Reducing Intergenerational Poverty

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Reducing Intergenerational Poverty

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ISBN 978-0-309-70366-6 | DOI 10.17226/27058
CONTRIBUTORS
Greg J. Duncan, Jennifer Appleton Gootman, Priyanka Nalamada, Editors; Committee
on Policies and Programs to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty; Board on
BUY THIS BOOK Children, Youth, and Families; Committee on National Statistics; Division of
Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine
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Reducing Intergenerational
Poverty
Greg J. Duncan, Jennifer Appleton

Gootman, Priyanka Nalamada, Editors
Committee on Policies and Programs to

Reduce Intergenerational Poverty
Board on Children, Youth, and Families
Committee on National Statistics
Division of Behavioral and Social

Sciences and Education
Consensus Study Report

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This activity was supported by contracts between the National Academy of Sciences and the
Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (75ACF121C00093), Bainum Family Foundation (7608), Doris Duke
Foundation (2021249), Foundation for Child Development (NAS 03-2021), National Academy
of Sciences W.K. Kellogg Fund, Russell Sage Foundation (2104-31166), and W.K. Kellogg
Foundation (P-6000158-2021). Support for the work of the Board on Children, Youth, and
Families is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (79846). Any opinions, findings,
conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the
views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.
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Reducing Intergenerational Poverty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
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COMMITTEE ON POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO REDUCE

INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
GREG J. DUNCAN (Chair), University of California, Irvine

FENABA R. ADDO, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
ANNA AIZER, Brown University
MARGARET R. BURCHINAL, University of Virginia
RAJ CHETTY, Harvard University
STEPHANIE FRYBERG, University of Michigan
HARRY J. HOLZER, Georgetown University
VONNIE C. MCLOYD, University of Michigan
KIMBERLY G. MONTEZ, Wake Forest School of Medicine
AISHA D. NYANDORO, Springboard to Opportunities
MARY E. PATTILLO, Northwestern University
JESSE ROTHSTEIN, University of California, Berkeley
MICHAEL R. STRAIN, American Enterprise Institute
STEPHEN J. TREJO, University of Texas at Austin
RITA HAMAD (Consultant), James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine /

National Academy of Medicine Fellow, Harvard School of Public Health
Study Staff
JENNIFER APPLETON GOOTMAN, Study Director (from March 2022)
SUZANNE LE MENESTREL, Study Director (until January 2022)
PRIYANKA NALAMADA, Program Officer
BRIANA SMITH, Senior Program Assistant (from July 2022)
MARISSA GLOVER, Senior Program Assistant (until July 2022)
EMILY P. BACKES, Deputy Board Director

v

BOARD ON CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND FAMILIES
JONATHAN TODRES (Chair), Georgia State University College of Law

RICHARD F. CATALANO, JR., University of Washington School of Social Work
TAMMY CHANG, University of Michigan
DIMITRI A. CHRISTAKIS, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, University of Washington
ANDREA GONZALEZ, McMaster University
NANCY E. HILL, Harvard University
CHARLES HOMER, Economic Mobility Pathways
MARGARET KUKLINSKI, University of Washington
MICHAEL C. LU, UC Berkeley School of Public Health
STEPHANIE J. MONROE, Wrenwood Group
STEPHEN RUSSELL, The University of Texas at Austin
NISHA SACHDEV, Premnas Partners, Washington, DC
JANE WALDFOGEL, Columbia University School of Social Work
JOANNA L. WILLIAMS, Rutgers University
Staff
NATACHA BLAIN, Senior Board Director
EMILY P. BACKES, Deputy Board Director

vi

Reviewers
This Consensus Study Report was reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their
diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to
provide candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine in making each published report as sound as possible and to ensure
that it meets the institutional standards for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to
the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the
integrity of the deliberative process.
We thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
RICHARD V. BURKHAUSER, Cornell University

RONALD F. FERGUSON, Harvard University
VIVIAN L. GADSDEN, University of Pennsylvania
CHARLES J. HOMER, Economic Mobility Pathways
KATHERINE MAGNUSON, University of Wisconsin–Madison
CYNTHIA S. OSBORNE, Vanderbilt University
STEVEN RAPHAEL, University of California, Berkeley
H. LUKE SHAEFER, University of Michigan
C. MATTHEW SNIPP, Stanford University
FLORENCIA TORCHE, Stanford University
Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and
suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations of this report
nor did they see the final draft before its release. The review of this report was overseen by
KENNETH A. DODGE, Duke University, and SHERRY GLIED, New York University. They
were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried
out in accordance with the standards of the National Academies and that all review comments
were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the authoring
committee and the National Academies.

vii

Acknowledgments
An ad hoc consensus study committee of the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine was convened to analyze the evidence on key determinants of
intergenerational poverty and the effectiveness of programs designed to address those
determinants in order to identify policies and programs with the potential to reduce long-term,
intergenerational poverty.
The committee thanks the sponsors of this study for their support: the Administration for
Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the
Bainum Family Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development,
the National Academy of Sciences W.K. Kellogg Fund, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the
W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
This report would not have been possible without the contributions of many people.
Special thanks go to the members of the committee, who dedicated extensive time, expertise, and
energy to the drafting of the report. The committee also thanks the members of the staff of the
National Academies for their significant contributions to the report: Jennifer Appleton Gootman,
Priyanka Nalamada, Emily Backes, and Briana Smith, as well as Suzanne LeMenestral and
Marissa Glover, who both contributed to the early stages of working with the committee.
The committee is also grateful to Javed Kahn, Pamella Atayi, and Lisa Alston for their
administrative and financial assistance on this project. From the Office of Reports and
Communication of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE),
Kirsten Sampson Snyder, Viola Horek, Douglas Sprunger, and Meredith Fender shepherded the
report through the review and the production process and assisted with its communication and
dissemination. Hannah Fuller and Megan Lowry, of the Office of News and Public Information,
and Sandra McDermin and Julie Eubank, of the Office of Congressional and Government
Affairs, were instrumental in the release and promotion of the report. The committee also thanks
Clair Woolley of the National Academies Press and Bea Porter of DBASSE for their assistance
with the production of the final report; Anne Marie Houppert, in the National Academies
research library, for her assistance with fact checking and literature searches; and Connie Citro
and Alix Beatty, National Academies staff, for their skillful writing and editing contributions.
Many individuals volunteered significant time and effort to address and educate the
committee during our information gathering sessions. Their willingness to share their
perspectives, research, and personal experiences was essential to the committee’s work. We
thank: Megan Bang, Northwestern University; Jill Duerr Berrick, UC Berkeley; Cheryl Crazy
Bull, American Indian College Fund; Matt Gregg, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Brenda
Jones Harden, University of Maryland; Anna Haskins, University of Notre Dame; Joe Hobot,
American Indian OIC; Kevin Killer, Oglala Sioux Tribe; Judith Leblanc, Native Organizers
Alliance and Parents; Jens Ludwig, The University of Chicago; Susan Mangold, Juvenile Law
Center; Leslie Paik, Arizona State University; Steven Raphael, UC Berkeley; Beth Redbird,
Northwestern University; Emilia Simeonova, Johns Hopkins University; C. Matt Snipp, Stanford
University; Karina L. Walters, University of Washington; Bruce Western, Columbia University;
and the parents, caregivers, organizational representatives, and policy experts who participated in
our listening sessions.
The committee thanks the researchers who conducted original analyses and prepared
commissioned papers: Lawrence M. Berger, Sophie Collyer, Brenda Jones Harden, Margaret
Thomas, Jane Waldfogel, Chris Wimer; as well as the staff at Ascend, Aspen Institute, for

viii

organizing and shepherding the committee’s listening sessions: Marjorie Sims and Andrea
Camp. The committee also thanks the following individuals for their contributions to this study
and the final report: Nicholas Ainsworth, Dorothy Duncan, Jonathan Fisher, Abby Hiller, David
Johnson, Zachary Parolin, and Austen Zheng.
Throughout the project, Natacha Blain, director of the Board on Children, Youth, and
Families, Carlotta Arthur and Patti Simon, executive director and associate executive director of
DBASSE, and Mary Ellen O’Connell and Monica Feit, the then executive director and deputy
executive director of DBASSE, provided valuable oversight and guidance.
Greg J. Duncan, Chair

Committee on Policies and Programs to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty

ix

Contents
Summary 1
1 Introduction 18
Study Approach
Organization of the Report
Defining Intergenerational Poverty
Organizing Our Discussion of Drivers and Interventions
Applying a Racial/Ethnic Lens in Assessing the Evidence
Criteria for Selecting Program and Policy Interventions
Strength of the Research Evidence
Magnitude of Impacts and Costs of Policies and Programs
Possible Behavioral Responses to Policies and Programs
Policy Conclusions
Political Feasibility
Considering Combinations of Programs
2 A Demographic Portrait of Intergenerational Child Poverty 32

Measuring Intergenerational Poverty
The Demographics of Intergenerational Poverty
A Broader Look at Intergenerational Income Mobility Across Groups
Intergenerational Income Mobility Among Children of Immigrants
The Geographic Distribution of Intergenerational Poverty
Intergenerational Mobility: Trends and Comparisons with Other Counties
Trends in U.S. Intergenerational Mobility
Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Versus Other Countries
3 Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Poverty 49

Defining Disparity, Inequality, Discrimination, and Structural Racism
Historical Roots of Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Mobility
Contemporary Drivers of Racial Disparity in Intergenerational Poverty
Education
Health
Wages and Employment
Housing and Neighborhood Environments
Crime, Victimization, and Criminal Justice
Child Welfare System
Some Implications for Program and Policy Interventions
4 Children’s Education 69
How Education Affects the Economic Mobility of Children
Achievement and Attainment Differences Across Racial and Ethnic Groups
Early-Life Education, Care, and Parenting

x

Elementary and Secondary Education

Postsecondary Education
Career Training
Education Interventions
K-12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
K-12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence
Career Training Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
5 Child and Maternal Health 87

Health Differences Across Income, Racial, and Ethnic Groups
How Health Affects the Economic Mobility of Children
Access to Health Care: Family Planning, Medicaid, Indian Health Services, and Mental
Health Services
Access to Family Planning Services
Health Insurance Coverage During Pregnancy and Childhood Through Medicaid
Access to Publicly Provided Health Care via the Indian Health Service (IHS)
Access to Mental Health Care
Environmental Influences as a Driver: Pollution, Stress, and Violence
Pollution
Increased Stress in Utero and During Childhood
Greater Exposure to Violence, Especially Gun Violence
Nutrition and Food Insecurity as a Driver
Interventions Involving Children’s Health
Increasing Access to Health Care Based on Direct Evidence
Improving the Environment Based on Direct Evidence
Improving Nutrition Based on Direct Evidence
Health Interventions Based on Indirect Evidence
Increasing Access to Medical Care Among Native American Families
Increasing Access to Mental Health Care
Reducing Child Exposure to Pollution
Increasing Child Nutrition via WIC
6 Children’s Family Income, Wealth, and Parental Employment 113

Trends in Income and Earnings
Family Income and Child Poverty
International Comparisons of Child Poverty Rates
Trends in Earnings and Employment
Causes of Labor Market Trends
Causes of Unequal Employment and Earnings by Gender and Race
Do Family Income, Parental Employment, and Earnings During Childhood Drive
Intergenerational Poverty?
Childhood Poverty and Intergenerational Outcomes
Parental Employment and Intergenerational Outcomes
Increased Access to Work-Based Safety-Net Benefits

xi

Wealth and Intergenerational Poverty

Household Wealth and Intergenerational Outcomes
Interventions Involving Children’s Family Income and Wealth and Parental Employment
Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence
7 Children’s Family Structure 137

Trends in Family Structure
Family Structure and Intergenerational Child Well-Being
Does Family Structure Affect Intergenerational Mobility?
Neighborhood Differences in Family Structure
Incarceration and Family Structure Differences
Family Structure Interventions
8 Children’s Housing and Neighborhood Environments 144

Housing as a Driver of Intergenerational Poverty
Housing Quality
Housing Crowding
Housing Stability and Tenure
Housing Affordability
Homelessness
Neighborhoods as a Driver of Intergenerational Poverty
Housing and Neighborhood Interventions
9 Neighborhood Crime and the Criminal Justice System 159

Victimization and Exposure to Violence as a Driver of Intergenerational Poverty
Exposure to Neighborhood Violence
Predictors of Neighborhood Violence
Crime Prevention Strategies
Youth Offending and the Criminal Justice System as Drivers of Intergenerational Poverty
Causes of Youth Offending
High-Frequency Police Encounters and Excessive Use of Force
Youth Confinement
Parent and Caregiver Interaction with the Criminal Justice System: Incarceration, Fines,
and Fees
Interventions Involving Neighborhood Crime and Criminal Justice
10 Child Maltreatment 174

Which Children Are Involved with the Child Welfare System?
Child Maltreatment and Child Welfare System Involvement as Drivers of Intergenerational
Poverty
Adult Correlates of Childhood Maltreatment

xii

Consequences of Involvement with Child Protective Services

Out-of-Home Care (Foster Care)
Factors Leading to Child Welfare Involvement
Interventions Reducing Child Maltreatment
11 Research and Data Needs for Understanding and Ameliorating Intergenerational

Poverty 183
Priorities for Future Research
Research Funding Principles and Guidance
Principles
Other Guidance
Creating a Federal Data Infrastructure for Research Use
Data Sources and Linkage Possibilities for Economic Resources
Promising Developments
Remaining Challenges for Economic Opportunity Research
Conclusions and Recommendations on Research and Data Needs
Experiments and Long-Term Follow-Ups
A Federal Data Infrastructure for Research Use
APPENDIX A: Biosketches of Committee Members 204
APPENDIX B: Perspectives on Intergenerational Poverty 211
APPENDIX C: Appendices to Chapters 217

Appendix to Chapter 2
REFERENCES 332

xiii

Boxes, Figures, and Tables

BOXES
1-1 Statement of Task

1-2 How Much Child Poverty Is There?
1-3 Standards of Evidence Used in Identifying Program and Policy Ideas
3-1 Key Terms and Concepts

3-2 Direct-Evidence Interventions in Chapters 4 Through 10 That Have Been Shown to be
Effective for Reducing Intergenerational Poverty Among Black or Latino Children
5-1 Federal Food Programs Serving Children
9-1 Useful Definitions
11-1 Research Priorities to Ameliorate Intergenerational Poverty and Facilitate

Socioeconomic Mobility, by Domain
11-2 Mixed Methods and Interdisciplinary Teams in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO)
Residential Mobility Experiment
11-3 Data on Health, Education, and Criminal Justice
11-4 Enhancing Panel Surveys for Intergenerational Poverty Research
11-5 Data Linkage Projects at the U.S. Census Bureau
11-6 Relevant Legislation and Statements of Support for Linked Data for Evidence
C-3-1 History of Land Dispossession and the Sauk Tribe

C-3-2 Labor Exploitation Through Sharecropping
FIGURES
S-1 Intergenerational persistence of low-income status, by racial and ethnic group

S-2 Fraction of intergenerationally low-income people in different racial and ethnic groups
S-3 Intergenerational mobility, by racial and ethnic group
1-1 Direct and indirect evidence of a policy change on long-run, intergenerational

outcomes
2-1 Percent of low-income children who are also low income in adulthood, by racial group
and type of poverty measure
2-2 Intergenerational low-income persistence, by racial and ethnic group
2-3 Fraction of children with low income in both childhood and adulthood, by racial and
ethnic groups
2-4 Intergenerational earnings and household income mobility for sons
2-5 Intergenerational earnings mobility for daughters
2-6 Intergenerational mobility, by race/ethnicity
2-7 Income rank of sons with low-income parents, by father’s country of origin

xiv

2-8 Geographic distribution of children with parents in the bottom income quintile who
reach the top three income quintiles
2-9 Age-35 household income of children of low-income parents in the New York City
area
2-10 Percent of children earning more than their parents, by birth cohort and parental
income percentile
3-1 How air pollution across America reflects racist policy from the 1930s
4-1 Employment rates for 25- to 34-year-olds in 2019, by education and sex
4-2 Median annual earnings for 25- to 34-year-old workers in 2019, by education
4-3 8th grade reading proficiency rates, by race/ethnicity, 1998-2019
4-4 College enrollment and BA+ attainment rates, by race/ethnicity
5-1 Adult health and early childhood income status, for individuals born between 1968
and 1975
5-2 Health of children living in poverty vs. other children, 2001–2005
5-3 Maternal and infant health disparities by race/ethnicity
5-4 Average suicide rate per 100,000 among children and adolescents, ages 0–19, by
race/ethnicity, 2010-2020
5-5 Annual death rates for the four most common causes of death in the United States
among children and adolescents, ages 1 to 19, 1999–2020
5-6 Food insecurity among children, by race and ethnicity of household head, 2008–2021
6-1 Average U.S. household income of children in the bottom, middle, and top income
quintiles, 1967–2019
6-2 Child poverty in the United States and four other anglophone countries, 2016
6-3 Average real wages in the U.S. for the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles, 1973–2019
6-4 Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by race/ethnicity
and sex, 4th quarter 2022 averages
6-5 Employment-to-population ratios by race and gender, November 2022
6-6 Median net worth of U.S. families in 2019
6-7 EITC expansion options
7-1 Percent of children living with married parents and in other arrangements, 1980–2019
7-2 Percent of children living with married parents, by race/ethnicity and education, 2019
7-3 SPM child poverty rates by family composition, 2019
8-1 Inadequate housing by poverty status and race/ethnicity

8-2 Homeownership rates based on household income as a percent of area median by
race/ethnicity, 2019
8-3 Housing cost burden, by tenure, income and race/ethnicity, 2020
8-4 Children living in high-poverty areas by race and ethnicity in the United States, 2017–
2021

xv

9-1 Violent crime victimization rates (per 1,000) in 2019, by income, age and
race/ethnicity
9-2 Juvenile overall and violent crime arrest rates (per 1,000) in 2018, by race/ethnicity
9-3 Number of confined youth by type of facility in 2019
9-4 Number of youth in long-term secure facilities/detention in 2019 by offense category
10-1 Rates of substantiated maltreatment of children ages 0–17 by selected characteristics,

2008–2020
C-2-1 Intergenerational mobility based on several measures of economic status, by

race/ethnicity
C-2-2 Average income-to-needs of children by percentile of the AGI distribution for children
under age 18
C-2-3 Adjusted gross income and income-to-needs distribution of children under 18 by tax-
unit dependency status
C-2-4 Average income-to-needs of children by percentile of the AGI distribution, including
and excluding minor filers
C-3-1 Incarceration rates by race from 1880 to 1950

C-3-2 Imprisonment rates of U.S. residents per 100,000 under the jurisdiction of state or
federal correctional authorities by race/ethnicity, 2010–2020
C-3-3 Rate of youth confined in juvenile residential placement facilities per 100,000 by
race/ethnicity, 2019
C-9-1 U.S. violent crime rate per 100,000 from 1960–2021

C-9-2 Incarceration rates by race, age, and education from 1960–2010
C-9-3 Rate of juvenile confinement by race/ethnicity, 1997–2019
TABLES
S-1 Program and Policy Ideas Linked by Direct Evidence to Reductions in

Intergenerational Poverty
8-1 Families Without Housing by Race/Ethnicity, 2020
11-1 Programs and Policies Linked by Direct Evidence to Reductions in Intergenerational

Poverty
C-2-1 Intergenerational Poverty Statistics Based on AGI Data in Tax Records

C-2-2 Intergenerational Poverty Statistics Based on Data from the PSID
C-2-3 Intergenerational Income Mobility Statistics Based on Data from the IRS and PSID
C-3-1 Interventions in Chapters 4 Through 10 That Have Been Shown to Be Effective for
Black, Latino, or Native American Children and Families

xvi

C-4-1 Ratio of Statistically Significant (p < .10) Treatment Impacts to Outcomes Examined
in the HomVee Literature Review
C-4-2 Ratio of Statistically Significant (p < .10) Treatment Impacts Averaged Over the 2
Cohorts on Outcomes Examined in the Puma et al. (2012) Head Start Impact Study
C-11-1 IRS/SSA Tax Forms and Data Elements for Accurate Measurement of Family Income
Over Time—Available to the Census Bureau and Needed
C-11-2 Program Records of Nontaxable Benefits for Accurate Measurement of Family
Income Over Time—Available to the Census Bureau and Needed

xvii

Summary
Capable and responsible adults are the foundation of any well-functioning and prosperous
society. Yet low-income families struggle to offer their children the same advantages and
necessities that better-off families can offer. As a result, throughout their childhoods children
living in families with low incomes face an array of challenges that place them at much higher
risk of experiencing poverty in adulthood as compared with other children.
The costs of perpetuating this cycle of economic disadvantage fall not only on low-
income individuals and families themselves, but also on society as a whole. Poverty reduces
overall economic output and places increased burdens on the educational, criminal justice, and
health care systems. Understanding the causes of intergenerational poverty and implementing
programs and policies to reduce it would yield a high payoff for children and for the entire
nation.
The United States has made remarkable progress in reducing child poverty in recent
decades, with the most comprehensive measure of child poverty used by the Census Bureau
showing dramatic declines through 2021 but then increasing sharply in 2022 (NASEM, 2019a;
Current Population Survey, 2023). But these data do not speak directly to the issue of
intergenerational poverty—the chances that children who grow up in low-income families are
themselves in low-income households as adults. Concerns over the threat to the United States’
economic future posed by intergenerational poverty led Congress to include in the Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2021 a provision directing the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a comprehensive study of intergenerational child poverty
in the United States that would:1
• Identify key drivers of long-term, intergenerational poverty;
• Evaluate the racial and ethnic disparities and structural factors that help perpetuate
intergenerational poverty;
• Identify evidence-based policies and programs that have the potential to significantly
reduce the effects of the key drivers of intergenerational poverty; and
• Identify key, high-priority gaps in the data and research needed to develop effective
policies for reducing intergenerational poverty in the United States.
To meet this charge, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families (BCYF) of the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) convened an ad
hoc committee with wide-ranging expertise across economics, education, medicine, sociology,
social psychology, public health, and developmental psychology, and with subject area expertise
1
The committee’s full Statement of Task is listed in Chapter 1, Box 1-1.

