG power in the mid- to high-frequency bands and reduced power in a low-frequency band compared with infants in the low-cash gift group. Indeed, infants in the high-cash gift group showed more power in high-frequency bands. Effect sizes were similar in magnitude to many scalable education interventions, although the significance of estimates varied with the analytic specification. In sum, using a rigorous randomized design, we provide evidence that giving monthly unconditional cash transfers to mothers experiencing poverty in the first year of their children's lives may change infant brain activity. Such changes reflect neuroplasticity and environmental adaptation and display a pattern that has been associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills.
AB - Early childhood poverty is a risk factor for lower school achievement, reduced earnings, and poorer health, and has been associated with differences in brain structure and function. Whether poverty causes differences in neurodevelopment, or is merely associated with factors that cause such differences, remains unclear. Here, we report estimates of the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on brain activity in the first year of life.We draw data from a subsample of the Baby's First Years study, which recruited 1,000 diverse lowincome mother-infant dyads. Shortly after giving birth, mothers were randomized to receive either a large or nominal monthly unconditional cash gift. Infant brain activity was assessed at approximately 1 y of age in the child's home, using resting electroencephalography (EEG; n = 435). We hypothesized that infants in the high-cash gift group would have greater EEG power in the mid- to high-frequency bands and reduced power in a low-frequency band compared with infants in the low-cash gift group. Indeed, infants in the high-cash gift group showed more power in high-frequency bands. Effect sizes were similar in magnitude to many scalable education interventions, although the significance of estimates varied with the analytic specification. In sum, using a rigorous randomized design, we provide evidence that giving monthly unconditional cash transfers to mothers experiencing poverty in the first year of their children's lives may change infant brain activity. Such changes reflect neuroplasticity and environmental adaptation and display a pattern that has been associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills.
KW - EEG
KW - Infant brain activity
KW - Poverty
KW - Randomized control trial
KW - Unconditional cash transfer
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85123412374&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85123412374&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2115649119
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2115649119
M3 - Article
C2 - 35074878
AN - SCOPUS:85123412374
VL - 119
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
SN - 0027-8424
IS - 5
M1 - e2115649119
ER -