1

in structural racism, labor markets, intergenerational mobility, minority populations,

immigration, policy development, and community-based empowerment work. The committee
reviewed research literature and a commissioned paper and held public sessions focused on
Native American communities, the child welfare system, and the justice system. The committee
also held closed listening sessions with low-income parents and caregivers,2 federal-level public
policy experts, and community-based service providers with perspectives on poverty in rural
areas, among Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian communities, and among Latino3
communities. These sessions were held with subsets of committee members and were organized
as small group discussions with organizational leaders supporting communities that the
committee had identified as being inadequately represented in its public sessions and in the
evidence base.
INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY AND POVERTY PERSISTENCE
The committee defined intergenerational poverty as a situation in which children who

grow up in families with incomes below the poverty line are themselves poor as adults. It is a
substantial problem in the United States. Among U.S. children born around 1980 who grew up in
households with incomes below or near the poverty line, 34% were living in low-income
households when they were in their 30s.4 In other words, one-third of children living in low-
income households also had low household incomes in adulthood, which is twice the 17% rate
found among adults in their 30s who did not grow up in low-income households.
Intergenerational economic disadvantage disproportionately affects Black and Native
American families. As shown in Figure S-1, only 17% of Asian children living in households
with incomes below or near the poverty line were poor in adulthood, compared with 29% of poor
White children and 25% of Latino children. However, close to half (46%) of Native American
children and over one-third (37%) of Black children who grew up in low-income families had
low incomes in adulthood.
2
Parents and caregivers involved in these listening sessions were primarily Black American individuals from
southern urban areas.
3
The report uses the terms “Latino,” “Black,” “White,” “Native American,” and “Asian” in identifying these
racial and ethnic groups. The term “Latino” is used in this report as an ethnonym of “Hispanic” and is referring
collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry. The term “Native
American” is being used to be inclusive of Indigenous populations in the United States, including Alaska Natives.
The term “Asian” is being used to be inclusive of a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far
East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent.
4
As detailed in Chapter 2, a similar study based on different data and an income cutoff corresponding to the U.S.
Official Poverty Threshold found that 29% of children growing up in poor households were themselves poor at age
30. This Summary uses the terms “poverty” and “low-income” to denote economic disadvantage, depending on the
income concept used in the cited research.

2

FIGURE S-1 Intergenerational persistence of low-income status, by racial and ethnic group.
NOTE: This figure shows the share of children with parents in the bottom income quintile,
who remained in the bottom income quintile in adulthood. Child income is measured as mean
household adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2014–2015 and parent income is measured as mean
household AGI in 1994–2000. Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
SOURCE: Data from Chetty et al., 2020.
Despite the higher rates of low-income persistence among Black and Native American
children, the largest share (40%) of persistently low-income children is White (Figure S-2).
More than one-third are (34%) Black, 19% are Latino, and Native American and Asian
children account for 2% each.

3

FIGURE S-2 Fraction of intergenerationally low-income people in different racial and ethnic
groups.
NOTE: This figure shows the racial/ethnic composition of children with parents in the bottom
income quintile who remained in the bottom income quintile in adulthood. Child income is
measured as mean household AGI in 2014-2015 and parent income is measured as mean
household AGI in 1994-2000. Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
SOURCE: Data from Chetty et al., 2020.
The flip side of intergenerational persistence is upward mobility out of a low-income

childhood, and here also Black and Native American families fare worst. One can think of
economic status as rungs on a 100-step ladder, with the lowest rungs corresponding to the
lowest incomes, the highest rungs representing the highest incomes, and each individual rung
representing one percentile of the income distribution. On average, White children who grew
up in low-income families—with incomes on the 10th rung of the ladder in the 1980s and
1990s—were able to climb their way to the 41st rung by the time they were in their 30s
(Figure S-3). Asian children rose higher up the ladder (53rd rung) than White children, while
Latino children did only slightly worse (39th rung) than White children.

4

FIGURE S-3 Intergenerational mobility, by racial and ethnic group.

NOTE: This figure shows the mean household income percentile of children with parents at
the 10th income percentile. Child income is measured as mean household AGI in 2014–2015
and parent income is measured as mean household AGI in 1994–2000. Children were born
between 1978 and 1983.
SOURCE: Data from Chetty et al., 2020
In contrast, Black and Native American children who grew up in the same economic
circumstances—the 10th rung of the parental income ladder—on average climbed only as far
as the 28th rung by the time they are in their 30s—13 rungs below White children. These
racial and ethnic gaps persist for children whether they started out on the 20th or even the 50th
rung. Comparable data on intergenerational mobility in wealth for Black and White children
show even larger gaps favoring White children. The size and consistency of these gaps across
the entire distribution of parental household income point to the importance of developing and
implementing large-scale, effective programs and policies to ameliorate them.

5

KEY DRIVERS OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
The committee examined the drivers of intergenerational poverty and mobility for all
children as well as the factors that moderate these drivers (e.g., histories, practices, contexts, and
structural factors) and limit the intergenerational mobility of both Black and Native American
children. It focused on seven specific domains:
Children’s Education and the Educational System5
By imparting skills and other capacities valued by employers, the U.S. education
system—including early education, K-12, and post-secondary schooling, as well as career
training—is a key driver of upward intergenerational mobility for many children, including low-
income children. However, low-income children start school with lower levels of academic and
social skills than other children, on average, and these average gaps do not close as they progress
through school. Large gaps in school achievement and completed schooling also persist across
racial and ethnic subgroups.
Child Health and the Health Care System6
Children in low-income families have worse health than other children, a disparity that
begins at birth and increases as children grow older. Improving the health of low-income
children improves their future educational attainment, employment, and earnings while reducing
their reliance on public assistance. Three important mechanisms for improving child health and
other outcomes are access to family planning services, health insurance coverage in pregnancy
and childhood, and food and nutrition programs. A child’s environment (including pollution,
stress, and violence) also has a profound impact on health and development during childhood
and on the longer-run economic outcomes that lead to intergenerational poverty.
Family Income and Wealth and Parental Earnings and Employment7
Low wages, earnings, and income among low-income families risk perpetuating the cycle
of economic disadvantage, in part by leaving low-income parents unable to provide their children
with proper nutrition, access to medical care, and enrichment and learning activities, along with a
host of other factors that might promote intergenerational mobility. Evidence suggests that safety
net programs during childhood and adolescence can improve children’s educational and labor
market attainment, as well as their physical health, in adulthood. Studies covering policy changes
over the past 25 years provide the strongest evidence for the beneficial intergenerational impacts
of expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In the absence of changes in household
income, changes in parental employment alone do not have consistent positive or negative
effects on children’s development.
5
Adapted from Conclusions in Chapter 4.
6
7

6

Family Structure8
Over the past 50 years, single-parent families have become much more prevalent, but
largely among parents who lack two- or four-year college degrees. The committee finds a strong
association between growing up in a single-parent family and childhood poverty. The links
between family structure during childhood and adult poverty (i.e., the transmission of poverty
intergenerationally) suggest a causal effect.
Housing, Residential Mobility, and Neighborhood Conditions9
The places where children live—their homes and neighborhoods—are foundational for
their health, education, and development. Consistent correlational evidence has linked
intergenerational poverty with high lead levels, homelessness, overcrowding, moving frequently,
and high housing costs relative to family income in childhood. Stronger evidence links
improvements in low-income children’s long-term economic, educational, and health outcomes
to moving to less disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Safety and the Criminal Justice System10
Crime affects children in two ways—through victimization and through involvement with
the criminal justice system, whether the crime episode involved them directly or involved a
member of their family. Low-income and younger people are most likely to report being victims
of crime in their neighborhoods and schools. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death
among American children, with the highest rates among low-income, Black, and Native
American children. Exposure to violence in childhood can have lasting adverse effects on
children’s health, well-being, and achievement.
At the same time, despite generally declining rates of crime in recent decades, increases
in incarceration rates (with small drops in recent years) disproportionately affect children in
families with low incomes, with negative consequences for their healthy development and long-
term economic success. Children in low-income families are more likely than other children to
have a close relative who is or has been incarcerated, and they themselves are more likely to be
involved in the juvenile justice system or to be incarcerated as adults. Experiencing juvenile
detention has been linked to less completed schooling and more adult crime.
Child Maltreatment and the Child Welfare System11
Children who experience abuse, neglect, and/or involvement with child welfare systems
have worse outcomes in adulthood than their peers who have not been maltreated or involved in
the child welfare system. Furthermore, income and poverty are highly correlated with child
8
9
10
11

7

maltreatment and child welfare system involvement. While there is a dearth of definitive causal
evidence on the effects of the various components of the child welfare system on eventual adult
poverty, research does point to some promising approaches to preventing child maltreatment in
the first place.
RACIAL DISPARITIES AND STRUCTURAL FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO

THESE DRIVERS12
The challenges that Black and Native American families face in propelling their children
into socioeconomic security result from contemporary and historical disparities, discrimination,
and structural racism. Behaviors and choices can also have major causal impacts on
intergenerational mobility. Many factors influence the behaviors and choices of, and therefore
the outcomes for, Black and Native American individuals, including the experiences of historical
violence, oppression, and marginalization. This history has shaped contemporary racial
disparities in education, health, the labor market, housing, the criminal legal system, and child
maltreatment.
Taken together, these factors have been crucial in shaping contemporary determinants of
intergenerational poverty. The evidentiary base is strongest for Black-White disparities;
additional research is needed on the causes and correlates of intergenerational poverty among
Native American individuals. Given these persistent intergenerational disparities, improving
outcomes for Black people and Native Americans will likely require some race consciousness in
our policies and their implementation to ensure that impacts are as positive as possible for these
marginalized groups.
Education Disparities
Despite decades of improving educational outcomes among Black and Native American
individuals, achievement and attainment gaps remain. Forced assimilation, an absence of
culturally relevant instruction, school segregation by race and class, and disproportionate
punishment create learning environments that do not foster educational achievement and
attainment. The most rigorous contemporary causal evidence points to the negative long-term
effects of harsh school discipline.
Health and Health Care Disparities
A history of unethical medical experimentation, contemporary implicit bias among health

care professionals, high uninsurance rates among Native American individuals, and greater
exposure to chronic stress, racism, and environmental toxins all have a negative impact on the
health of low-income Black and Native American children, reducing their chances of upward
mobility.
12

8

Employment and Earnings Disparities
Even after improvements in their relative earnings over time, Black workers still have
lower average earnings, face less predictable work hours and less stable employment, and reside
disproportionately in states where the relatively low federal minimum wage is binding. Some of
these differences can be attributed to their lower educational achievement and attainment, as well
as lower labor force participation rates. At the same time, audit studies document the ongoing
prevalence of racial discrimination against Black workers.
Housing Disparities
Despite recent reductions in race-based residential segregation, the long history of

redlining in the United States is still affecting people’s lives in the form of higher poverty rates,
lower life expectancy, higher rates of chronic disease, greater exposure to pollution, and lower
rates of upward mobility, among other outcomes. Discrimination against Black house seekers
and renters is correlated with greater residential segregation and with larger Black-White gaps in
intergenerational income mobility. Black and Native American children are significantly more
likely to grow up in high-poverty neighborhoods, which is also correlated with lower
intergenerational mobility.
Criminal Justice System Disparities
Substantial evidence documents racial disparities in both the commission of violent crime
and victimization as well as in arrests, charging, convictions, sentencing, incarceration, and
community supervision. Black and Native American youth experience disproportionate
punishment in the juvenile justice system. Community violence poses a significant risk to health
and well-being for Black, Native American, and low-income communities, while
disproportionate system involvement and incarceration negatively affect young people’s later
employment and earnings.
Child Maltreatment and Welfare-System Involvement Disparities
Black and Native American children have the highest rates of child maltreatment and are
more likely to be referred to child welfare services. Such exposures correlate with worse
educational and employment outcomes in early adulthood.
EVIDENCE-BASED POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO REDUCE

The committee sought to identify evidence-based policies and programs for low-income
children that could reduce their chances of remaining low-income as adults. We identified three
types of policies: (1) those that target children directly, such as higher-quality or expanded
education and health services; (2) those that target families, such as income support or residential
mobility policies and programs; and (3) those that target neighborhoods, such as neighborhood
policing programs.

9

The committee reviewed evidence on both the short- and the longer-run impacts of these
policies. In some cases, evaluators have been able to estimate impacts on intergenerational
poverty by tracking the adult outcomes of children who were and were not affected by the policy
change or intervention years or even decades before. The committee decided to highlight policy
and program ideas whose effectiveness is supported by this kind of direct intergenerational
evidence (see Table S-1 for a summary of these policy and program ideas). Moreover, the
committee developed rules for using the strength of the supporting evidence to distinguish
between programs and policies supported by “strong” versus “promising” direct evidence.
The committee also reviewed policy and program ideas supported by indirect evidence.
For example, if a program evaluation establishes effectiveness based on shorter-run outcomes
such as school test scores rather than adult outcomes, that would be considered indirect evidence.
Most of the details on programs supported by indirect evidence appear in Appendix C. We note
that because our filter was designed to include only studies that offered rigorous long-run causal
evidence, it is likely that many effective programs and policies that have not yet been evaluated
for long-run effectiveness are not included in our list of highlighted policies.
The committee found direct evidence of success in reducing intergenerational poverty for
five of the seven key drivers: education; health; income and parental employment; housing; and
crime.
Education Interventions
Evidence for the value of early care and education programs, including parenting
support programs such as home visiting, is mixed. Well-studied model programs implemented in
the 1960s and 1970s generated impressive benefits that persisted well into adulthood. However,
evidence on more recent programs is too weak and contradictory to identify profitable
incremental federal investments in the early education area.
At the elementary and secondary education levels, too many low-income students attend
schools with crumbling infrastructure and have inexperienced or poorly qualified teachers as
well as curricula unlikely to prepare them for college. Recent studies have shown that increases
in school funding directed at underresourced districts are effective in promoting both higher
student achievement and higher rates of completed schooling, so the committee proposes that
policy makers consider increasing federal funding for school districts with the highest
concentrations of low-income students.
Causal evidence also points to the positive effects of Black teachers on the high school
graduation and college enrollment of Black students and the positive effects of Ethnic Studies
course-taking for high school graduation, which suggests supporting efforts that increase teacher
workforce and curricular diversity. Conversely, exclusionary school discipline increases
students’ chances of dropping out of high school and criminal justice contact in young
adulthood, and it also reduces their college enrollment rates. Policy makers should consider the
development and evaluation of positive behavioral and alternative disciplinary interventions.
With respect to postsecondary education, the strongest evidence was for the programs to
increase attendance and completion among low-income students. Specifically, programs
designed to increase enrollment, improve relevant instruction and support services, and give
students incentives to enroll in higher-value institutions and programs of study all show promise.

10

The primary ways to accomplish these goals are through carefully targeted financial aid
programs and increased funding for proven support services for low-income students (such as
tutoring and case management).
Strong evaluation research on career training programs also points to promising
approaches, including career and technical education pathways beginning in high school as well
as sectoral training programs for youth and adults that develop occupational skills valued by
employers in key growing sectors of the labor market.
Child Health Interventions
Child health interventions that appear likely to reduce intergenerational poverty include
federal programs that have funded family planning and Medicaid services, including medical
services provided by the Indian Health Service. Strong evidence also links reductions in
pollution to improvement in child health and future earnings. Finally, although the strongest
evidence on the long-term impacts of child nutrition is based on historical data, more recent
evidence links nutrition programs in childhood to medium-term outcomes such as health in early
adolescence.
Family Income, Wealth, and Parental Employment Interventions
Evaluations of expansions of the EITC have produced strong direct evidence that
intergenerational poverty can be reduced through earnings subsidies that increase both family
income and parental employment during childhood and adolescence.
Family Structure Interventions
While two-parent family structures may protect families against intergenerational

poverty, the committee could not identify proven policies and programs that promote such
structures.
Housing, Residential Mobility, and Neighborhood Interventions
Emerging evidence suggests that programs to stimulate housing production and

neighborhood improvement may hold considerable promise. The strongest causal evidence
supports housing choice vouchers coupled with assistance moving to low-poverty
neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Safety, Prevention, and the Criminal Justice System Interventions
A diverse array of interventions to address violence and victimization show promise, as

do interventions addressing the ways the criminal justice system affects youth outcomes and
intergenerational mobility. One approach is interventions designed to reduce future juvenile

11

offending by means of investments in child human capital, reducing children’s exposure to lead,
and scaling-up successful therapeutic interventions. Another approach is to strengthen
communities by reducing violent crime, victimization, and gun violence, for example through
effective policing strategies, such as expanding police presence and supporting community
policing in high-crime neighborhoods.
Child Maltreatment and the Child Welfare System Interventions
Research has identified a number of promising programs focused on reducing the risk of
child maltreatment. Evaluation evidence on the longer-run impacts of these programs is too weak
to identify profitable incremental federal investments in the child maltreatment area.
Reducing Racial Disparities
Racial disparities are relevant to virtually any intervention aimed at reducing

intergenerational poverty, so the committee also looked for evidence about programs specifically
designed to reduce them. The committee was unable to identify long-term evaluations of
programs that would specifically address racial disparities in intergenerational poverty. It did,
however, find that a number of the programs listed in Table S-1 would disproportionately benefit
Black children (see Table C-3-1). These include increasing K–12 school funding, having more
Black teachers, reducing harsh school discipline, strengthening financial aid and student support
programs in postsecondary education, establishing career training programs, expanding Medicaid
access, reducing pollution, funding nutrition programs, expanding the EITC, reducing juvenile
incarceration, supporting therapeutic programs such as Becoming a Man, engaging in vacant lot
abatement, and policing in high-crime neighborhoods. It also found direct evidence of programs
that promoted the intergenerational mobility of Latino children: funding nutrition programs,
reducing harsh school discipline and offering ethnic studies courses.
CROSS-CUTTING POLICY AND PROGRAM ISSUES
The committee also considered how the seven drivers of intergenerational poverty—and
the interventions that might address them—might be interrelated. It identified several cross-
cutting issues.
First, it recognized that interventions designed to address any one driver might have
spillover effects for other drivers. For example:
• Health interventions early in life, including access to family planning services and health
insurance coverage in pregnancy and childhood, have been shown to improve children’s
educational attainment, employment, and earnings as well as employment outcomes for
mothers.
• Increases in school funding have been linked not only to improved educational and labor
market outcomes for children, but also to reductions in juvenile and adult crime.
• Reductions in lead exposure have been linked to long-run improvements in educational,
criminal, and health outcomes.

12

• Reductions in harsh school discipline have been linked with higher educational
achievement and attainment, lower usage of safety net programs, and reduced
involvement in the criminal legal system later in life.
Second, the committee found that some important issues that arose in our listening
sessions did not fit neatly into just one of the seven intervention domains. A prominent example
is the struggle many families face in securing high-quality early care and education (ECE),
particularly for their youngest children, in order to enter or remain in the labor market or secure
additional schooling. The lack of affordable ECE can interfere with the effectiveness of many
programs designed to address intergenerational poverty. Children themselves need ECE that
promotes their health, safety, and school readiness. Reliable ECE is also important for parents
because steady employment requires affordable and reliable ECE. The Child Care and
Development Block Grant program has provided subsidies to many low-income working
mothers, and while it has been shown to promote parental employment, it has been less
successful at promoting children’s school readiness. Finding affordable approaches to promoting
both parental employment and children’s school readiness is a key policy research priority.
A third cross-cutting issue, which was also stressed by community members in our
listening sessions, is the need to ensure equitable and ready access to programs. Unnecessarily
burdensome administrative procedures discourage families from receiving benefits for which
they are eligible. Burdensome requirements can also interfere with parents’ ability to secure
steady employment.
A final cross-cutting issue, which was raised in the committee’s statement of task, related
to children’s ages: Are incremental investments in a particular childhood stage (preschool,
middle childhood, or adolescence) consistently more effective than investments in other stages?
A look at Table S-1 shows that this is not the case; promising investments were identified in all
childhood stages.
PROGRAM COMBINATIONS THAT REDUCE INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
The committee’s charge also included a request to identify combinations of federal policy
investments that could reduce intergenerational poverty persistence. Given the high standard of
evidence the committee adopted, this task proved difficult because virtually all of the policy and
program evaluation literature focuses on individual policies, rather than on combinations of such
policies. Nevertheless, the report does speculate on the efficacy of some program
combinations—in particular those combining work incentives, income supplementation, and
ECE support. It also concludes that studies of the effectiveness of program combinations are
urgently needed.

13

RESEARCH AND DATA NEEDED FOR UNDERSTANDING AND REDUCING

Although the committee was able to identify a number of programs and policies that
appeared to be effective in reducing intergenerational poverty, it lacked high-quality evidence on
the intergenerational impacts of many other promising programs. This is sobering but not
surprising, given the expense and difficulty of scaling up promising interventions identified in
controlled experiments, the length of time required to see the effects of interventions on
intergenerational poverty, the difficulties of assembling data for historical, retrospective analysis,
and the costs of obtaining adequate sample sizes for the populations most at risk of
intergenerational poverty, especially Native Americans.
The committee therefore offers recommendations to funders concerning the highest
priorities for research related to intergenerational poverty, and to federal agencies responsible for
collecting the data researchers need to analyze the likely impacts of promising programs and
policies.
Research Funding Guidance
Research aimed at identifying proven programs for boosting every child’s chances to succeed
should conform to the following three principles:
1. Prioritize strong research designs that provide causal estimates of long-term

program impacts.
2. Set aside funding not only for rigorous small-scale experiments, but also for
replications and long-term follow-ups of promising programs at scale.
3. Fund research arms for specific communities at highest risk.
The committee suggests, in addition, that new research and ongoing surveys, both cross-
sectional and longitudinal, add samples of high-risk population groups to the extent feasible,
gather detailed information about race and ethnicity, and include questions about where
respondents were born and grew up. Finally, the committee notes the potential utility in
evaluation research of involving members of the communities under study, understanding the
implementation challenges, and adding mixed-method and interdisciplinary approaches to the
research designs.
Creating a Federal Data Infrastructure for Research Use
Existing census, survey, and administrative data—linked for families over time and
across subject domains, including income, wealth, demographics, health, and education, and with
appropriate confidentiality protection—would be invaluable for cost-effective research on
intergenerational mobility. At present, much of the data for studying intergenerational poverty
and related topics are controlled by various federal and state agencies and are difficult to link or
use for academic research or policy evaluation. Recent efforts to ameliorate this situation include

14

the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018, which presumes access to
federal data by statistical agencies for evidence-building; supportive reports of the Commission
on Evidence-based Policymaking and other organizations; and innovative projects at the Census
Bureau and other agencies to build linked datasets.
To address the significant limitations on researcher access to linked datasets, which
include technical and feasibility issues, the need to balance privacy protection appropriately
against data accuracy, and legal barriers:
RECOMMENDATION 11-1—The Chief Statistician at the Office of Management

and Budget (OMB), to facilitate research on economic opportunity,
intergenerational poverty, and related topics, should:
• Work within OMB and with relevant agencies and congressional committees to
amend the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act to:
o include a presumption of secure access to confidential data for academic
research and policy evaluation, explicitly superseding provisions in U.S.C.
Titles 26 and 13, which require research to benefit the IRS and the Census
Bureau, respectively;
o provide secure access for statistical use, academic research, and policy
evaluation to records of state benefit programs that receive federal funds
(e.g., SNAP);
o require federal agencies with custody of confidential datasets to use a risk-
utility framework for determining appropriate privacy protection methods
for their data; and
o impose penalties on researchers and other data users for willful, harmful
disclosure of confidential data, similar to the penalties imposed on
statistical agency staff;
• Work with the IRS Statistics of Income Division and the Census Bureau to expand
the tax items available to the Census Bureau under regulation 6103(j)(1)-1 for
research use;
secure sustained funding for data linkage projects, Federal Statistical Research
Data Centers, and technical capacity in the states to share records to support cost-
effective research on intergenerational poverty, economic opportunity, and related
topics; and
• Work with relevant agencies to establish guidelines for consent and data storage
that will facilitate the re-use of survey and intervention data, linked to subsequent
administrative records, for long-term follow-up and for studies not yet anticipated
at the time of the original study.

15

TABLE S-1 Program and Policy Ideas Linked by Direct Evidence to Reductions in
Driver Program or policy idea

(* indicates that the supporting evidence was particularly strong)
Education
• Early childhood None identified in recent research
• K–12 education Increase K-12 school spending in the poorest districts*

Increase teacher workforce diversity*
Reduce exclusionary school discipline*
Increase access to Ethnic Studies courses
• Post-secondary Expand effective financial aid programs for low-income students*

education Increase campus supports (such as tutoring and case management)*
• Career training Expand high-quality career and technical education programs in high
school*
Expand sectoral training programs for adults and youth*
Child and Maternal Health

• Family planning Increase funding for Title X family planning programs*
Ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries have access to family planning
services*
• Health insurance Expand access to Medicaid with continuous 12-month eligibility and
12-month post-partum coverage*
Expand access to Indian Health Services for all eligible mothers and
children
• Pollution reduction Support the EPA to work with local partners to adopt and expand
efficient methods of monitoring outdoor and—especially in
schools—indoor air quality
• Nutrition Remove the five-year waiting period of SNAP eligibility for legal
permanent resident parents*
Eliminate the proration of SNAP benefits for citizen children with
undocumented parents
Family Income, Employment, and Wealth

• Work-based income Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit by increasing payments along
support some or all portions of the schedule and possibly by providing a
credit to families with no earnings*
Family Structure

16

None identified by research to date

Housing and Neighborhoods
• Residential mobility Expand coverage of the Housing Choice Voucher program and
couple it with customized counseling and case management
services to facilitate moves to low-poverty neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Crime and the Criminal Justice System

• Juvenile incarceration Juvenile confinement should only be used for youth who pose a
serious and immediate threat to public safety*
• Child investment Improve school quality and reduce lead exposure in ways identified
strategies in the education and health categories*
Scale-up evidence-based therapeutic interventions such as the
Becoming a Man program
• Strengthen Scale up programs that abate vacant lots and abandoned homes*
communities to reduce Increase grants to community-based organizations*
violent crime and
victimization
• Policing strategies Expand funding for policing in high-crime neighborhoods*
Expand use of effective strategies like community policing*
• Gun safety Improve gun safety in ways that pass constitutional review*
Promote child access prevention laws and restrictions on right-to-
carry laws, limit access to guns by domestic abusers*
Promote sentencing add-ons for violence involving firearms*
Child Maltreatment
Racial Disparities
A number of the programs and policies listed above have been shown
to be effective for Black children and families (See Table C-3-1)*
Notes: “*” indicates that the program or policy’s impact on intergenerational poverty is
supported by random-assignment evaluation evidence that has been replicated across several
sites or by compelling quasi-experimental evidence based on national or multi-state data or a
scaled-up program. Table entries without an “*” represent programs or policies for which the
evidence has not been replicated or the policy has not been scaled up.

17

1
Introduction
Children are the future of every society. The more they live in economically secure,
nurturing families, are healthy, receive high-quality education, and are otherwise supported to
achieve their potential as adults, the better off that society as a whole will be. Over the past
decade, an average of about 10 million U.S. children (14% of all children) lived in families with
incomes below the poverty line.1 These children face a multitude of disadvantages that, taken
together, ensure that they will not have the same opportunities to achieve adult success as will
children from more advantaged backgrounds. Abundant research has shown that children living
in households in poverty are more likely than their more affluent peers to struggle in school and
to suffer from poor health and other problems (NASEM, 2019a, Ch. 3). Children living in
economic poverty for most of their childhood are more likely to remain poor as they become
adults and have children of their own.
Researchers have estimated that the societal costs associated with children growing up in
economic poverty—for example, the costs of reduced adult productivity and increased costs of
crime and health care—amount to 4.0% to 5.4% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product annually
(NASEM, 2019a). This is roughly $1 trillion per year when applied to the current size of the U.S.
economy. Children who remain poor into adulthood—that is, those who experience
intergenerational poverty—risk transmitting their poverty status and its costs to their own
children as well.
Intergenerational poverty is not only a burden for these families and the U.S. economy,
but also a rebuke to the American ideal of upward mobility for every generation and to the dream
of all American parents that their children will have the chance to prosper. The perpetuation of
intergenerational poverty among children who happen to be born into low-income families is
also fundamentally unfair, going against the widely agreed-upon moral imperative that all
children should have equal opportunities for success.
Recent research documenting the scope of child poverty and its intergenerational
transmission in America today provides reasons for both optimism and pessimism. The most
comprehensive measure of child poverty used by the Census Bureau shows dramatic declines
over the past several decades (NASEM, 2019a; U.S. Census Bureau, 2022). And the most
comprehensive study of intergenerational economic disadvantage finds that nearly 40 percent of
children who grew up on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder were well above that level
when they reached their 30s (Chetty et al., 2020), although one-third of those children remained
low-income as adults.2 International comparisons of intergenerational mobility based on an
1
These data are based on Census data compiled over the period from 2012 to 2021 using the Supplemental Poverty
Measure.
2
The “bottom rungs” refers to children growing up with family incomes in the bottom quintile of the distribution,
and “well above” is defined as incomes in the top three quintiles of the adult income distribution when they were in
their 30s. See Chapter 2 for details.

18

absolute income standard for parents and children show similar patterns in the United States and
Canada. In the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries, in contrast, rates of
intergenerational mobility are much higher than in the United States (Manduca et al., 2020).
Most striking in the U.S. data are differences in these intergenerational mobility rates
across children in different racial and ethnic groups. Broadly speaking, rates of intergenerational
poverty persistence are relatively similar for White, Latino, Asian, and immigrant children, but
much higher for native-born Black and, especially, Native American children.3
A congressionally mandated National Academies study committee—the Committee on
Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years—
produced a report on short-term strategies for reducing the number of children living in poverty
in the United States (NASEM, 2019a). However, because that report focused on immediate
poverty reduction, it did not attempt to identify policies and programs directed at children or
their families that have been shown to be effective in reducing the likelihood that the children
will grow up to be poor in adulthood.
In response to a second congressional mandate, and with support from the Administration
for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the
Bainum Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, the
National Academy of Sciences W.K. Kellogg Fund, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation, the National Academies undertook a study to examine the drivers of long-
term intergenerational poverty and identify policies and programs with the potential to reduce it.
The Committee on Policies and Programs to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty was appointed to
carry out this charge. The committee includes 14 members with disciplinary expertise in
economics, education, medicine, sociology, social psychology, public health, and developmental
psychology, and with subject area expertise in structural racism, labor markets, intergenerational
mobility, minority populations, immigration, policy development, and community-based
empowerment work.
The principal elements of the congressional charge were to identify key drivers of long-
term, intergenerational poverty, including the racial disparities and structural factors that
contribute to this cycle; to assess existing research on the effects on intergenerational poverty of
major assistance, education, and other intervention programs; and, most important, to identify
evidence-based programs and policies that have the potential to significantly reduce the effects
of the key drivers of intergenerational poverty. Finally, the committee was asked to identify
high-priority gaps in the data and research needed to help develop effective policies for reducing
intergenerational poverty in the United States. The full text of the charge is shown in Box 1-1.
BOX 1-1
Statement of Task
An ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

will identify policies and programs with the potential to reduce long-term, intergenerational
3
The report uses the terms “Latino,” “Black,” “White,” “Native American,” and “Asian” in identifying these racial
and ethnic groups. The term “Latino” is used in this report as an ethnonym of “Hispanic” and refers collectively to the
inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry. The term “Native American” is used
to be inclusive of Indigenous populations in the United States, including Alaska Natives. The term “Asian” is used to
be inclusive of persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian
subcontinent.

19

poverty. This study is designed to complement and will build on the findings, conclusions, and
recommendations in the recent Congressionally mandated report, A Roadmap to Reducing
Child Poverty. The committee will apply a racial/ethnic disparities lens in analyzing the literature
on key determinants of entrenched poverty and the evidence on the effectiveness of programs
designed to address those determinants. It will assess the implications of that analysis for policy
and make recommendations to guide future federal investments in long-term measures to
reduce intergenerational poverty.
Specifically, the committee will:
1. Briefly assess the available research documenting the correlates and causes of the
perpetuation of poverty from childhood into adulthood. The committee will evaluate the racial
disparities and structural factors that contribute to this cycle. Based on that review of evidence,
the committee will identify key drivers of long-term, intergenerational poverty.
2. Assess existing research on the effects of major assistance, intervention, and

education programs on intergenerational poverty. Based on the available evidence, the
committee may assess relevant programs in the United States and other industrialized countries
(such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland) and may consider both well-established
programs and innovative ideas developed at the state or local level or in other countries that
have the potential to be scaled up for use nationwide. In reviewing the literature, the committee
will:
i. consider impacts on intergenerational poverty, if possible as defined by the
Supplemental Poverty Measure;
ii. consider the distribution of poverty-reducing impacts across demographic groups (as
defined by such characteristics as race and ethnicity, rural or urban location, immigrant status,
age of parent, and age of child); and
iii. consider behavioral responses to these programs that may influence their poverty-
reducing effects (for example, the Earned Income Tax Credit creates incentives to increase
parental earnings).
3. Identify policies and programs that have the potential to significantly reduce the
effects of the key drivers of long-term, intergenerational poverty identified in question 1 above
and for which there is strong evidence that they will reduce multi-generational poverty. The
committee will consider expansions to existing federal programs as well as the possibility of
developing new programs. The committee's review will include analyses of program costs,
benefits, and efficacy. The committee may directly compare programs with one another to
determine which efforts make the most efficient use of funds and hold the greatest promise to
end intergenerational poverty. In the case of programs identified as having strong potential to
reduce intergenerational poverty, the committee will provide analysis in a way that will allow
federal policy makers to identify and assess potential combinations of policy investments that
can best meet their policy objectives. To the extent possible, the committee will also identify
combinations of programs that may result in synergies or redundancies, in terms of either the
programs' effects or the populations targeted.
4. Identify key, high-priority gaps in the research needed to help develop effective
policies for reducing intergenerational poverty in the United States.

20

STUDY APPROACH
The committee proceeded on complementary tracks in responding to its charge. First, it

conducted a review of the scientific literature related to intergenerational poverty and economic
mobility. The committee supplemented this literature review with a commissioned paper on child
welfare and special tabulations on child poverty based on data from the U.S Census Bureau.
To broaden its understanding of the causes and impacts of poverty, the committee
convened two public sessions and six closed listening sessions with key stakeholders. In these
sessions the committee heard from parents and caregivers4; researchers with expertise in the
child welfare and justice systems; community leaders and researchers with expertise on Native
American communities; community-based service providers serving rural areas, Alaskan Native
and Native Hawaiian communities, and Latino communities; and federal-level public policy
experts. A summary of these sessions is included in Appendix B. While the participants in these
information-gathering sessions were not selected to be representative and do not reflect the full
range of perspectives or experiences of those affected by intergenerational poverty, they
provided the committee with important contextual information and key narratives for
understanding the lived experience of families at risk of intergenerational poverty. These
discussions served as a backdrop for the committee’s review and assessment of the available
empirical literature, as well as for its deliberations on “best bet” programs and policies for
reducing intergenerational poverty. Appendix B provides more detail on key themes and quotes
from those sessions.
ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
This report of the committee’s response to the charge describes its findings about the
drivers of intergenerational poverty and conclusions regarding “best bet” policies that the
committee judged worthy of consideration by policy makers and in public policy discussions. It
has been divided into a set of relatively short chapters and a set of appendices that provide
additional details to support the claims and analyses discussed in the main report. The committee
urges interested readers to consult these appendices to gain a more complete picture of its work.
Chapters 2 and 3 offer contextual background: Chapter 2 is a demographic portrait of
intergenerational poverty and income mobility in the United States, and Chapter 3 is an overview
of the historical and contemporary experiences of Black and Native American people in the
United States and the enduring effects of their disparate treatment. Chapters 4 through 10 present
the committee’s findings and conclusions from the research on seven primary drivers of
intergenerational poverty: children’s education, children’s health, parental income, family
structure, housing and neighborhoods, crime and criminal justice, and child maltreatment.
Chapter 11 briefly summarizes what the committee has learned and identifies the gaps in the data
and research needed to develop effective policies for reducing intergenerational poverty in the
United States that the committee regards as most pressing.
4
Parents and caregivers involved in these listening sessions were primarily Black American individuals from

21

DEFINING INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
The Statement of Task explicitly instructs the committee to use an economic definition of
intergenerational poverty: the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). As explained in Chapter 2,
the SPM defines poverty by comparing an individual’s household income with a poverty
threshold that varies with household size and local cost of living. Poverty thresholds ranged
between $25,000 and $30,000 for two-adult, two-child families in 2020 (Fox & Burns, 2021).
Children and all other family members in households with incomes below the relevant threshold
are considered poor.5 Using the SPM, which includes noncash sources of income, the U.S.
Census Bureau estimates that 12.4% of U.S. children lived in families with incomes below the
poverty line in 2022 (Shrider and Creamer, 2023; Box 1-2).
BOX 1-2
How Much Child Poverty Is There?
Using a poverty measure (the SPM) that includes noncash sources of income, the U.S.
Census Bureau estimates that 12.4% of U.S. children lived in families with incomes below the
poverty line in 2022 (Shrider and Creamer, 2023). This poverty rate is nearly half its level in
2013. And this recent decline is on top of a 10 percentage-point decline in SPM-based poverty
between 1967 and 2013 (NASEM, 2019a, Figure 2-11). These rapid declines in child poverty
may lead some to raise the question of whether the United States is on the cusp of eliminating
child poverty, and perhaps intergenerational poverty as well.
The committee’s view is that, despite these welcome reductions in child poverty, both
current and intergenerational poverty remain urgent national problems. The primary reason is
that single-year poverty rates fluctuate with policy changes and macroeconomic conditions.
Child poverty rates in 2021 were only 5.2%, but that low rate can be attributed to pandemic
relief policies, such as the expansion of the Child Tax Credit to very-low-income parents.
Moreover, many children not classified as in poverty are nevertheless living in families
with incomes not far above the poverty line. Drawing the line at 150 percent of the current SPM
poverty thresholds increases the number of children in low-income families by 60 percent.
SOURCE: Committee generated.
The Census Bureau first began issuing SPM-based poverty estimates in 2011, and prior to
that time there was only limited work extending SPM-based estimates (Burkhauser et al., 2023).
As the committee assessed the evidence concerning patterns of intergenerational poverty and
programs and policies that might reduce it, it found no estimates of the SPM poverty status in
adulthood of individuals who, as children, lived in household with incomes below the SPM-
based poverty line. The committee turned to other income and mobility measures, for example
looking at the share of children with families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution who
remained in that income quintile as adults or who moved into a higher quintile. The committee
5
The SPM differs from the Official Poverty Measure in a number of ways, most notably in that it includes “in-
kind” sources of income such as tax credits and benefits from programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP) (formerly Food Stamps) and because it is adjusted for the local cost of living.

22

also expanded its conception of economic success, or lack of it, in adulthood to include strong
correlates of family income, such as earnings from employment, level of schooling completed,
health status, and involvement as an adult with the criminal justice system.
Most of the poverty standards used by the U.S. government are based on an absolute
income standard that is adjusted for inflation and family size but little else. A broader set of
measures conceives of economic position in a relative sense—where parental families and adult
children are on the economic ladder relative to other families and adult children. Most parents
hope that their children will do better than they have done by climbing up to the middle or even
upper rungs of the economic ladder in adulthood (discussed in more detail in Chapter 2). These
hopes are based on the relative economic position attained by their children. Much of the data in
this report on intergenerational mobility has been compiled using a ladder-based relative
standard; however, both relative and absolute conceptions of poverty were relevant in the
committee’s search for evidence-based programs and policies that would reduce
ORGANIZING OUR DISCUSSION OF DRIVERS AND INTERVENTIONS
The committee is asked to identify key drivers of long-term, intergenerational poverty

and then identify policies and programs that have the potential to significantly reduce the effects
of those drivers. In organizing its discussion of drivers and interventions, the committee found it
useful to classify the many factors that influence the developmental trajectories of children living
in households below the poverty line into seven domains:
• The educational system—early childhood through higher education
• The health care system—health services for children of all ages and for their parents,
especially during pregnancy
• Family income and wealth as well as parental earnings and employment, including the
labor market for low-skilled workers
• Family structure
• Housing, residential mobility, and neighborhood conditions
• Neighborhood safety and the criminal justice system, particularly the juvenile justice
system, and
• The child welfare system.
Drivers and interventions within each of these domains are presented in separate chapters
(Chapters 4 through 10).
APPLYING A RACIAL/ETHNIC LENS IN ASSESSING THE EVIDENCE
The Statement of Task directs the committee to “apply a racial/ethnic disparities lens” in
assessing the evidence on the determinants of and solutions to intergenerational poverty, and to
“evaluate the racial disparities and structural factors that contribute to this cycle.” The
importance of applying a racial disparities lens is highlighted in the research reviewed in Chapter
2, which shows that Black and Native American people are much more likely than White
Americans to experience intergenerational poverty and downward economic mobility.

23

Several members of the committee have expertise in the study of race and racism, as did
some of the invited scholars and community members who participated in the listening sessions.
In discussing how to interpret this mandate, members of the committee expressed differing and
sometimes competing views. Some argued that applying a racial lens requires calling into
question the basic premise that intergenerational poverty is the overarching problem that needs to
be solved. The low-income parents the committee heard from—most of whom were non-
White—emphasized the importance of noneconomic factors, such as family stability, health,
culture, personal growth, and community. The Native American scholars and leaders stressed
that it is crucial to start from “an Indigenous framework,” which requires an “understanding of
being in relationship,” and a different sense of time in which one is “able to see ourselves in
seven generations, the way our ancestors saw us seven generations ago.”
The committee recognizes the limitations of a narrower economic concept of poverty that
would not reflect cultural, family, and community experiences or aspects of community and
individual wealth that extend beyond income. Nevertheless, intergenerational poverty, as
specified in the committee’s congressional charge, demonstrably affects children’s lifetime
health and welfare in measurable ways, so the committee decided to use an economic concept of
poverty as the main framework for its analysis.
Applying a racial/ethnic lens also caused the committee to think carefully about the
standards of evidence and sources of knowledge, or what researchers call “epistemology,” that
are accepted in different spheres of investigation (Collins, 2002). The committee engaged in
spirited debates about what constitutes rigorous social science evidence. These discussions are
not unique to this committee’s work. Experts on race and racism have long challenged the
dominance of quantitative methods and the assumptions that underlie them (e.g., Zuberi &
Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Many also challenge the view that only experimental and quasi-
experimental quantitative research can reliably explain observed social phenomena and support
the development of effective intervention strategies (Krieger & Smith, 2016; Kvangraven, 2020).
This debate is ongoing and unresolved, and the committee opted to focus on quantitative
evidence, ideally from randomized trials or other study designs that support causal inference, as
its primary epistemology.
The committee’s use of both the term “race” and the contemporary labels of racial
categorization within the United States should not be read as attributing any biological facts
about or inherent characteristics of groups who have been racialized as White, Black, or Native
American (NASEM, 2023). These categories are not direct measures of “cultural, social,
biological, and economic processes” (Zuberi 2001, p. 142). Instead, the signifier of “race” most
commonly used in the social sciences imperfectly encodes the impacts of centuries of legal,
social, economic, cultural, and biological processes of racialization.
The committee provides a citation-rich narration of this racialization of Black and Native
American people in the United States as well as a review of continuing practices of disparate
treatment and their impacts on intergenerational mobility in Chapter 3 and its appendix. Also, in
Chapter 3 and throughout the report, we describe empirical trends and patterns in education,
health, households, crime and incarceration, and the labor market that often reveal stark
differences by race. Finally, when possible, the committee assessed how various interventions
have shown varying levels of effectiveness among different racial groups.

24

CRITERIA FOR SELECTING PROGRAM AND POLICY INTERVENTIONS
The committee examined research studies across the seven domains and used several
criteria to identify policies and programs directed at children currently living in poverty that
show strong evidence of reducing those children’s chances of being poor as adults. Within each
of the seven domains, the committee cast a wide net for programs or policies that might reduce
intergenerational poverty, both overall and among children in certain racial and ethnic minority
groups. Some interventions, such as higher-quality or expanded education and health services,
target children directly. Other programs, such as income support or residential mobility policies
and programs, target families. Still others, such as neighborhood policing programs, target the
neighborhoods where children grow up. Each of these types of programs has a potential role in
targeting intergenerational poverty. Across these kinds of policies and programs, the committee
used the following considerations to select the most promising:
1. Strength of the research and evaluation evidence

2. Magnitude of impacts relative to costs, and
3. Possible behavioral responses to policies and programs.
Strength of the Research Evidence
The most important criteria for selecting programs and policies were the nature and
strength of the relevant research and evaluation evidence. Specifically, the committee considered
the type of evidence, whether it was direct or indirect, and its historical timing.
Type of evidence
The committee weighed a variety of views about the types of evidence that would satisfy
the call for “strong” evidence in the Statement of Task. Mindful of the fact that policies and
programs are intended to bring about change in the family, schooling, health care, or other
environments in which children are reared, the committee opted to prioritize evidence from
random-assignment program evaluations and methodologically strong natural experiments
(studies that have examined the impacts on children and their families of unanticipated changes
in the timing and structure of policies). These methods are based on a comparison of the likely
long-run consequences for children in both the presence and the absence of the policy or
program. Random assignment to a program or policy versus “business as usual” conditions
comes closest to providing the needed comparison. High quality quasi-experimental studies
approximate random assignment conditions. Almost all of our featured policy and program ideas
for reducing intergenerational poverty are supported by this kind of evidence.
In assessing the effectiveness of certain programs and policies, the committee was
divided on the question of how to interpret and weigh evidence from correlational studies and
qualitative studies about the lived experiences of the children and families who stood to benefit
from those under consideration. It decided to feature these kinds of considerations in its
discussion of policy and program implementation but not in its identification decision of featured
programs and policy ideas supported by strong evidence.

25

Direct evidence policies and programs

The committee reviewed both direct and indirect evidence on programs and policies that
might reduce intergenerational poverty (Figure 1-1). It chose to feature program and policy ideas
supported by direct long-term evidence, which requires that evaluations track the children into
adulthood who were or were not affected by the childhood policy change or intervention. In
contrast, indirect evidence on policies and programs comes from coupling shorter-run evidence
on program effectiveness with other kinds of information on longitudinal linkages between these
short-term outcomes and intergenerational outcomes. The difference between direct evidence
and indirect evidence is discussed in more detail below.
FIGURE 1-1 Direct and indirect evidence of the effects of a policy change on long-run,
intergenerational outcomes.
Direct evidence supporting a program or policy idea comes from an evaluation study that
tracks children or youth involved in the program long enough to be able to observe outcomes—
typically completed schooling6 or earnings but also adult health and involvement in the criminal
justice system—that are closely correlated with adult poverty status. The committee considered
direct evidence on program evaluations to be “strong” if it was based on a program that had
already been scaled up to serve large numbers of children or youth or if positive results had been
independently replicated at two or more sites. It judged evidence on policy evaluations to be
particularly strong if it was based on a methodologically strong study using national or multi-
state data.
Moreover, to be recognized by the committee as having long-term effects, a policy has to
include a developmental channel. In other words, exposure to the policy during childhood would
reduce the likelihood that a child would be poor as an adult, independent of any direct effect of
an ongoing policy after the child reaches adulthood. For example, an income transfer policy
would be judged to reduce intergenerational poverty only if it would result in a lower level of
poverty among adults who were exposed to the policy during childhood even if that policy were
no longer in place when those individuals were adults.
6
We considered high school graduation as a close correlate of adult poverty because it serves as a
gateway for additional training and more than 80% of adults with a high school diploma but no additional
formal schooling had household incomes above the poverty line (Semega & Koller, 2021).

26

Programs supported by strong direct evidence include a number of high-quality youth

occupational training programs that target high-demand sectors of the economy, such as IT and
health care, and require and reward specific occupational skills (Katz et al., 2022.) As detailed in
Chapter 4, random-assignment evaluations of a number of these programs have shown that they
can boost earnings for up to 10 years beyond the end of the programs.
Recent work on state expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides
another good example of strong direct evidence of the intergenerational effects of a certain
policy. As explained in Chapter 6, Bastian and Michelmore (2018) found causal links between
the timing and generosity of the state EITC supplements and children’s completed schooling,
employment, and earnings in early adulthood. Other EITC-focused studies reviewed in Chapter 6
have found complementary state EITC impacts on children’s birthweight, test scores, behavior
problems, and food insecurity. Overall, the evidence supporting further expansions of the EITC
appears to be robustly positive. In other cases, direct evidence gathered on the impacts of
policies and programs is less robust. A methodologically strong study of the impacts of ninth-
grade enrollment in Ethnic Studies courses showed improved rates of high school graduation and
engagement of students in a large urban school district (Bonilla et al., 2021), but studies
attempting to replicate these results in other districts are still in progress. This direct evidence is
therefore considered “promising” rather than “strong” for the purposes of this report (see below).
Indirect evidence policies and programs

Indirect evidence comes from coupling shorter-run evidence on program effectiveness
with other kinds of information on longitudinal linkages between these shorter-run outcomes and
intergenerational outcomes. For example, suppose that a health insurance reform is shown to be
highly effective at reducing the number of low-birthweight births. Since other studies have
shown that, on average, low birthweight is associated with worse adult labor market and health
outcomes, one might conclude that the health insurance policy will indirectly reduce
intergenerational poverty. Or suppose that rigorous evaluations of high-intensity tutoring
programs produce convincing evidence that these programs boost achievement test scores for the
next year or two. Because test scores in childhood and adolescence are associated with higher
earnings in adulthood, one might conclude that these kinds of tutoring programs are likely to
reduce intergenerational poverty. Unfortunately, many programs that have shown encouraging
short-run effects on outcomes such as test scores have not yielded enduring benefits.7 Because
such short-term effects may disappear in the long run, the committee decided that although it was
important to consider such indirect chains of evidence, they did not constitute strong evidence.
Historical timing of the evidence

It was also important to the committee to consider the historical context in which the
reviewed policies and programs were implemented. The only reason evaluators of the famous
Perry Preschool program have been able to track outcomes through age 54 is that the program
was in operation in the 1960s. Policies and programs begun in the past 20 years cannot possibly
have generated such long-run evidence.
7
Recent methodological work (Athey et al., 2019) has attempted to provide rigorous ways of using program
impacts on short-run outcomes to estimate intergenerational impacts, but the committee judged that these methods
were not yet reliable enough to feature in its report.

27

But long-run evidence suffers from a changing-context problem. In the case of Perry, the
conditions facing the children who were studied and their families were vastly different from the
conditions for children today (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). Safety-net programs such as the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and the EITC have been
introduced and expanded during the intervening years. Expressed in 2021 dollars, annual federal
expenditures on children rose more than sixfold, from $800 per child in 1970 to $5,270 in 2019
(Lou et al., 2022). Home environments have improved as well. The education levels of low-
income mothers of preschool-age children have risen dramatically since the 1960s, while family
sizes have fallen, which means that the quality and quantity of parental care for children in the
comparison group are likely to have increased substantially. Moreover, low-income mothers
today spend much more on enrichment goods such as books and toys, and have more access to
center-based child care (Duncan & Murnane, 2014; Bassok et al., 2016). All of these changes
raise the bar for current programs and policies to demonstrate effectiveness, which makes it more
difficult to identify the policies and programs that, if instituted today, would be likely to result in
reduced intergenerational poverty several decades from now.
When are cohorts “recent enough” that counterfactual conditions are sufficiently similar
to those facing today’s children? The committee drew the line at the year 1990, so even if
policies and programs run prior to that year demonstrated intergenerational impacts, we required
more recent evidence of effectiveness before including a program in our featured list of direct-
evidence programs. For example, a large body of literature documents the health benefits for
children of environmental changes wrought by the 1970 Clean Air Act (see Chapter 5). But the
committee also looked for more recent evidence, finding it in evaluations of the child health
impacts of the 1990 amendments to the 1970 Clean Air Act. The recent evidence increased the
committee’s confidence that additional steps to improve environmental quality would also
improve child health and reduce intergenerational poverty.
We also considered evidence to be direct if strong post-1990 evidence of impacts on pre-
adult mediators was coupled with strong pre-1990 evidence on long-run adult impacts in the
same domain. East (2018) provides an example with evidence of substantial SNAP impacts
based on program changes in the period 1996–2003 on improvements in child health between
ages 6 and 16. This post-1990 evidence, coupled with the Hoynes et al. (2016) evidence on adult
health impacts from the pre-1990 Food Stamp program roll-out, was judged by the committee to
be strong evidence in support of a policy idea involving expansions to the SNAP programs.
Taken together, these rules regarding direct and indirect evidence seemed to the committee to
strike a reasonable balance between the need for evidence on intergenerational impacts and the
challenge of evolving counterfactual conditions.
Our 1990 cutoff interacts with the childhood timing of an intervention in ways that
reduce our chances of finding direct evidence supporting early childhood interventions. Because
our standards for direct evidence require documented impacts in late adolescence or adulthood,
an early childhood intervention instituted in, say, 2010 would have no chance of documenting
impacts on adolescent or adult outcomes. In contrast, an occupational training program for
teenagers implemented in 2010 would be able to follow its participants well into their 20s and
early 30s. This is important to bear in mind when considering our list of policies and programs
supported by direct evidence.

28

Strength of the research evidence: A summary

The committee built into its classification of policies and programs considerations of
historical timing, distinctions between direct and indirect evidence, and the categorization of
direct evidence as “strong” or merely “promising” (Box 1-3). The report highlights policy and
program ideas for which strong direct evidence, based on evaluations of relatively recent policy
or program implementations, is available. It also discusses policy and program ideas supported
by what it considers to be promising direct evidence, plus indirect evidence. Most of the details
about indirect-evidence studies are provided in Appendix C.
BOX 1-3
Standards of Evidence Used in Identifying Program and Policy Ideas: Strong Direct
Evidence, Promising Direct Evidence, Indirect Evidence, and Other Evidence
Direct evidence – evaluation studies based on random-assignment or compelling quasi-

experimental methods linking recent (post-1990) implementations of a childhood or
adolescent program or policy to improvements in adult correlates of poverty status (such as
completed schooling or earnings). Policies and programs supported by direct evidence are
featured in this report.
• Direct evidence is considered strong if random-assignment evaluation evidence has
been replicated across several sites or if quasi-experimental evidence is based on
national or multi-state data or a scaled-up program.
• Direct evidence is considered promising if it is limited to program or policy
implementation in a single site or jurisdiction.
Indirect evidence – evaluation studies based on random-assignment or compelling quasi-

experimental methods linking recent (post-1990) implementations of a childhood program or
policy to improvement in childhood or adolescent correlates of poverty status in adulthood
(such as birthweight or test scores).
Other evidence considered – evidence from correlational and qualitative studies, as well as
random-assignment and quasi-experimental studies of policies and programs implemented
prior to 1990, was also considered.
In distinguishing among these evidence standards, the committee does not mean to imply
that the highlighted programs that are based on direct evidence are necessarily more effective
than the others. The distinction refers only to the nature of the evidence—direct or indirect—
from the available evaluation studies.
The relative paucity of direct-evidence policy and program ideas was disappointing to the
committee and points to the need for policy evaluation studies with intergenerational scope as
well as enhanced data infrastructure that would make it easier to conduct such studies. These
topics are discussed in Chapter 11, which covers research and data needs.

29

Magnitude of Impacts and Costs of Policies and Programs
With respect to assessing program costs, benefits, and efficacy the committee recognized
the advantages of a benefit/cost approach. However, it is difficult to translate the information
provided in many of the policy and program evaluations into quantitative measures of program
benefits and costs. Wherever it was possible based on available information, we discuss program
cost information, including in estimates of the costs of the policy and program interventions and
in discussions of how program impacts varied across different racial and ethnic groups.
Possible Behavioral Responses to Policies and Programs
The committee’s charge included a directive to assess possible behavioral responses to

policies and programs. When the research literature includes information on behavioral
responses, the report notes this in its policy and program descriptions. The responses studied are
primarily labor supply responses—in other words, to find out whether the availability of a
government benefit affects how much low-income people choose to work. In some cases, as with
parental employment, these behavioral responses, and their consequences for children’s
development, are important channels by which the policy in question might affect
intergenerational poverty. Unfortunately, so few evaluations provided estimates of possible
behavioral responses that we were unable to incorporate these considerations into our selection
of “best bet” policy and program ideas.
Policy Conclusions
The committee used its direct-evidence criterion to identify programs and policies that
have the strongest likelihood of reducing intergenerational poverty and presents the findings as
conclusions about “best bets.” That is, we identified those programs and policies we judged most
worthy of consideration by policy makers and in public policy discussions. But, like its
predecessor at the National Academy, the Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty committee, our
committee did not attempt to reach consensus on policy recommendations. We believe that those
judgments require weighing not only evidence on effectiveness within and across domains, but
also normative judgments about the kinds of policies that governments should and should not
pursue.
Political Feasibility
All National Academy consensus committees are instructed to base conclusions and
recommendations on the evidence. The committee interpreted this to mean a focus on the effects
of policies, and not on the likelihood of their being enacted. It did not attempt to address the
political feasibility of potential interventions.
Considering Combinations of Programs
The statement of task also instructed the committee to “identify combinations of

programs that may result in synergies or redundancies, in terms of either the programs’ effects or
the populations targeted.” As described below, we found it necessary to categorize evidence into
specific domains (e.g., education, health) in part because policy making typically occurs within

30

these kinds of siloes. For example, safety-net policies focused on income operate through the tax
system and are administered by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), while nutrition-focused
programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). However, both in
listening sessions with low-income families and in reviewing the research, the committee found
clear evidence of the multifaceted nature of poverty. Families struggling financially are often the
same families that have limited access to high-quality health care, education, and neighborhoods,
and that have increased negative interactions with the criminal justice and child welfare systems.
It is therefore likely that programs in each domain will be more effective if delivery could be
coordinated for the families needing multiple types of support. For example, attempts to increase
employment among parents with young children may backfire if there is limited availability of
high-quality childcare. However, there is very little available evidence about the precise nature
of these program interactions. Thus, our discussion mostly considers interventions in isolation,
though it does note (and values) potential cross-domain effects of the interventions.
A related cross-cutting theme was the administrative barriers to participation in the safety
net programs featured in this report. Because of the siloed nature of policy making, low-income
families are often forced to complete multiple redundant and complex applications, such as for
SNAP, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and the EITC, some of which require in-person
interviews. This often results in low take-up of these programs among eligible families. To
support the evaluation and implementation of combined programs called for in the statement of
task, and more fundamentally to increase take-up of these programs to maximize their poverty-
alleviating benefits, efforts are needed to streamline program applications with the end user in
mind. Given the limited nature of evidence on the impact such interventions have on
intergenerational poverty, evaluations of any such efforts are needed.
Some important issues spanned multiple domains. For example, child care needs and
policies arise in discussions of education, health, parental earnings, family structure, and child
welfare. In this report we discuss them primarily in the education chapter (Chapter 4), although
we note cross-domain effects elsewhere. Other prominent cross-cutting issues are lead exposure
and air quality, both of which are discussed in the health chapter (Chapter 5), and parental
employment, which is discussed in the family income chapter (Chapter 6).

31

2
A Demographic Portrait of Intergenerational Child Poverty
The committee was charged with identifying policies and programs that have the
potential to reduce intergenerational poverty. To provide useful background information, this
chapter describes the demographic structure of intergenerational mobility out of low-income
status in the United States. Here the committee was aided by the availability of population-wide
data that tracks individuals from the years when they were still living with their parents as
children until they were well into their 30s and had families and careers of their own. With these
data, the committee could identify the subset of individuals who were living in low-income
households during childhood and then track their economic trajectories into adulthood. And
because the data cover the entire population, they can describe the intergenerational fortunes of
different racial and ethnic groups as well as the trajectories of children of immigrants from all
parts of the globe. The chapter then turns to geographic differences in mobility out of a low-
income childhood across the United States—shedding light on the geographic correlates of
intergenerational poverty—and examines how the structure of intergenerational mobility has
changed over time.
MEASURING INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
Intergenerational poverty can be defined as a situation in which children who have grown
up in families in poverty are themselves living in poverty during their adult years. Given our
Statement of Task, our ideal estimates of this status would be based on the Supplemental
Poverty Measure (SPM).1 Recent counts of SPM-based childhood poverty are readily accessible
because the Census Bureau issues an annual report on U.S. children with household incomes
below the SPM-based poverty line (e.g., Shrider and Creamer, 2023). Over the decade preceding
the COVID-19 pandemic, these child poverty rates averaged 14.9%, although they fell to 5.2%
in 2021 in response to generous pandemic cash assistance programs and rose again to 12.2% in
2022 when these programs ended. . These figures represent a likely upward bound on the
prevalence of intergenerational poverty, because not all children who are poor during their
childhood years will also be poor in adulthood.
1
The SPM provides the most comprehensive measure of poverty. Specifically, it compares household income
with a set of poverty thresholds, which ranged between $25,000 and $30,000 for two-adult, two-child families in
2020 for the SPM (Fox & Burns, 2021). Children and all other family members in households with incomes below
the corresponding threshold are considered poor. The SPM differs from the Official Poverty Measure in a number of
ways, most notably in that it includes “in-kind” sources of income such as tax credits and benefits from programs
such as SNAP (formerly Food Stamps.) Because some “in-kind” income sources such as SNAP payments may not
be completely substitutable with cash income, there is more ambiguity with the household income component of the
SPM than the OPM poverty measure. See Chapter 6.

32

It will be at least two decades before we can know how many of the children in these
2021 poverty counts are also poor in adulthood. What we can do now is observe
intergenerational mobility out of poverty for past cohorts of children and then make educated
guesses about the future economic position of current cohorts. But this is complicated by the
absence of data on SPM-based poverty for past cohorts. In fact, the committee’s review of
evidence on patterns of intergenerational poverty and programs and policies that might reduce it
produced only one limited study using an SPM-type measure of the poverty status in adulthood
of individuals who, as children, lived in household with incomes below an SPM-type poverty
line (Parolin et al., 2022; see Appendix C-2).
Most of our data on intergenerational poverty and mobility come from a much larger
study that provides a wealth of population-wide information about intergenerational mobility out
of low-income status defined by income reported on Internal Revenue Service tax forms rather
than SPM-based poverty (Chetty et al., 2020).2 These data allow us to focus on children with
low-income parents—defined as parents with incomes in the bottom 20% of the income
distribution for the full population of children. We are most interested in what fraction of these
children remained in low-income status in their 30s and how these fractions vary across groups
defined by race and ethnicity. We also show counterpart calculations in Parolin et al. (2022),
which are based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and a measure of
economic status that is much closer to the SPM poverty definition that what can be constructed
from IRS data. Case counts for these PSID-based data are much lower than those in the IRS data,
permitting subgroup comparisons only between White and Black children.
A disadvantage of an IRS-based approach is that a “bottom fifth” definition of poverty is
somewhat arbitrary and is relative—it will always be the case that 20% of the population is low
income by this definition, even though we have already seen that, using the SPM poverty
measure, poverty rates have fallen substantially in recent years. Another drawback is that tax
records do not measure some of the household resources that are relevant for defining “poverty,”
in particular because they exclude government transfers. To address this last issue, we provide
data from Parolin et al. (2022) and from other intergenerational studies based on more complete
income measurements. Based on data presented in Appendix C: Chapter 2, we also describe the
correspondence between our measures of household income and measures of income used to
define the SPM based on the Current Population Survey.3 Because the Chetty et al. (2020) 20th
percentile threshold does not correspond to any conventional poverty thresholds used in the
United States, we refer to it as a marker of “low-income status” rather than poverty.
We also use IRS-based data on intergenerational economic status at the individual level,
based on each child’s eventual earnings between the ages of 31 and 37. In this case, we focus on
the same group of children as before—those whose parental income was in the bottom quintile.
But instead of measuring economic status in adulthood by household income, we use the
individuals’ own earnings. This approach reveals some noteworthy gender differences in adult
earnings for certain racial and ethnic groups and provides a more nuanced portrait of
intergenerational mobility than one based only on household income.
2
Our methods using these data are detailed in Appendix C: Chapter 2; and in Chetty et al. (2020).
The appendix tables show that the majority of children growing up in families with parents’ income below the
3
20th percentile of the parental AGI distribution grow up in poverty as measured by the SPM; however, many children
whose parents are in the bottom 20 percent are still above the poverty line, because they receive transfers or have other
household members whose earnings place them above that line.

33

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
Focusing on U.S. children born around 1980 who grew up in low-income families, the
committee found that, depending on the measure, between 29% and 34% of them were living in
low-income families when they were adults (Figure 2-1). In other words, around one-third of all
children raised in low-income families also lived in a low-income household in adulthood. The
34% figure based on tax data is twice as high as the 17% rate found among children who did not
grow up in such families.
Figure 2-1 also shows immobility estimates separately for Black and White children—the
only two groups large enough to support reliable estimates in the Parolin et al. (2022) data. In
both data sets, remaining in low-income status in adulthood is considerably more likely for Black
than White children.
FIGURE 2-1 Percent of low-income children who are also low-income in adulthood, by racial
group and type of poverty measure.
NOTE: This figure shows the fraction of children with low family incomes in childhood who
also have low incomes in adulthood based on both absolute and relative measures of low-income
status. Absolute poverty data come from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; absolute poverty
is measured by whether cash plus in-kind income is below the Official Poverty Measure
threshold between ages 0 and 10 (childhood) or at age 30 (adulthood). Children in the PSID
analysis were born between 1965 and 1994. Relative poverty data come from IRS tax records;
relative poverty is measured by whether average adjusted gross income (AGI) between 1994 and

34

2000 is in the bottom 20% of the AGI distribution between ages 0 and 18 (childhood) or by
whether AGI between 2015 and 2016 is in the bottom 20% of the AGI distribution between ages
31 and 39 (adulthood). Children in the IRS analysis were born between 1978 and 1983.
SOURCE: Data from Parolin et al. (2022), based on data from the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics and Chetty et al. (2020), based on data from the Internal Revenue Service.
Because the Chetty et al. (2020) data are based on all tax records, they support a much
more detailed comparative look at intergenerational persistence across population subgroups.
Figure 2-2 shows that the 29% rate of intergenerational low-income persistence for White
children is similar to the 25% rate for Latino children, while Asian children raised in poor
families have a considerably lower rate of low-income persistence (17%). In contrast, nearly half
(46%) of Native American children and 37% of Black children who grow up in low-income
households remain poor in adulthood.4
% staying low-income
All 34
White 29
Asian 17
Latino 25
Black 37
Native American 46
0 10 20 30 40 50
FIGURE 2-2 Intergenerational low-income persistence, by racial and ethnic group.

NOTE: This figure shows the fraction of children with parents in the bottom income quintile
who remained in the bottom income quintile in adulthood, by racial/ethnic group. Adjusted
Gross Income is measured as mean household income in 2014–2015 and parent income is
measured as mean household income in 1994–2000. Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
SOURCE: Data from Chetty et al. (2020).
Despite the higher rates of low-income persistence among Black and Native American
children, White children make up the largest share (40%) of children with persistently low
economic status (as defined by the 20th income percentile) (Figure 2-3). One-third of persistently
low-income children (34%) are Black, 19% are Latino, and Native American and Asian children
account for 2% each.
4
To provide an idea of what kind of economic status corresponds to the 20th percentile of the distribution of AGI,
we used the Current Population Survey to rank children by both AGI and income/needs based on the SPM needs
standard. The 20th percentile of the AGI distribution for parents corresponds to an income that is 36 percent above
the poverty line—an income of about $37,500 for a family of four (in 2022 dollars). See Appendix C: Chapter 2 for
more details on the comparison of data from these two sources.

35

FIGURE 2-3 Fraction of children with low income in both childhood and adulthood, by racial
and ethnic group.
NOTE: This figure shows the race/ethnicity of children with parents in the bottom income
quintile who remained in the bottom income quintile in adulthood. Child income is measured as
mean household income in 2014–2015 and parent income is measured as mean household
income in 1994–2000. Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
Measuring adult economic success by individual earnings rather than family income
allows us to differentiate between patterns for males and females. In contrast to the focus on low-
income persistence in prior figures, Figure 2-4 shows rates of upward mobility for male children
using both adult earnings and household income, defined as earnings or household income in the
top 60% of their respective distributions. As before, all the data presented in this figure are for
children born between 1978 and 1983 and with parental family incomes below the 20th
percentile while they were growing up. The lighter-colored bars show fractions of males with
adult earnings in 2014 and 2015 above the 60th percentile of the adult earning distribution, while
the darker bars show those with household incomes above the 60th percentile, but in the case of
Figure 2-4 only for males.

36

FIGURE 2-4 Intergenerational earnings and household income mobility for sons.
NOTE: The figure shows the fraction of male children growing up in households with adjusted
gross income in the bottom 20 percent of the AGI distribution whose individual earnings and
household incomes in adulthood (ages 31–37) placed them in the top three quintiles of the adult
earnings and household AGI distributions. Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
For males, there appears to be more intergenerational mobility in earnings than in

household income. This stems, in part, from the fact that males’ earnings in adulthood are being
compared with the full distribution of earnings across both males and females. Since men
generally have higher labor force participation rates and earn more than women, their mobility
into the top three earnings quintiles exceeds that of women. Slightly more than half of White,
Asian, and Latino men have adult earnings that place them in the top 60% of the overall earnings
distribution, while the corresponding rates for Black and Native American men are considerably
lower. A comparison of the earnings and household income results in Figure 2–4 shows broadly
similar patterns across groups.
In the case of daughters, there is a notable difference between the relative rates of
household income mobility and earnings mobility for Black individuals and White individuals
(Figure 2-5). Black and White women who have grown up in low-income households have
identical (39%) rates of earnings mobility but very different (26% vs. 47%) rates of household
income mobility. As detailed in Chapter 7, this is probably due to the fact that Black women are
more likely than White women to live in single-parent families, and thus also to be the primary
earners in their families. In the case of both earnings (30%) and household income (28%), Native
American women have roughly the same low rates of intergenerational mobility for both
household income and earnings.

37

FIGURE 2-5 Intergenerational earnings and household income mobility for daughters.
NOTE: The figure shows the fraction of female children growing up in households with AGI in
the bottom 20% of the AGI distribution whose individual earnings and household incomes in
adulthood (ages 31–37) placed them in the top three quintiles of the adult earnings and
household AGI distributions. Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
CONCLUSION 2-1: As measured by household income, rates of intergenerational

persistence in low-income status in the United States differ starkly by race/ethnicity.
The lowest rates are found for Asian children, followed by White and Latino
children. In contrast, persistence rates are very high for Black and Native American
children. When adult economic success is measured using individual earnings rather
than household income, mobility patterns are generally similar. Black women who
grew up in low-income households are an exception; their earnings in adulthood are
just as high, on average, as those of White women who grew up in similar economic
circumstances. This reflects the greater likelihood that they are the primary earners
in their families.

38

A BROADER LOOK AT INTERGENERATIONAL INCOME MOBILITY ACROSS

GROUPS
For a more comprehensive look at intergenerational mobility across groups, it is useful to

think of economic status as rungs on a 100-step ladder, with the lowest rungs corresponding to
the lowest incomes and the highest rungs representing the highest incomes. Each rung
corresponds to a percentile in the income distribution. In the case of intergenerational mobility,
there are two ladders—one showing the family income rank of children throughout childhood
and the other showing the family income rank of those children in adulthood (ages 30 to 39).
The top five lines in Figure 2-6 show mobility patterns for children with very low
childhood family incomes—on the 10th rung (percentile) of the income ladder. The topmost line
shows considerable mobility in the case of White children, whose adult income, on average,
reached the 41st rung. Asian children who grew up with 10th-rung income levels rose even
higher, on average to the 53rd rung. Latino children’s average upward mobility (39th rung)
nearly matched that of White children. In sharp contrast, both Black and Native American
children starting out on the 10th rung ended up at the 29th rung—12 rungs lower than White
children.5
What about intergenerational economic mobility from other starting points? The second
set of lines in Figure 2-6 shows average mobility for children in the five racial/ethnic groups who
all started out with family incomes across childhood placing them on the 50th rung—the middle
position in the childhood income distribution. The 10-rung gap persists for children starting out
at the middle of the income distribution (the 50th rung), with White children advancing about
four rungs and both Black and Native American children losing ground and falling back to the
39th and 41st rungs, respectively. Looking across the top and bottom sets of lines, it appears that
if Black and Native American children were to match the average economic position of White
adults who started out on the 10th rung as children, they had to have grown up in families with
incomes above the middle (50th) rung.
5
As detailed in Appendix C-2, Fisher and Johnson (2023) provide counterpart data from the PSID based on
measures of income, consumption and wealth. Upward mobility from the 10 th percentile is several rungs lower in
PSID than IRS income data, but consumption and wealth-based destination rungs are more similar to IRS results.

39

FIGURE 2-6 Intergenerational mobility, by race/ethnicity.

NOTE: This figure shows the mean income percentile of children with parents at the 10th and
50th income percentiles. Child income is measured as mean AGI income in 2014–2015 and
parent income is measured as mean AGI income in 1994–2000. Children were born between
1978 and 1983.
These differences reinforce the importance of applying a racial/ethnic disparities lens in

analyzing key determinants of entrenched intergenerational economic disadvantage. As a result,
Chapter 3 examines the histories, practices, and contexts that limit the intergenerational mobility
of both Black and Native American children.
CONCLUSION 2-2: Racial and ethnic disparities are an enduring feature of the
intergenerational trajectories of children, with Black and Native American children
experiencing much less upward mobility than White children growing up in the
same economic circumstances.

40

INTERGENERATIONAL INCOME MOBILITY AMONG CHILDREN OF

IMMIGRANTS
Immigrants come to the United States with a wide range of human capital and labor
market skills. Compared with the U.S.-born, foreign-born individuals disproportionately have
either very high or very low levels of educational attainment (Card, 2005). Immigrants are more
likely than U.S. natives to hold a graduate or professional degree, while at the same time,
particularly if they come from poorer countries, they are far more likely than natives to have
completed fewer than 12 years of schooling. Not only do many immigrants from less developed
countries arrive with only a few years of relatively low-quality schooling, many also lack
proficiency in English. These factors limit the labor market opportunities and earnings of low-
skilled immigrants (Duncan & Trejo, 2012).
Because of the large share of immigrants with low skills, average earnings are
substantially lower for foreign-born workers than for their U.S.-born counterparts (Card, 2005).
Not surprisingly, the poverty rate tends to be higher for immigrants than for those born in the
United States. In 2018, for example, the poverty rate was 14.6% for the foreign-born compared
with 12.9% for the U.S.-born (Budman et al., 2020).6 As a result, children of immigrants are
more likely than children of natives to grow up in poverty.
Nevertheless, children of immigrants tend to experience remarkable socioeconomic
progress. On average, they acquire more education and have higher earnings in adulthood than
do children of the U.S.-born (Abramitzky et al., 2021; Card, 2005). Children of immigrants enjoy
larger economic gains relative to their parents than do U.S.-born children (Abramitzky et al.,
2021; Chetty et al., 2020), and this is particularly true of children who grew up in poverty. In
other words, among children raised in poor households, children of immigrants are substantially
more likely than children of non-immigrants to escape poverty as adults.
Figure 2-7, taken from Abramitzky et al. (2021), illustrates this finding. As in the case of
our earlier figures, the analysis is based on data from Chetty et al. (2020) using tax records and
census information to link the incomes of millions of parental households with the incomes of
their adult children. For sons whose parental households between 1994 and 2000 ranked at the
25th percentile of the income distribution (i.e., families near the bottom of the distribution), the
figure reports the average rank of the sons’ household incomes when they were 31- to 37-year-
old adults. Figure 2-7 reports this information both for children of U.S.-born parents (the red bar
in the figure) and separately for children of immigrants by country of origin (the gray bars).
The figure documents extraordinary intergenerational mobility among children of poor
immigrants. On average, sons of U.S.-born parents who grew up in households at the 25th
percentile of the income distribution climbed more than 20 rungs to the 46th percentile in
adulthood. But most sons of immigrants who grew up in similarly low-income households did
considerably better as adults. Sons of parents from almost every country of origin—countries
both rich and poor—experienced greater intergenerational mobility, on average, than did sons of
U.S.-born parents. Abramitzky et al. (2021) find a similar pattern of results when looking at
daughters rather than sons.
6
These statistics are based on the Official Poverty Measure rather than the alternative poverty measure (SPM)
that is primarily used in this report.

41

FIGURE 2-7 Average income rank of sons with low-income parents, by father's country of
origin.
NOTE: This figure is adapted from Figure 3C of Abramitzky et al. (2021). It shows the mean
income percentile of sons with parents at the 25th income percentile, by father's country of
origin. Child income is measured as mean income in 2014–2015 and parent income is measured
as mean household income in 1994–2000. Children are from the 1978–1983 birth cohorts.
Children were born between 1978 and 1983.
SOURCE: Data from Abramitzky et al. (2021), Figure 3C.
Why do children of immigrants experience these larger intergenerational advances? Part

of the difference seems to be rooted in the fact that immigrants are more likely to settle in areas
that offer their children better opportunities for upward mobility (Abramitzky et al., 2021). Also
worth noting is that in many cases, the earnings of immigrants from poorer countries do not
reflect the full potential of these individuals, who did not typically grow up speaking English or
attending U.S. schools. Their children, however, enjoy these advantages and the economic gains
associated with them (Abramitzky et al., 2021; Bleakley & Chin, 2004, 2008, 2010).
CONCLUSION 2-3: Children of immigrants from almost every country of origin—

rich and poor nations alike—experience greater intergenerational mobility than
children of U.S.-born parents. This immigrant advantage is larger for children from
lower-income households, and to a large extent it reflects the fact that immigrants

42

are more likely to settle in areas that offer their children better opportunities for
upward mobility.
THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
Rates of intergenerational economic disadvantage differ greatly from one part of the
country to another, and even from one neighborhood to another in some cities. Figure 2-8 shows
national patterns of intergenerational mobility in the United States. Constructed from
anonymized adult tax records for more than 10 million children born between 1980 and 1982, it
shows the average likelihood that children with parents in the bottom quintile of the income
distribution will be in one of the top three quintiles in adulthood (Chetty et al., 2014a). Children
are assigned to commuting zones based on the location of their parents, and their household
incomes are measured in 2011–2012, when they are approximately 30 years old.
The blue parts of the map represent commuting zones in which children from the bottom
quintile are more likely to reach one of the top three quintiles; the red areas represent places
where such intergenerational mobility is less likely. The persistence of intergenerational
economic disadvantage varies substantially across regions. Low-income children who grow up in
the deepest-blue areas, such as the Great Plains, are about twice as likely to rise in the income
distribution as otherwise comparable children growing up in parts of the Southeast and Midwest.
Although the red areas in Figure 2-8 overlap substantially with areas with concentrations
of Black children, Chetty et al. (2020) show that, even among whites, mobility is lower in the
Southeast and areas with larger Black populations more generally.
FIGURE 2-8 Geographic distribution of children with parents in the bottom income quintile
who reach the top three income quintiles.

43

NOTE: This map shows the share of children with parents in the bottom income quintile who
reached the top three income quintiles in adulthood, by commuting zone. Child income is
measured as mean AGI household income in 2011–2012 and parent income is measured as mean
AGI household income in 1996–2000. Children are from the 1980–1982 birth cohorts and are
assigned to the commuting zones where they grew up.
SOURCE: Data from Chetty et al. (2014a).
Variation among nearby census tracts is also evident. A broad range of outcomes can be
found in both rural and metro areas; indeed, low-income children in neighboring areas may
experience vastly different life trajectories. Chetty et al. (2018) use a dataset similar to that used
to construct Figure 2-8 to measure intergenerational mobility for each census tract in the United
States. Their estimates show that the geographic distribution of intergenerational economic
disadvantage within communities in the United States is far from uniform. Some areas offer
opportunities on par with some of the most upwardly mobile countries in the world, while in
nearby areas intergenerational economic disadvantage is much more persistent. Figure 2-9
provides an illustrative example by plotting upward mobility by census tract in New York City
(analogous data for other cities are available in Chetty et al.’s Opportunity Atlas at
www.opportunityatlas.org). Here the measure of upward mobility is the predicted income of
children raised in families at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution, a measure
that can be estimated more precisely at the census tract level than the probability of remaining in
or rising out of low-income status for the subset of children who start out in the bottom quintile.
FIGURE 2-9 Age-35 household income of children of low-income parents in the New York
City area.

44

NOTE: This map shows the mean household income of children with parents at the 25th income
percentile, by census tract in the New York City area. Child income is measured as mean AGI
household income in 2014–2015 and parent income is measured as mean AGI household income
in 1994–2000. Children are from the 1978–1983 birth cohorts and are assigned to the census
tracts where they grew up.
SOURCE: Image generated from https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ for Chetty et al. (2018).
Several studies have demonstrated that the variations shown in Figures 2-8 and 2-9 are
driven largely by the causal effects of place, rather than by differences in the types of people
living in different places (Chetty et al., 2016; Chetty & Hendren, 2018; Chyn, 2018; Chyn et al.,
2023). This argues for examining place-focused policies such as investing in the economic
development of low-opportunity areas and in approaches to increase children’s upward mobility
in those areas.
Race remains a factor as well. The geographic distribution of intergenerational poverty in
each location varies by race, with one racial group experiencing good outcomes while other
groups may not. Consistent with Figures 2-1 and 2-3, Chetty et al. (2020) show that, on average,
Black children and Native American children in the United States have much lower rates of
upward mobility (and higher rates of downward mobility) than White Americans. But these
researchers go on to demonstrate that the gaps often persist within neighborhoods. In 99 percent
of U.S. census tracts, Black boys have lower average incomes in adulthood than White boys.
Therefore, to paint an accurate portrait of the geographic distribution of intergenerational
poverty, it is necessary to take into account how economic mobility varies across places and
across racial and ethnic subgroups.
Motivated by this finding, a rich literature has emerged using geographic variation to
understand what factors explain differences in intergenerational mobility across areas. Studies
have found several systematic predictors of differences in mobility, from poverty rates and
school quality to the degree of inequality and historical factors such as redlining and Jim Crow
laws (see Chapter 3).
The demographic characteristics of neighborhoods also show strong correlations with
levels of upward mobility. Living in an area with a larger concentration of Black residents is
associated with lower intergenerational mobility for both Black individuals and White
individuals. One of the strongest predictors of differences in mobility across areas is the
neighborhood fraction of children living with single parents. This correlation was nearly as
strong for children growing up in married-parent families as for children growing up in single-
parent families. However, because this is merely a correlation, it does not mean that changes in
neighborhood family structure will necessarily cause changes in intergenerational mobility. In
fact, Chetty et al. (2014a) find evidence that some of this correlation can be explained by the fact
that family structure is associated with an area’s degree of income inequality.
“Economic connectedness” is another strong predictor. Chetty et al. (2022) examine a
measure of social capital constructed from Facebook friendships among low- and high-income
individuals. They find that “economic connectedness”—as measured by the share of a person's
Facebook friends from higher social strata—is among the strongest predictors to date of upward
intergenerational income mobility. In fact, they find that it can explain several of the other
correlations discussed above, such as the link between mobility and poverty rates, racial
demographics, and income inequality. For example, areas where poverty is more concentrated

45

tend to have fewer social connections between low- and high-income people, and this can
explain (in a predictive sense) why higher poverty is associated with lower mobility.
CONCLUSION 2-4: Children’s chances of growing up and escaping low-income

status vary substantially depending on where they live. At both a broad regional
level and within community boundaries, there are areas where low-income children
tend to grow up and join the middle class, as well as areas where generations are
more likely to remain mired in poverty. The spatial patterns of economic mobility
vary by racial and ethnic group; nonetheless, disparities in economic mobility
between Black and White children persist even within neighborhoods.
INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY: TRENDS AND COMPARISONS WITH OTHER

COUNTRIES
Regardless of whether the amounts of intergenerational mobility out of low-income status

shown in Figures 2-1 and 2-3 are perceived to be large or small, it is useful to examine how
mobility rates have changed over time and how they compare in the United States and other
countries.
Trends in U.S. Intergenerational Mobility
A number of economic and demographic changes over the past 75 years have created
strong headwinds for children who grew up in poverty and have sought to do better economically
than their parents. Economic growth was much stronger before the mid-1970s than it has been
since. Moreover, as detailed in Chapter 6, high-income families have experienced far more
growth since the mid-1970s than low-income families. Much of this differential growth can be
attributed to increasing rewards for workers with college degrees relative to those whose
schooling came to an end in high school. Some of the lower growth in family income is due to an
increasing prevalence of single-parent families among the less educated.
Data presented thus far have shed light on the intergenerational mobility of children born
around 1980. What about children born 20 or 40 years earlier? In the United States,
intergenerational data spanning multiple cohorts are scarce. Although our decennial census
counts the entire U.S. population every 10 years, there is no easy way of linking the data for a
child in, say, the 1940 or 1950 census to the data gathered for that same child 30 or 40 years
later. Chetty et al. (2020) matched the relevant data with the censuses starting in 2000, but no
one has yet done so with prior cohorts.
Concentrating on children born in the first half of the 20th century, Jácome et al. (2021)
find clear evidence of increasing intergenerational mobility. In contrast, for more recent cohorts,
decreasing mobility is evident in some but not all measures. Davis and Mazumder (2022) take
advantage of two large Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys covering cohorts born around 1950
and cohorts born in the early 1960s. They describe mobility patterns for all of the children in
these birth cohorts, making no distinction between children born into low- and higher-income
families. As did a number of other intergenerational studies they review, they find considerable
decreases in intergenerational mobility between their two cohorts. They also show that declining
mobility can be attributed, in part, to increasing returns to education beginning in the late 1970s,

46

a factor that drives up mobility rates for middle- and upper-middle-income children relative to
low-income children, as well as to the increasing prevalence of single-parent families, which
leads to more persistent intergenerational disadvantage among lower-income children.
As described in Appendix C: Chapter 2, Chetty et al. (2017) take a different approach
that enables them to describe mobility patterns for birth cohorts going back to 1940. Their data
provide answers to a simple question: How many children born in a given year (e.g., 1940, 1970)
will grow up to enjoy a family income that exceeds that of their parents? To adjust for the fact
that family incomes tend to grow with time, both parent and child household incomes are
measured when earners are around age 30. Figure 2-10 shows their results for birth cohorts every
10 years, beginning in 1940. It further breaks down the chances of upward mobility separately by
parental income percentile.7
FIGURE 2-10 Percent of children earning more than their parents, by birth cohort and parental
income percentile.
NOTE: This figure shows the share of children earning more than their parents, by child birth
cohort and parental income percentile. This measure is calculated using children’s and parents’
marginal income distributions estimated using the CPS and decennial U.S. Census for the 1940–
1984 birth cohorts, and a rank-rank copula estimated using tax records for the 1980–1982 birth
cohorts, which is then applied to all cohorts from 1940 to 1984. See Appendix C: Chapter 2 for
more details.
7
Because AGI and the SPM are not perfectly aligned, lower-income parental income percentiles contain a mix
of households above and below the poverty line. At the 20th percentile of AGI, for the years we consider, the
average SPM poverty rate was 29.1 percent, meaning that roughly three out of ten households were living in
poverty. For the same years, at the 10th percentile of AGI, the average SPM poverty rate was 68.3 percent.

47

Declining intergenerational mobility is quite apparent in the figure. Among children born
in 1940 to families at the 20th percentile of the income distribution, almost all (93 percent) were
found to have higher incomes in adulthood than their parents did. This fraction drops steadily in
later cohorts; for the 1980 birth cohort, it is estimated to be only slightly more than half (57%).8
At the 10th percentile there is a similar decline across birth cohorts, although among this group
the share of children born in 1980 who went on to have higher incomes in adulthood than their
parents is substantially higher, at roughly 70%. Similar patterns of decline are observed in other
industrialized countries for children born in the second half of the 20th century (Berman, 2022).
Seeking an explanation for the trends, Chetty et al. (2017) estimate what the trends would
have been in a “higher growth” scenario in which the economy had grown as fast in recent
decades as in past decades, and a “more broadly shared growth” scenario in which the benefits of
the growth that did occur were equally shared across the income distribution. They find that both
conditions matter. Higher growth would have reduced the decline in absolute mobility by about a
third, while more broadly shared growth would have reduced the decline in absolute mobility by
about two-thirds of what actually occurred. In this sense, changes in inequality—particularly the
relative stagnation of wages at the bottom of the income distribution in the United States over the
past 40 years—are central to understanding the decline of absolute upward mobility.
INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES VERSUS OTHER

COUNTRIES
We conclude our portrait with an international comparison. Do U.S. children have an

easier or more difficult time surpassing their parents’ economic fortunes than children in other
countries? More specifically, given that the Chetty et al. (2017) study, described above, finds that
about half of U.S. children born in 1980 do better than their parents, what are the counterpart
fractions in other countries?
Studies based on income comparisons between parents and children have found that the
U.S. mobility rate of 50% is similar to that of Canada (Ostrovsky, 2017), lower than Germany’s
70% rate (Bönke et al., 2019; Stockhausen, 2018), and considerably smaller than Sweden’s 77%
rate (Liss et al., 2019). A recent and more comprehensive study (Manduca et al., 2020) found
quite high mobility across most Scandinavian countries and in the United Kingdom and
confirmed the lower rates in the United States and Canada.
CONCLUSION 2-5: After declining over the past 75 years, the fraction of children
doing better than their parents is now lower in the United States than in most other
industrialized countries. The most likely cause is that gains from economic growth
have been disproportionately enjoyed by higher-income families, which has made it
even more difficult for those at the bottom rungs of the income distribution to work
their way up.
8
Although the pattern of declining mobility is clear in the Chetty et al. (2017) analysis, the exact numbers are
less certain. A key technical question is how to adjust for cost-of-living differences, a contentious issue among
economists. Chetty et al. (2020) show that alternative inflation measures can generate estimates of the overall
fraction of, for example, children born in 1980 who are doing better than their parents that range from around 50
percent to a little over 70 percent.

48

3
Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Poverty
While progress toward socioeconomic parity has occurred between White people and
Black and Native American people in some domains, such as in high school graduation rates,
residential integration, and poverty rates, in other domains gaps have been persistent or even
widened. And despite whatever progress has been made, the previous chapter documents stark
differences in intergenerational mobility for Black American and Native American children
relative to other groups, even for children born between 1978 and 1983—more than a decade
after the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s. Chapter 2 provides two striking examples:
• Much higher fractions of low-income Black (37%) and Native American (46%) children
are also low income in adulthood, as compared with low-income White children (29%).
• Both Black and Native American children with middle-class (50th rung) family incomes
in childhood attain lower rungs of economic status in adulthood than White children who
were low-income (10th rung) in childhood.
This chapter examines the histories, practices, and contexts that limit the
intergenerational mobility of both Black and Native American children. These patterns are also
gendered, as is discussed further in Appendix C: Chapter 3. The evidence presented in this
chapter points to historical and contemporary racism as a driving factor in intergenerational
economic outcomes. For example, in comparison with other advanced countries, the United
States has a relatively weak social safety net, which limits the resources available for reducing
intergenerational poverty. This weak welfare state is due in part to greater racial polarization in
the United States and racist stereotypes of non-White people (Alesina et al., 2001; Fox, 2012).
Many mechanisms of structural racism can be found in an array of institutional arrangements and
public policy choices of the past and present (e.g., Baker, 2022), although the magnitude of the
effects of such choices is unknown. Because racial disparities in intergenerational poverty were,
in part, a product of past policy choices, future policy choices may help to reduce current and
future disparities.
DEFINING DISPARITY, INEQUALITY, DISCRIMINATION, AND STRUCTURAL

RACISM
Because this chapter discusses disparities and inequalities among racialized groups, it is
vital to clarify what is meant by “racial inequality,” “racial disparity,” “racial discrimination,”
and “structural racism.” Box 3-1 provides a list of brief definitions of these terms, and Appendix
C: Chapter 3 offers a more in-depth discussion. It is also important to note that race can interact
with gender, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, and disability in ways that
compound inequality (Crenshaw et al., 2015; Harris, 2000; Nanda, 2019a).

49

BOX 3-1
Key Terms and Concepts
Racial Disparities
Racial disparities are group-based average differences in outcomes. Chapter 2 and the
opening section of this chapter documented the disparities between White people and Black
and Native American people in rates of intergenerational economic mobility. Racial disparities
are also evident in the key life experiences that are relevant for upward mobility, such as
exposure to environmental toxins, residence in high-poverty neighborhoods, and attendance at
schools with college-preparatory curricula. The cumulative and intersecting nature of these
disparate exposures over the life course partly explains higher rates of intergenerational
poverty. The word “gaps” is often used interchangeably with disparities.
Racial Inequality
Racial inequality refers to group-based differential treatment or access to valued
resources that are rooted in law and public policy as well as in individual behavior and
institutional practices (NASEM, 2022b, pp. 1–7). Racial inequalities can result from multiple
sources, including both historic and contemporary oppression, structural racism, and prejudice,
whether intended or not. Racial inequality is a more comprehensive term than racial disparities
because it recognizes that disparities occur across multiple domains and multiple outcomes.
While the term may sometimes be used as synonymous with racial disparities to mean group-
based differences in a particular domain or outcome, it is more often used to describe
differences at a more macro-level. For example, there might be racial disparities in access to
preschool, and racial inequality in the educational system.
Racial Discrimination
An important part of racial discrimination is differential treatment on the basis of race that
disadvantages a racial group (National Research Council, 2004, p. 4). This type of
discrimination can reflect either animus toward specific racial groups, which economists call
“taste-based” discrimination, or else what some social scientists call statistical discrimination, a
situation in which the discriminator possesses too little information about the characteristics of
an individual and instead makes assumptions about the individual based on group-based
stereotypes regarding, for example, skills or criminal behavior. Both racial-animus-based and
stereotype-based discrimination are illegal in the United States. Recent labor market evidence
(e.g., Cordoba et al., 2021; Hurst et al., 2021) suggests there has been a decline in racial
animus but growing statistical discrimination, although audit studies show no decline in
employment discrimination since at least 1989 (Quillian et al., 2017). Regardless of its origin
and nature, discrimination is relevant for intergenerational poverty because it excludes Black
people and Native Americans from access to contexts that enhance opportunities or exposes
them to situations that reduce opportunity.
Structural Racism
Structural racism refers to a system in which public policies, institutional practices,
cultural representations, and other systems work in often reinforcing ways to maintain or
compound racial inequalities (NASEM, 2022b, pp. 1-7). Thus, structural racism goes beyond
mere patterns (disparities) or treatment (discrimination) to capture how rules, routines, and

50

assumptions of U.S. law, institutions, norms, ideologies, policies, and technologies create
disadvantages and advantages for people and groups based on how they are racialized in
society. Structural racism can be historical or contemporary. Federal acquiescence to local
segregationist laws and practices, which resulted in the near exclusion of Black World War II
veterans from the benefits of the GI Bill, is an example of historical structural racism (Delmont,
2022). Historical structural racism affects the stocks of assets, skills, exposures, and
opportunities—e.g., college degrees and home equity—that compound with families over
generations into the present. A contemporary illustration of structural racism is how ostensibly
race-neutral artificial intelligence algorithms may incorporate racial biases and inequalities from
the real world to produce racially disparate outcomes when applied (Benjamin, 2019; Noble,
2018; Obermeyer et al., 2019). The qualities of being “built in” and often obscured are hallmarks
of structural racism.
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF RACIAL DISPARITIES IN INTERGENERATIONAL

MOBILITY
To elaborate on structural racism and its link to intergenerational poverty, the persistent
racial and ethnic disparities in upward mobility that are documented in this report can be better
understood when placed in historical context. The report focuses on the historical experiences of
Native Americans and Black Americans, given the persistence of intergenerational poverty in
these populations (see Chapter 2). Though other racial and ethnic minorities in the United States
have been impacted by structural racism, the duration, depth, and breadth of anti-Black and anti-
Native racism are distinct.
Native Americans and Black Americans stand out as groups subjected to centuries of
structural racism rooted in beliefs about White supremacy. Among the most severe forms of
historical structural racism that set Black and Native Americans on a course of socioeconomic
disadvantage are (1) forced migration and land theft; (2) chattel slavery and labor exploitation
(Kiernan, 2007; Saito, 2020); and (3) forced assimilation and legalized racial discrimination
imposed by racially oppressive institutions. While land theft is paramount for Native Americans
and slavery for Black people, it is important to note that Native Americans were also enslaved
(Johnson, 2017; Reséndez, 2016; Trafzer & Hyer, 1999), and Black people have experienced
both historical and contemporary theft (Atuahene & Berry, 2018; Immergluck et al., 2020;
McMillan & Chakraborty, 2016; Mitchell, 2005a). These primary histories and their long-term
effects are discussed in depth in Appendix C: Chapter 3.
These forms of structural racism were means of economic exploitation that enriched
White individuals and deprived generations of Black and Native Americans of economic assets,
including income, wealth, and land ownership, as well as the correlated human capital, such as
educational attainment and occupational skills, that are necessary for upward mobility and that
they otherwise stood to gain (Desmond, 2021; Dubois, 1998). Native and Black Americans
experience myriad other forms of theft, extraction, loss, and appropriation, both historically and
in the present, from paying higher property taxes for similar public goods (Avenancio-Leon &
Howard, 2022), to bearing a greater parking ticket burden (Brazil, 2020), to being the revenue-
generating “mascot” for sports teams (Black, 2002; Fryberg et al., 2008). Whether historical or

51

contemporary, the disproportionate rates of intergenerational poverty among Black people and
Native Americans are due in part to their disproportionate subjection to impoverishment.
CONTEMPORARY DRIVERS OF RACIAL DISPARITY IN INTERGENERATIONAL

POVERTY
The historical context described above and in Appendix C: Chapter 3 sets the stage for
understanding contemporary intergenerational poverty in the United States and its relationship to
Black and Native American communities. Black and Native American children and families face
more challenging conditions rooted in a racialized distribution of resources and social processes
of racial exclusion in the United States that have compounded over time. Today those processes
manifest as inadequate access to health care and to well-funded, quality schools; greater
exposure to crime, violence, and harm from the criminal justice system; housing insecurity and
exposure to toxins; and lower family incomes, wealth, and neighborhood resources (NASEM,
2018).
Given this history and contemporary context, the question of how to address racial
inequality thus looms large. The social determinants of health framework, which is widely
accepted in the scientific literature today, is an instructive example. This framework is used to
understand racial inequalities in the unequal risk of poor health outcomes, the lack of access to
health care, and differential treatment by health care providers. Adult health is influenced by an
individual’s health-related behaviors and choices, but the factors that influence the behaviors and
choices of Black and Native American individuals include the experiences of historical violence,
oppression, and marginalization (NASEM, 2017d; NASEM, 2021). Public health researchers
understand that to varying degrees, health outcomes for these groups are a product of a racially
stratified society rooted in historical and material conditions that remain salient in the health care
system itself (Jones, 2002). Improving health outcomes for Black and Native American
individuals means fixing the constituent pieces of an unequal society.
A logic similar to that of the social determinants of health framework pertains to
intergenerational poverty. Identifying the structural mechanisms that drive racial inequality can
help ensure that the policy or practice solutions are designed at an appropriate institutional or
systemic level. To that end, this section describes the systems and social drivers—education,
health, housing and neighborhood resources, child welfare, criminal justice, and income and
employment—that perpetuate racial disparities in intergenerational poverty today.
Throughout each section, we discuss the patterns and experiences for both Black and
Native American individuals when possible. However, much of the research on racial disparities
uses a Black-White paradigm. Native American people are often left out of reported data, given
their small overall population numbers, and even when there are available data they are often left
out of analyses. Chapter 11 on future priorities for research and data collection discusses this
issue in further detail.
Education
While educational attainment and skills have dramatically improved over time among
Black and Native American children, and while racial disparities have declined in magnitude in
some areas, disparities in access to educational opportunity are still deep and enduring

52

characteristics of the American education system. Education can play a powerful role in undoing
intergenerational poverty, as it promotes the development of the knowledge and skills that will
allow children to be successful in the labor market, but the progress here remains far too limited.
(See Chapter 4.)
For Native Americans, for example, there is a history of the U.S. government using
education as a tool for colonization and forced assimilation. Throughout much of the 20th
century, in the name of education, Native children were taken from their families, placed in
federally controlled boarding schools, and punished for “speaking or acting Indian” (Adams,
1995). As a result, for generations, getting an education has been a metaphor for assimilation or
“becoming White” (Deloria, 1999; Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Elliott-Groves & Fryberg, 2019;
Ogbu & Davis, 2003). Although most tribal nations and Native individuals today recognize that
education is essential for socioeconomic success, the path toward attaining an education is
replete with structural and social barriers.
When a Native American child enters kindergarten, compared with other American
children, they are often behind in reading, mathematics, and fine motor skills (Snyder & Dillow,
2011). This result is largely due to the lack of early childhood education and the preponderance
of economic and social struggles in the home. Native American children have lower preschool
enrollment rates (44%) than White children (49%).1 Disparities continue throughout the life
course: Compared with other ethnic groups, Native students between the ages of 3 and 17 are
more likely to be identified as having a learning disability and as needing special education
intervention services (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Native students have the highest dropout rates
of any ethnic group in the United States. Recent statistics from the Bureau of Indian Affairs
show that 29% to 36% of all Native American students drop out of school, mostly between the
7th and 12th grades. In the 12 states with the largest populations of Native American students,
these numbers are even higher, with less than 50% of Native American students graduating from
high school, compared with 71.4% of all students in those states (Faircloth & Tippeconic, 2010).
These high school graduation rates are the lowest among American students.
The same patterns apply to college completion. The six-year graduation rate for Native
American students from four-year degree-granting institutions is 39%, compared with 74% for
Asian American students and 64% for White students (National Center for Education Statistics,
2019). These outcomes do not constitute a snapshot of one generation of Native students but
rather reflect a history of distrust stemming, in large part, from the physical and social abuses
experienced during the boarding school era (late 1800s to the mid-1900s) that constitute an
intergenerational trauma passed down from one generation to the next (Adams, 1995; Smith,
2007a) and the lack of cultural fit for Native American students in mainstream educational
institutions (Fryberg & Markus, 2007; Fryberg et al., 2013, 2018).
Native American students who attend schools in which Natives are more than one-quarter
of total enrollment reported more serious problems with absenteeism, tardiness, low family
involvement, and low expectations than other schools (Devoe & Darling-Churchill, 2008). One
potential reason for these differences is the landscape of social representation in the schools, that
is, the ideas and images available. Shear et al. (2015, online Table 3) found that 87% of state-
level U.S. history standards portray Native people in pre-1900 contexts. In high Native contexts,
1
See: https://www.diversitydatakids.org/research-library/data-visualization/neighborhood-preschool-enrollment-
patterns-raceethnicity.

53

this bias in the curriculum may be more salient (Fryberg & Leavitt, 2014; Lomawaima &
McCarty, 2006). Beyond the curriculum, Native American students rarely see members of their
group represented as primary or secondary teachers (0.5% are Native American), as college
students (1% are Native American), or as professors (0.5% are Native American; Coopersmith,
2009; Snyder et al., 2009). The lack of self-relevant social representations in education subtly
conveys to Native students that they do not belong and cannot be successful in these educational
contexts (Fryberg & Eason, 2017; Fryberg & Townsend, 2008; Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-
Billings, 1995).
Similar disparities in treatment and outcomes are evident for Black children. As
described further in Chapter 4, Black students entering kindergarten are about half a year behind
their White counterparts in early math achievement, with gaps apparent in kindergarten-entry
literacy as well. These differences in learning continue throughout the educational process and
through school completion (Kuhfeld et al., 2020; Paschall et al., 2018; Reardon, 2021). One
explanation is that teachers’ expectations for their students differ based on students’ race and
ethnicity. Lower expectations have harmful effects on actual achievement (Jussim & Harber,
2005), and White teachers have lower expectations of Black students than they do of White
students (Gershenson et al., 2016; Papageorge et al., 2020).
Also meriting attention is access to high-quality, well-funded schools and the school
environment itself. After years of progress toward racial desegregation, on some measures pre-
K-to-12 schools have become increasingly segregated by class and race (An & Gamoran, 2009;
Reardon & Owens, 2014; Reardon et al., 2021). Most school districts reflect the demographic
and socioeconomic compositions of their neighborhoods, and Black and Native American
children are more likely than White children to live in high-poverty areas (NASEM, 2019a).
School assignment policies that send all (or many) children from a high-poverty neighborhood or
community to the same school create schools with high concentrations of children living in
poverty. Schools serving children from low-income families tend to have fewer material
resources (e.g., books, libraries, classrooms), fewer course offerings, and fewer experienced
teachers. The educational opportunities available to students attending these schools are not of
the same quality as those in schools in more affluent areas (Monarrez & Chien, 2021). These
trends pose increasing challenges for school systems that serve large numbers of non-White
students, which all too often are the same school systems that have fewer economic resources in
the first place.
School discipline is relevant as well. Black and Native American students are
disproportionately subjected to harsh in-school discipline, which threatens students’ well-being
and learning (Beland & Kim, 2016; GAO, 2018; Gregory et al., 2017). Disparities in punishment
appear at the very earliest ages. In preschool, Black and Native American toddlers are suspended
at rates 2.5 and 1.5 times, respectively, their representation in the preschool population, and
Black preschoolers are overrepresented among expelled children by a factor of 2 (U.S. DOE
Office for Civil Rights, 2021a). In K-12 settings, Black and Native youth are also at higher risk
of being referred to law enforcement and being arrested at school (Brown, 2014; U.S DOE
Office for Civil Rights, 2021b).
Studies show that such disparities are not always due to children’s behavior but rather are
sometimes due to between-school differences in punishment cultures and to the differential
labeling of behaviors of Black and White children and ensuing punishments (Goff et al., 2014;
Gilliam et al., 2016; Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015; Owens & McLanahan, 2020; Sabol et al.,

54

2022; Skiba et al. 2014), and higher rates of racial bias at the community level (Riddle &
Sinclair, 2019). For example, Okonofua and Eberhardt (2015) found that when presented with
identical descriptions of student behavior, teachers viewed two minimal infractions as more
troubling and deserving of harsher punishment when committed by a Black student than by a
White student. At the same time, students in classrooms with higher shares of Black, Native
American, and Latino peers report a greater likelihood that classroom misbehavior slows down
learning and experience greater pressure to misbehave (Ferguson 2016). Okonofua, Walton, and
Eberhardt (2016) hypothesize that there is a negatively reinforcing causal loop from
disproportionate punishment to poor student behavior, whereby racially stigmatized students
experience a lack of belonging, delinquent labeling, and perceived unfair treatment, which
increases their misbehavior. Field-tested randomized controlled experiments (RCTs) show that
increasing teachers’ use of “empathic discipline” (Okonofua et al., 2016) and improving Black
students’ identity self-affirmations (Borman et al., 2022) and sense of belonging, inclusion, and
growth (Goyer et al., 2019) all decrease exclusionary discipline against Black students.
Exclusionary school discipline leads to lost learning days (Losen & Martinez, 2020). The
U.S. Department of Education reports that students lost more than 11 million days of school
owing to out-of-school suspensions in 2017–2018, with this burden falling disproportionately on
Black and Native American students (and also falling disproportionately on boys). The Civil
Rights Project at UCLA reports (using 2015–16 data) that “Black students lost 103 days per 100
students enrolled, which is 82 more than the 21 days their White peers lost due to out-of-school
suspensions.” Native American students lost 54 days per 100 students enrolled (Losen &
Martinez, 2020).
Correlational and quasi-experimental studies show that school discipline is negatively
related to standardized test scores, and high school and college graduation and is positively
correlated with involvement in the criminal legal system (Wolf & Kupchik, 2017; Chu & Ready,
2018; Mittleman, 2018; Bacher-Hicks et al., 2019; Rose, et al. 2022; Rosenbaum, 2020). Raffaele
Mendez (2003) found that unequal treatment based on race and other characteristics results in
disparate outcomes for children, as out-of-school suspensions are highly predictive of future
involvement with the criminal justice system and reduced educational achievement. Using
integrated administrative data from the state of Oregon linking school discipline with adult
outcomes, Davison and colleagues (2022) found that
approximately 30% of the gap between Black and White young adult criminal justice
outcomes, SNAP participation, and bachelor’s degree (BA) receipt can be traced back to
inequalities in school discipline, and that just accounting for out-of-school suspensions
for insubordination reduces the Black-White disparity by approximately 10% (Davison et
al., 2022, p. 233).
In sum, large gaps in school achievement and completed schooling persist across racial
and ethnic subgroups, posing a key challenge for policy makers seeking to reduce
intergenerational poverty and pointing to the importance of education-related interventions,
which will be discussed in Chapter 4.

55

Health
Child physical and mental health is an important driver of intergenerational mobility, as

will be examined in Chapter 5. Children born to mothers with lower socioeconomic status in the
United States are born in worse health than other children, and this disparity increases as they
age (Case et al., 2002), culminating in a strong relationship between childhood poverty and adult
health as well as adult income given the link between health and income. Inequalities in health
derive largely from unequal risk of poor health outcomes (through environmental influences on
health and nutrition and food insecurity), lack of access to health care, and differential treatment
by health care providers. For example, a study of the desegregation of hospitals after the 1964
Civil Rights Act demonstrated sharp declines in Black infant mortality, demonstrating how the
lack of appropriate maternity care to Black women had resulted in the deaths of Black newborns
(Almond et al., 2006). Using a social determinants of health framework, public health
researchers hypothesize that these inequalities are all, to varying degrees, outcomes of a racially
stratified society and are rooted in historical and material conditions that remain salient in the
health care system itself (Jones, 2002).
Historically, science and medicine have reinforced White racial superiority to justify and
perpetuate disparate treatment of individuals. Examples of racism in science and medicine that
have engendered Black people’s mistrust of the medical system include the eugenics movement
of the 1900s, which resulted in the forced sterilization of Black women; and the use of tissue
from Henrietta Lacks (a Black woman with cervical cancer) to create cell lines for scientific
research without her permission. The effects of the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the
Negro Black Male,” in which Black men were deliberately not treated for syphilis despite
effective available treatment in order to study the natural course of the disease in Black men is
perhaps most well-documented. Alsan and Wanamaker (2018) compared older Black men to
other demographic groups, before and after the information about the Tuskegee study was
revealed, and in varying proximity to the Tuskegee study’s victims. They found that the public
disclosure of the study in 1972 was associated with increases in medical mistrust and mortality
and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older Black men, with
the largest effects found for Black men living in closest in geographic proximity to Tuskegee.
They estimate that life expectancy fell for Black men by up to 1.5 years in response to the
disclosure, accounting for approximately 35% of the 1980 life expectancy gap between Black
and White men (Alsan & Wanamaker, 2018).
Implicit bias has also been shown to be prevalent in health care (FitzGerald & Hurst,
2017; Hall et al., 2015) and to result in disparate outcomes among individuals of different races.
For example, some research suggests that Black women are less likely than their White
counterparts to receive an epidural during childbirth because of providers’ beliefs about the
relationship between race and pain tolerance, as well as poor communication in racially
discordant provider-patient relationships (NASEM, 2021). Research has also shown that
providers perceive Black individuals as less likely than White individuals to adhere to medical
advice, a perception that contributes to poor communication and care (Laws et al., 2014; Van
Ryn & Burke, 2000). These experiences of implicit bias can lead to mistrust and avoidance of the
system, thus exacerbating health disparities (Chaturvedi & Gabriel, 2020).
Lack of access to health care also affects the health of Black and Native American
people. Native Americans experience very high uninsured rates; the Centers for Disease Control

56

and Prevention (CDC) reports that 28.6% of Native Americans under age 65 are uninsured
(ASPE, 2023). Although the Indian Health Service provides medical care, funding is adequate to
meet the needs of only about half of those eligible for services, and staff shortages are persistent
(Chapter 5). Black individuals under the age of 65 have an uninsurance rate (11.5%) that is
roughly 60% higher than the uninsurance rate for White individuals (7.5%) (Artiga et al., 2020).
A landmark study demonstrated that even after accounting for socioeconomic factors, race and
ethnicity remained significant predictors in access to and the quality of health care received
(IOM, 2003).
Racism impacts health through environmental influences, including greater exposure to
and experiences of trauma and chronic stress (Giscombé & Lobel, 2005; Nuru-Jeter et al., 2009),
environmental toxins, and violence. Stress, for example, has been associated with poor health in
multiple arenas, including mental health (Paradies et al., 2015), sleep (Slopen et al., 2016),
obesity (Bernardo et al., 2017), hypertension (Dolezsar et al., 2014), and cardiovascular disease
(Lewis et al., 2014). In addition to the actual experience of discrimination, just the threat of
discrimination—and its associated hypervigilance—can harm a person’s health. Chronic
exposure to racism and discrimination leads to dysregulation of stress hormones and to
epigenetic modifications, in which environmental influences regulate gene expression without
changing genetic sequences (Seeman & Crimmins, 2001; Seeman et al., 2014). It also leads to
“weathering,” that is, premature aging at the cellular level (Geronimus et al., 2006). These
biological changes are associated with chronic disease in childhood, such as asthma and obesity,
and poor cardiovascular outcomes in adulthood, which affect future economic prospects
(McEwen & Seeman, 1999; McEwen & Stellar 1993; Shonkoff et al., 2009).
In sum, Black and Native children continue to experience worse health than their White
counterparts, and drivers of worse health among Black and Native children include those related
to access to health care, environmental influences including pollution and community violence
and those related to nutrition, as well as differential treatment by health care providers.
Improving the health of Black and Native American children living in low-income households is
therefore a key lever for reducing intergenerational poverty, as improvements in child health
have been shown to improve economic status in adulthood (see Chapter 5).
Wages and Employment
The persistence of economic immobility has defined Black Americans’ relationship to

labor and the labor market throughout much of U.S. history (Collins & Wanamaker, 2022; also
see Appendix C: Chapter 3, where this is discussed in detail). Black people’s relationship to the
labor market can be divided into at least three distinct periods: (1) slavery to emancipation, (2)
emancipation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and (3) post-Civil Rights Act to the present. In
both the first and second periods, racist and discriminatory employment practices were legally
sanctioned, protected, or ignored.
In the third (contemporary) period, explicit discrimination based on race and ethnicity is
illegal. Yet despite declines in Black/White wage and employment gaps, significant disparities
remain (Bayer & Charles, 2018). Black workers receive lower average earnings, face less
predictable work hours, experience less overall employment stability, and reside
disproportionately in states where the relatively low federal minimum wage is binding (Hardy &
Logan, 2020). They also tend to be concentrated in low-skilled or disappearing occupations

57

(Meschede et al., 2019; Smith, 2002), resulting in their overrepresentation among low-income
populations (NASEM, 2019a).
One explanation of these disparate outcomes is racial discrimination in the labor
market—affecting who gets an interview as well as who gets hired. Evidence from audit and
correspondence studies indicates that White applicants are more likely than Black applicants
with the same education and employment qualifications to receive employer call-backs (Pager,
2003; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Neumark, 2012), and job offers (Quillian et al., 2020).
These employment patterns are present in entry-level positions (Pager, 2008; Agan & Starr,
2018), among the college-educated (Gaddis, 2015), and among those with advanced degrees
(Reeves, 2014). Experimentally identified discrimination against Black applicants may be of
either the taste (i.e., based on racial animus) or statistical kind, although Bertrand and
Mullainathan (2004, p. 1010) note that both models “struggle to explain” their findings in full.
A weakness of this research is that audit studies cannot be used directly to measure the
role of discrimination in generating observed outcome disparities in wages or employment rates.
In an essay reviewing the field, Neumark (2018, p. 855) states that “very few [audit] studies have
tried to capture wage outcomes, and none have done so convincingly.” Other studies, however,
suggest that employment discrimination identified in audit studies translates into wage gaps
(Lanning, 2013), as do higher levels of White racial prejudice in an area (Charles & Guryan,
2008). And in the related field of housing-discrimination audit studies, Christensen and
colleagues (2021, p. 7) find that “differential treatment identified in the correspondence study
predicts…the probability of a subsequent lease by a renter from the same [racial] group.” In
other words, housing discrimination identified against Black auditors is related to a lower
probability that a Black person ultimately lives in the audited housing unit. This study offers a
model for research matching employment audits to hiring and wage outcomes for the same jobs.
Racial disparities in employment and earnings can also be attributed in part to gaps in
educational attainment, achievement, and skills between Black and White Americans. As
discussed in the previous section on education, such gaps are in part the result of unequal
treatment and access in educational institutions. The relative contribution of cognitive and non-
cognitive skills and education to the employment and wage gap is a topic of long-standing
scholarly debate (Carneiro et al., 2005; Darity & Mason, 1998; Elder & Zhou, 2021; Neal &
Johnson, 1996; Rodgers & Spriggs, 1996; Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2005), and often depends on
how the education controls are specified and the specific outcome of interest. For example,
Thompson (2021, p. 20) reports that the “contribution of human capital to differences in the
earnings of Black and white men grew steadily over the past 50 years,” whereas Cajner et al.
(2017) find that differences in observable characteristics have consistently explained very little
of the Black-White employment gap over a similar time period, and Coleman (2003) reports a
wider wage gap controlling for skill. Importantly, achievement and education gaps now favor
women relative to men in all racial groups (Reeves, 2022), and may help explain why
intergenerational poverty is more pronounced for Black men than for Black women when
measured by individual earnings. Other important considerations such as union density and wage
structures are also important for explaining racial earnings gaps (Bayer & Charles, 2018). As is
discussed further in Chapter 4, improving education and skills for low-income Black and Native
American children is likely to increase their adult wages and decrease their intergenerational
poverty.

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Labor market segmentation may also explain racial disparities in employment. Black
workers are more likely to be employed in less stable jobs, with less regular work, and with more
precarious work hours. For instance, while Black people make up 12.1% of the labor force, they
make up 25.9% of temporary workers earning 40% less for the same jobs as permanent workers
in the same position (Wilson, 2020). Racialized wage gaps also manifest along gender lines. In
2017, the median annual earnings for full-time Black women workers was 21% lower than for
White women and 39% lower than for White men, reflecting the over-representation of Black
women in low-wage service and sub-minimum wage jobs (Banks, 2019).
Black workers tend to fare worse in the labor market, independent of macroeconomic
conditions, though they suffer more during downturns and benefit relatively more during tight
labor markets. During the economy recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment
rates have declined, yet racial disparities remain. As of July 2022, the unemployment rate of
Black workers was 6.0%, compared with 3.9% for Latino workers and 3.1% for White workers
(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). In April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic raged, the
unemployment rate of Black Americans reached 16.6%, compared with 12.8% for White
Americans (Fairlie et al., 2021). More than 6 in 10 Black adults with a 2019 household income
of less than $35,000 reported losing labor income in 2020 (Sanchez Cumming and Kopparam,
2021). In late 2009, during the peak of the Great Recession (2007–2009), unemployment for
Black workers was 14.8%, significantly higher than the White unemployment rate of 8.5% (U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010).
Differences in labor force participation rates—particularly among men (Binder & Bound,
2019; Eberstadt, 2016; Thompson, 2021)—also contribute to racial disparities in earnings and
household income. In 2021, according to data on adult men from the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) (2023), Latino men (75.4%) were more likely to participate in the labor force
than men of other races, and Black men (63.5%) were the least likely, with White men (67.9%)
and Native American men (66.2%) between the two. In contrast, among adult women, Black
women (58.8%) were more likely to participate in the labor force than were Latina women
(55.8%), White women (55.4%), and Native American women (55%). The BLS data overstate
labor force participation among Black men because they do not include incarcerated populations
(Pettit, 2014) and there is evidence of underreporting of those not incarcerated (Holzer, 2021).
Measured progress between White and Black men in relative earnings becomes much more
limited when the lower labor force of the latter, especially among the incarcerated, is taken into
account (Bayer & Charles, 2018).
Important racial disparities can be found not only among workers but also among
business owners and entrepreneurs. Black-owned businesses comprise about 9% of privately
owned businesses in the United States and are overwhelmingly newly founded or started (Fairlie
et al., 2010; M’Balou Camara et al., 2019). These businesses are denied loans at 2.5 times the
rate of White-owned businesses (Cavalluzzo & Wolken, 2005). Black-White differences in loan
denials are largest at the top end of the wealth distribution (Ards and Myers, 2001). In one study,
only 56% of minority-owned businesses were approved for financing, compared with 73% of
White-owned firms (de Zeeuw, 2019). In addition to loan denials, Black-owned firms are more
likely to be charged higher interest rates despite clean credit histories and creditworthiness (Ards
& Myers, 2001; Blanchflower et al., 2003). Disparities in the source and amount of start-up
capital may mean the difference between success or failure.

59

In sum, disparities in both employment and earnings remain between White individuals
and Black individuals. Given that persistently low family incomes and employment are an
important driver of intergenerational poverty, policies that increase parental incomes and
employment may increase intergenerational mobility (and will be discussed in Chapter 6).
Housing represents a bundle of possible inputs—such as access to good schools, parks,

safety, doctors and health care, and commercial offerings—that affect family well-being and can
promote or hinder mobility out of poverty. Despite a reduction in Black-White residential
segregation in recent decades (Logan & Stults, 2022), Black Americans have experienced
systematic exclusion from places that promote upward mobility and have instead been
concentrated in places with various forms of toxicity. Additionally, the rise in segregation by
socioeconomic status (Reardon & Bischoff, 2011) means that Black and Native American
families living below the poverty line suffer a double blow, which limits the upward mobility of
their children over time.
After the Great Depression, the federal government came to play a greater role in housing
policy, replicating and intensifying the discrimination already present in the private housing
market (see Appendix C: Chapter 3). Government programs were a source of wealth
accumulation and upward mobility for White families, while excluding Black families from
homeownership and its wealth generating potential (Katznelson, 2005; Radford, 2008; Taylor,
2019). The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration insured
approximately half of all mortgages for single-family homes and small buildings by the 1950s
(Fishback et al., 2022, p. 25), yet “between 1945 and 1959, less than two percent of all federally
insured home loans went to African Americans” (Hanchett, 2000, p. 166). To insure private
mortgages, the federal government developed standardized appraisal systems that regarded Black
neighborhoods as high-risk (Fishback et al., 2022; Stuart, 2003). The rating system color-coded
sections of cities in green, blue, yellow, and, for the lowest category, red. The term redlining
refers to the systematic denial of mortgage loans based on these federal guidelines, which were
steeped in racial, ethnic, and anti-urban biases (Jackson 1985; Rothstein, 2017, see Appendix C:
Chapter 3). Exclusion from mortgage markets reduced housing wealth in redlined areas (Xu,
2022), and exposed Black neighborhoods to predatory private lenders like contract sellers, who
siphoned off the income and wealth of Black individuals (Dubois Cook Center, 2019; Satter,
2009). Family wealth—or its lack—is an important determinant of children’s outcomes (Conley,
1999; Orr, 2003 ; Pfeffer, 2011; Moulton et al., 2021), and thus discrimination against Black
people in the housing market reverberates across generations (Oliver & Shapiro, 1997; Pfeffer &
Killewald, 2018).
Research shows the long arm of redlining reaching into the present. Aaronson et al.
(2021) compare areas along actual and potential Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC)
boundaries and show that the HOLC appraisal ratings in the early 20th century impact the long-
term socioeconomic outcomes of children born in the 1970s and 80s. In particular, children in
the lower-graded areas were in lower household-income rankings at age 29 and were less likely
than other children to move toward the top of the income distribution as adults. Today,
historically redlined neighborhoods have lower homeownership rates and lower home values
(Aaronson et al., 2021), higher poverty rates, lower life expectancy, higher rates of chronic

60

disease (National Community Reinvestment Coalition, 2020), higher rates of preterm births
(Krieger et al., 2020), less health-promoting tree cover and green space (Hoffman et al., 2020;
Nardone et al., 2021; Schinasi et al., 2022), and higher incidence of emergency room visits for
asthma (Nardone et al., 2020). Lane et al. (2022) find that historically redlined areas are
disproportionately occupied by non-White residents today and have greater exposure to
pollution. Figure 3-1 shows these patterns clearly for the city of Oakland, California. Exposure to
pollution has negative effects on children’s health and long-term outcomes, as discussed above
and in Chapter 5. This is an area that has been positively impacted by policy, namely the Clean
Air Act of 1970, which has reduced racial disparities in such exposure (Currie, 2023).
FIGURE 3-1 How Air Pollution Reflects Racist Policy From the 1930s.
SOURCE: Zhong and Popovitch (2022).
Redlining and the association of Black residents with risk did not end in the 1930s.
Appraisal manuals explicitly called for lower appraised values in racially mixed neighborhoods
up until at least 1977 (Yinger, 1995; Kuebler, 2012), and private appraisal practices continue to
disadvantage Black home buyers today (Freddie Mac, 2022; Howell & Korver-Glenn, 2021;
Perry et al., 2018). In the decades leading up to the housing crisis of 2007, Black neighborhoods
and households were disproportionately targeted by lenders and banks to receive subprime loans,
no matter their socioeconomic status and despite other indicators of creditworthiness (Bayer et
al., 2018; Faber, 2013; Hwang et al., 2015; Institute on Race and Poverty, 2009; Massey et al.,
2016; Rugh & Massey, 2010; Steil et al., 2018). Scholars have referred to these practices as
“predatory inclusion” (Taylor, 2019).
Targeting Black neighborhoods for lower appraisals or subprime loans is possible in part
because of enduring patterns of racial residential segregation. The causes of that segregation are
manifold, including historical and contemporary “preferences,” racial steering and discrimination
by real estate agents and landlords, White flight, and anti-Black prejudice (Boustan, 2010; Card
et al., 2008; Charles, 2006; Christensen et al, 2021; Flage, 2018; Krysan & Crowder, 2017;
Massey & Lundy, 2001; Rugh & Massey, 2014). While residential segregation between Black
and White Americans has declined steadily since about 1970, it remains higher than for any other

61

racial or ethnic group. Given current trends, Black-White residential segregation will not dip into
what social scientists consider to be low levels until the year 2080 (Rugh & Massey, 2014, 213).
The most recent national audit study using matched pairs of house-seekers found declines
in discrimination against Black people compared with previous decades, but it also found
continued practices of racial steering of Black testers into neighborhoods with higher poverty
rates, lower school test scores, higher rates of violent crime, and greater exposure to air toxins
(Christensen & Timmins, 2022; Turner et al., 2013). Christensen et al. (2021) conducted the
largest correspondence study of racial discrimination in the rental market to date. They found
that apartment seekers with Black-identified names were 9.3% less likely than White renters to
receive a response. Further, they show that greater housing market discrimination is correlated
with greater residential segregation and with larger White-Black gaps in intergenerational
income mobility. Likewise, Black boys who grow up in areas with less racial bias, as measured
by Google searches for racial epithets and on-line implicit bias tests, have higher incomes in
adulthood (Chetty et al., 2020). Past and current racial residential discrimination and segregation
are correlated with lower rates of intergenerational mobility (Andrews et al., 2017; Chetty et al.,
2014; Christensen et al., 2021; Derenoncourt, 2022).
Patterns of racial residential segregation increase Black people’s exposure to high
poverty neighborhoods (Ananat, 2011; Christensen and Timmins, 2022; Massey & Denton,
1993; Quillian, 2012). Roughly 30% of Black and Native American children, compared with 4%
of non-Hispanic White children, live in neighborhoods where 30% or more of the residents have
incomes below the poverty line (Casey Foundation, 2019). Just as the intergenerational
experience of poverty is higher among Black people, so is the intergenerational exposure to
neighborhoods experiencing poverty (Sharkey, 2013). Growing up in high poverty
neighborhoods, and in counties with greater concentrated poverty and racial segregation, is
correlated with lower intergenerational mobility (Chetty & Hendren, 2015, 2018). As such it is a
key policy lever, which will be described in greater detail in Chapter 8.
Crime, Victimization, and Criminal Justice
There is substantial contemporary evidence of racial disparities not only in the

commission of violent crime and victimization but also across the criminal legal system in
arrests, charging, convictions, sentencing, incarceration, and community supervision (Alesina &
La Ferrara, 2014; Alexander, 2010; Arnold et al., 2018; Feigenberg & Miller, 2021; Franklin,
2013; Stewart et al., 2022; Weaver et al., 2019; for reviews and compilations of this research see
Balko, 2020; Du, 2021; Hinton et al., 2018; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2019; National Research
Council, 2014; Arya & Rolnick, 2008; Nielsen & Silverman, 2009; NASEM, 2022b; Redner-
Vera & Wang, 2022). Black and Native American youth also experience disproportionate
punishment in the juvenile justice system (Development Services Group, 2016; National
Research Council, 2013; Rovner, 2016). An analysis of juvenile incarceration in 2019 shows that
the rate of confinement for Black and Native American youth is higher than the rates of
confinement for White, Latino, and Asian youth combined (Wang, 2021).
At the same time, community violence poses a significant risk to health and well-being
for Black, Native American, and low-income communities, as is discussed in Chapter 9. Black
and Native American youth are more likely to be homicide victims than White youth, but rates of
other kinds of violent victimization are more comparable (Hullenaar & Ruback, 2020). Black

62

and Native youth also witness more community-level violence (Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2022;
OJJDP, 2016). Data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (Federal Bureau of Investigations,
2019) also show racial disparities in the commission of violent crime—particularly robberies and
homicide. For instance, in 2019, Black people committed over half of reported homicides in
which the race of the perpetrator was known, despite being just 13% of the U.S. population.
Although some analysts have been critical of these data and suggest racial bias (e.g., Hinton,
2017), the National Crime Victimization Survey shows similar over-representation of Black
assailants (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2021). Chapter 9 shows that reducing crime and exposure
to violence are important strategies for reducing intergenerational poverty.
A recent National Academies committee was charged with understanding these racial
disparities in criminal involvement and criminal justice processing. The resulting report
concludes that “Racially inscribed inequalities, especially disadvantage, explain most of the
dramatic differences in crime across racialized areas. These same disadvantaged contexts also
contribute to racial disparities in criminal justice contacts, further compounding inequality”
(NASEM, 2022b, p. 137). In other words, racial disparities in criminal offending and criminal
justice contact emerge within the broader histories of structural racism and racial inequality in
the important domains of education, health, neighborhoods, and labor markets, which is
documented in this chapter. As the aforementioned report (2022, p. 1) argues: “Racial inequality
can drive disparities in both crime and [criminal justice] system involvement; racial differences
in criminal victimization, offending, and incarceration can further exacerbate racial inequality in
socioeconomic life (NASEM, 2022b).”
It is important to note that the process of criminalization is often excluded from such
analysis of offending and criminal behavior. The term “criminalization” acknowledges that
conduct designated as “crimes” is necessarily a product of societal efforts to label, enforce,
surveil, and punish. Criminalization refers to how the law, the police, and court officials classify
and act upon some kinds of conduct, but not others, as criminal. Social norms, prejudices, and
power relations at a given point in time can influence this process, potentially codifying and
locking in definitions of crime that have a disproportionate impact on Black and Native people
(Lacey & Zedner, 2017; Lacey et al., 2018). For example, the Bureau of Indian Affairs created
criminal codes and reservation court systems that criminalized traditional religious and cultural
activities that the U.S. government sought to eradicate in its campaign to forcibly assimilate
Native Americans (Ross, 2010).
A wide range of evidence points to the negative effects of criminal conviction and
incarceration, which disproportionately affect Black and Native Americans, on later employment
and earnings. Field studies, for example, find that employment outcomes after incarceration are
worse for Black youth and men compared with White youth and men (Sullivan, 1989; Western &
Sirois, 2019). Consistent with these findings, Pager (2007; Pager et al., 2009) also finds that the
stigma of a criminal record in the labor market is larger for Black job-seekers than for White
ones. Monetary sanctions and court-ordered fees resulting from contact with the criminal justice
system can also impact socioeconomic outcomes. A randomized controlled trial in a
misdemeanor court in Oklahoma showed that court fines and fees led to warrants for
nonpayment, debts in collection, and state garnishment of tax refunds (Pager et al., 2022).
Studies show that these sanctions are both disproportionately imposed on and are associated with
the adverse treatment of Black Americans by police and other officials (Bing et al., 2022; Shoub
et al., 2021). Finally, punishment in one generation reverberates in the next through worse child

63

and young-adult health, educational attainment and achievement, socioeconomic and

psychological adjustment, and behavior (Finlay et al., 2022; Haskins et al., 2018; Heard-Garris et
al., 2018; Shaw, 2019; Wakefield & Wildeman, 2013).
In sum, racial inequality in crime, victimization, and criminal justice system involvement
contributes to disproportionate rates of intergenerational poverty among Black and Native
Americans. Interventions that address both violence and victimization as well as how the
criminal justice system affects youth outcomes and, ultimately, intergenerational mobility are
discussed in detail in Chapter 9.
Involvement with the child welfare system is also marked by pronounced racial
inequalities (e.g., see Kim et al., 2017). Research suggests that associations between
maltreatment or child welfare involvement and later outcomes do vary by race/ethnicity. For
example, in a large study of children in Mississippi (n=30,000), Yoon and colleagues (2021)
documented that children who experienced maltreatment had worse educational outcomes than
those who had not, specifically in grade retention and chronic absenteeism. Black male children
who were maltreated had worse educational outcomes compared with similar White males or
Black or White females. Further, Mersky and Topitzes (2010) analyzed data from the Chicago
Longitudinal Study, which included 1,539 children from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds, 93% of whom were Black. They found that children with substantiated reports of
maltreatment had an increased likelihood of adverse education and employment outcomes during
early adulthood (18–24 years), such as lower high school graduation rates (54% vs. 37%), less
employment or college attendance (53% vs. 41%), and increased history of arrest (36% vs. 48%).
The strong relation between family poverty and race/ethnicity in the United States,
especially among the child population (NASEM, 2019a; Thiede et al., 2021), also has
implications for maltreatment and child welfare involvement. It may be challenging to
differentiate child maltreatment and neglect from the common sequalae of poverty (e.g., food
insecurity, lack of child care), and thus the child welfare system risks sweeping in families—
particularly Black and Native American families—just for being low-income.
A strong evidentiary base exists on the overrepresentation of Black children in the child
welfare system. Specifically, Black children are more likely than their White counterparts to be
referred to the child welfare system regarding suspected maltreatment (Administration for
Children and Families, 2022a; Drake et al., 2011; Putnam-Hornstein et al., 2013) and to be
substantiated for maltreatment (Administration for Children and Families, 2022a; Drake et al.,
2011; Putnam-Hornstein et al., 2013). According to the most recent federal data, Black children
have the second highest maltreatment victimization rate, at 13.2 per 1,000 children of the same
race or ethnicity (Administration for Children and Families, 2022a). The limited rigorous data on
children from Native populations (American Indian/Alaska Native) suggest that they have the
highest rate of maltreatment at 15.5 per 1,000 children of the same race or ethnicity
(Administration of Children and Families, 2022a; Wulczyn, 2020).
These disparities have been attributed to elevated risks among non-White families (Barth
et al., 2020; Barth et al., 2022; Drake et al., 2011) as well as structural racism internal and
external to the child welfare system (e.g., increased community surveillance, biased decision-
making), and policies of removal of Native American children) (Boyd, 2014; Detlaff & Boyd,

64

2022). Both these explanations can be considered in the context of poverty. Specifically, Black
and Native American families are more likely to experience the poverty-related risks identified
previously, such as mental health challenges, substance use, and criminal justice system
involvement (Birckhead, 2012; Wadsworth et al., 2016; Jones Harden and Slopen, 2022). They
are also more likely to reside in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of poverty and
experience the adverse neighborhood conditions that characterize these communities (Molina et
al., 2012; Quillian, 2012; Jones Harden & Slopen, 2022), including child maltreatment (Coulton
et al., 2007; Maguire-Jack et al., 2022).
Scholars have attempted to disentangle the influences of race and poverty on child
welfare system involvement. For example, in a population-based study, Putnam-Hornstein et al.
(2013) documented that Black children were more than twice as likely as other children to
experience child maltreatment referral and substantiation, as well as foster care placement prior
to age five. However, when the authors adjusted for the contribution of socioeconomic factors,
they found that low-socioeconomic-status (SES) Black children were less likely to be referred,
substantiated, and enter foster care than White children from similar SES backgrounds.
In sum, these disparities point to the need for policies and programs that can reduce child
maltreatment and child welfare system involvement in order to address intergenerational poverty.
Such interventions are discussed in Chapter 10.
CONCLUSION 3-1: The challenges that Black and Native American families
face in propelling their children into socioeconomic security result from
contemporary and historical disparities, discrimination, and structural
racism. Behaviors and choices can also have major causal impacts on
intergenerational mobility. Many factors influence the behaviors and choices
of Black and Native Americans, including the experiences of historical
violence, oppression, and marginalization manifested through mechanisms of
contemporary structural racism. These factors are crucial in shaping the
relevant determinants of poverty over generations.
SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR PROGRAM AND POLICY INTERVENTIONS
The most obvious policy implication of the prevalence of racism in all its forms, even
today, is that there is a need to end racism and counter the persistent effects of past
discrimination. Nevertheless, there are few direct policy mechanisms available for achieving this
goal, outside the existing body of federal and state antidiscrimination laws in employment,
housing, and other realms. Improving outcomes for Black people and Native Americans will
likely require some race consciousness in our policies and their implementation to ensure that
their impacts are as positive as possible for these marginalized groups.
Race consciousness requires marshalling data to understand racial disparities and the
policies and practices that contribute to it. For example, the U.S. Treasury Department (2021) is
“examining the tax system through a racial equity lens,” as facilitated by the Executive Order on
Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal
Government (White House, 2021). As discussed in Chapter 4, Black teachers can have a positive
long-term impact on Black students, so race consciousness may also be important for workforce
policies. Race-targeted policies may result from race conscious data gathering. For example,

65

responding to the underrepresentation of Black and Native American (and Latino) students from
universities, race-targeted affirmative action in university admissions and employment (for
government contractors) can help achieve more racial equity and has done so relatively
successfully (Holzer & Neumark, 2000; Long & Bateman, 2020).2
Race consciousness and targeting in policy making is politically contentious. But policies
such as Texas’s Top Ten Percent Rule, which targets the highest achieving high school students
rather than race, have been shown to “pull in” larger concentrations of Black and Hispanic into
higher quality Texas universities than White students and, in the case of Black students
disproportionately increase their college graduation rates as well (Black et al., 2023). In the labor
market, the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act, a race-conscious policy that extended minimum-
wage laws to previously uncovered workers in agriculture and service employment, where Black
people were over-represented, had the effect of reducing the Black-White earnings gap
significantly (Derenoncourt & Montialoux, 2021).
Even race-neutral efforts to reduce poverty can have disproportionately beneficial effects.
An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Trisi and Saenz, 2021) concludes that
“economic security programs have become more effective at reducing poverty and racial
disparities over the last 5 decades” (p. 2) and that “economic security programs reduce gaps in
child poverty by race and ethnicity by nearly half” (p. 9). The National Academies report A
Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty (2019a, Table 5-1) lists several programs that
disproportionately reduce Black child poverty (the report did not highlight Native American
children), including the EITC, child care subsidies, housing vouchers, and a universal child
allowance. Other research shows causal evidence that expanded Medicaid coverage has
disproportionately positive impacts on Black children’s long-term health outcomes and
suggestive evidence on positive impacts on educational outcomes (Miller & Wherry, 2019;
Wherry & Meyer, 2016; Wherry et al., 2018). Similarly, another race-neutral policy, the Clean
Air Act of 1970 and its National Ambient Air Quality Standards has contributed significantly to
the narrowing of Black/White disparities in exposure to particulate matter (Currie et al., 2023).
Reducing school suspensions is another race-neutral way to disproportionately benefit the long-
term outcomes of Black students (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2019). While these policies and programs
are promising for reducing various disparities, there is less direct causal evidence on
interventions that will improve intergenerational mobility for Black and Native American
individuals.
In the chapters that follow, we identify a set of policies and programs for reducing
intergenerational poverty that are supported by direct evidence on intergenerational impacts.
There are notably few interventions for which there is direct evidence of intergenerational
impacts specifically on Black and Latino Americans, and none assessing impacts on Native
Americans. As discussed elsewhere, there are relatively few studies that are able to measure
direct intergenerational impacts at all, and those often rely on small samples. Subsetting these
studies to examine effects specifically for Black or Latino families leaves even smaller samples.
A common pattern is that an intervention yields a measurable, statistically significant
effect on the overall population, but that the estimated effect on the Black or Latino
subpopulation is imprecisely measured and not statistically significant. This can be so even when
the estimate of the effect on the subpopulation is equal to or larger than the full-population
2
In June 2023, the Supreme Court issued a ruling to restrict affirmative action that will present challenges to
efforts to diversify the nation’s colleges and universities (NASEM, 2023).

66

effect, simply because the subpopulation effect is less precisely measured. In this case, the
appropriate conclusion is not that the intervention does not work for Black or Latino families, but
rather that we do not have enough data to distinguish the effects on these families from the
overall positive effect.
Still, there is some promising evidence that the subgroup effects of the interventions we
identify elsewhere have direct intergenerational effects. These are detailed in Appendix C, Table
C-3-1, and are summarized in Box 3-2 in the case of interventions that have been found to have
statistically significant effects in samples (or subsamples) that consist primarily of Black or
Latino families. Where the subgroup effects are not significant, they are not included here. As
noted, this should not be taken as evidence that the programs do not work for members of those
subgroups.
BOX 3-2
Direct-Evidence Interventions in Chapters 4 Through 10 That Have Been Shown to be
Effective for Reducing Intergenerational Poverty Among Black or Latino Children
Education
K-12 education: Increased K-12 school spending in the poorest districts benefits Black
students. Having Black teachers benefits Black students. Reducing harsh school discipline
benefits Black and Latino students, especially males. Ethnic Studies course-taking benefits
Latino students.
Post-secondary education: Some programs that expand effective financial aid programs
for low-income students and increase campus supports (such as tutoring and case
management) benefit Black students.
Career training: Expanding high-quality career and technical education programs in high
school and sectoral training programs for adults and youth increases the later earnings of Black
youth and young adults.

Health insurance: Access to Medicaid improves the life expectancy of Black children.
Pollution reduction: Some pollution reduction policies increase the adult work hours and
earnings of Black children and have reduced racial gaps in exposure to pollution by 60%.
Nutrition: Expanding SNAP access for legal permanent resident parents and eliminating
proration for citizen children of undocumented parents would improve intergenerational health
for Latino children.

Work-based income support: State supplements to the Earned Income Tax Credit
generate generally positive effects on educational attainment and earnings of Black children.

Juvenile incarceration: Reducing juvenile detentions and incarcerations promotes school
completion and reduces adult crime among Black youth.
Child investment strategies: Scaling-up evidence-based therapeutic interventions such
as the Becoming a Man program improves youth outcomes for Black males.
Strengthening communities to reduce violent crime and victimization: Scaling up
programs that abate vacant lots and abandoned homes reduces crime in majority-Black
neighborhoods.

49

Policing strategies: Expanding funding for policing in high-crime neighborhoods reduces

homicides among the Black population.
SOURCE: Appendix Table C-3-1; Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 9.
@hr@
The implications of our findings above for research are clear and extremely important.
Because rigorous analysis of structural racism is a fairly recent phenomenon, a great deal
remains to be done. Developing more consensus on how to define, measure and test its effects—
especially in the contemporary context—is a necessary first step. Then, testing and evaluating
innovative and targeted policies and programs can also address the lack of rigorous evidence on
how to improve upward mobility for those who have suffered from both poverty and racism.

68

4
Children’s Education
Education plays a vital role in human development and national prosperity. It is central to
citizenship and supports human flourishing in many ways, including the development of the
knowledge and skills that will allow children to be successful in the labor market. Earnings from
work have been crucial in allowing past generations of families to avoid intergenerational
poverty, and that will remain true in the future. Over the last 50 years, earned income
consistently lifted the non-work-related incomes of between 70 and 75 percent of families above
the SPM-based poverty line (NASEM, 2019a, Figure 4-1). Building children’s earning capacities
is key for enabling them to avoid poverty in adulthood.
Evidence reviewed in this chapter shows that educational outcomes such as years of
completed schooling have a strong causal connection with higher earnings and other important
measures of life success and well-being, and thus with the ability of children to rise out of
poverty when they are adults. There is also a strong association between student achievement—
as measured by test scores—and labor market outcomes, although in this case it is more difficult
to show a causal connection. Thus, educational institutions that help children from families in
poverty to complete more schooling and, perhaps, achieve higher test scores have the potential to
dramatically reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
However, the education system is not always as successful as it might be at delivering
these educational outcomes. Children who grow up in families in poverty are systematically
exposed to lower-quality educational experiences and resources than children from wealthier
families. This, in turn, leads to lower levels of achievement, completed schooling, and earnings
in adulthood. Resource and achievement gaps are also apparent across children of different races
and ethnicities.
Fortunately, recent educational research and evaluation work points to promising ways to
increase the chances that children growing up in low-income families will enter the labor market
with the skills needed to keep their family incomes well above the poverty threshold.
This chapter begins by reviewing evidence on the importance of education for children’s
eventual economic success. It then considers, in turn, four components of the educational
process: child care and early education programs for young children; elementary and secondary
school; postsecondary education; and, for some, career training. While the chapter focuses on the
importance of children’s educational experiences for their development, there is a less direct
channel that may be even more important in the long run: Educational successes in one
generation may affect children of the next generation by influencing parenting practices, helping
parents to provide enriching home environments and in other ways support their children’s
educational experiences (e.g., Currie & Moretti, 2003).

69

HOW EDUCATION AFFECTS THE ECONOMIC MOBILITY OF CHILDREN
The skills that people bring to the labor market are a key determinant of success at
finding sufficient employment and earnings to lift themselves and their families above the
poverty line. Autor (2019) documents the increasing bifurcation of work in industrialized
countries over the past 50 years into occupations that require high levels of education and pay
high wages, on the one hand, and low-education occupations that pay relatively little—and often
leave workers and their families in poverty—on the other. Traditional midlevel jobs that require
only a high school education but pay well are less and less available, and workers who might
have secured these jobs in the past are now largely relegated to lower-wage jobs that do not pay
enough to lift a family above the poverty line.
Most workers who acquire the skills needed for professional, managerial, and technical
jobs do so through formal postsecondary schooling. Workers with college degrees are much
more likely to be employed than those with less education, and when they are employed they
earn substantially more. Employment rates among 25–34-year-olds in 2019 were 30 percentage
points higher (87% vs. 57%) for workers with college degrees than for workers who had not
finished high school (Figure 4-1). And while employment rates are generally higher for men than
women, both groups show the same pattern of increased employment with higher levels of
completed schooling.
FIGURE 4-1 Employment rates for 25- to 34-year-olds in 2019, by education and sex.

70

SOURCE: Data from DeBrey et al. (2021), Tables 501.50, 501.60 and 501.70.
Earnings, too, increase steadily with additional years of education: College graduates
earn twice as much as high school dropouts and 50 percent more than workers with high school
diplomas but no additional education (Figure 4-2). Autor (2014) shows that even after
accounting for tuition costs and the time value of money, college graduates can expect to earn
between $500,000 and $800,000 (in 2022 dollars) more than high school graduates over the
course of their careers.
Decades of rigorous labor economics research demonstrate that these earnings advantages
are not simply reflections of other differences between graduates and nongraduates. Instead, they
largely reflect the labor market rewards generated by the knowledge and skills that students gain
as they complete more schooling (Card, 1999). On average, each additional year of education
causes subsequent earnings to increase by 7 to 12 percent. Educational credentials can signal
persistence, conscientiousness, and other noncognitive traits to employers (as argued, for
example, by Caplan, 2018). But the rewards to completed schooling reflect more than
credentialism; even a year or two of college, without a degree, raises employment and earnings
over what someone would obtain with just a high school diploma. Moreover, the benefits of
education are not confined to the labor market—research has also shown that additional years of
education reduce criminal behavior (Lochner, 2020) and improve health (Galama et al., 2018;
Hamad et al., 2018) and parenting (Currie & Moretti, 2003).
FIGURE 4-2 Median annual earnings for 25- to 34-year-old workers in 2019, by education.

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SOURCE: Data from U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (CPS),
Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 1996 through 2020, Table 502.30
Labor market success appears to depend not only on completed years of schooling, but
also on the skills acquired during time spent in school. Many studies have documented
associations between test scores, even as early as kindergarten (Chetty et al., 2011), and labor
market success. Associations between earnings and high school reading and math test scores
appear to be just as strong for men as for women, and they predict earnings as late as age 50
(Watts, 2020).
The labor market rewards for education and skills have grown in magnitude over the past
four decades, as documented in Chapter 6. This appears to be partly because technological
change and globalization have increased the productivity of highly educated or highly skilled
workers, and partly because of the rising monopoly power of employers in the labor market and
the weakening of institutions (such as unions and minimum wage statutes) that traditionally
protect workers from such power. For an individual child, educational attainment—in whatever
form—is more important than ever for escaping poverty in adulthood, and it is a major driver of
intergenerational poverty and mobility.
While a college education is an important path out of poverty, other paths are available to
workers without college degrees. These often involve acquiring occupational skills in high-
demand industries (such as health care, advanced manufacturing, information technology,
construction, and transportation/distribution logistics) that allow workers to earn more than their
counterparts without these skills. Such skills can be attained in high school career and technical
education and in work-based learning programs; in various certificate programs in community
(or for-profit) colleges, whether or not they are for-credit programs; and in high-quality sector-
based training programs, as noted below.1
ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTAINMENT DIFFERENCES ACROSS RACIAL AND

ETHNIC GROUPS
Given the importance of achievement and years of completed schooling for reducing
intergenerational poverty, it is alarming to see large gaps on those measures between income,
racial, and ethnic groups. Looking at the reading and math scores of children who entered
kindergarten in 2010, Reardon and Portilla (2016) found that children from low-income (10th
percentile) families were more than a year behind children from high-income (90th percentile)
families. Black and Latino students entering kindergarten were about half a year behind their
White counterparts in early math achievement (separate data on Native Americans were not
available). In the case of kindergarten-entry literacy skills, Latino students again lagged behind
their White classmates by about half a year, with a somewhat smaller gap for Black students.
Achievement gaps that become evident in kindergarten tend to remain relatively stable or grow
slightly after second grade (Kuhfeld et al., 2020; Paschall et al., 2018; Reardon, 2021).
1
On average, for-credit community college credentials generate higher labor market rewards than not-for-credit
credentials, although both can earn a labor market premium (Baum et al., 2020). Credentials from for-profit colleges
also generate lower returns, on average, than those from colleges in the public nonprofit sector (Cellini & Turner,
2019).

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The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has tracked reading and math
proficiency for decades. Figure 4-3 shows the fractions of 8th graders of different races and
ethnicities judged to be proficient in reading; similar patterns appear in 4th grade and in both 8th
and 4th grades for math achievement.
FIGURE 4-3 8th grade reading proficiency rates, by race/ethnicity, 1998–2019.

SOURCE: Data from National Assessment of Education Progress.
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE.
Although proficiency rates have increased somewhat for most groups, the rates
themselves are very low—generally around 20 percent for low-income students and for Black,
Latino, and Native American/Alaska Native students. Asian students are the only group with
proficiency rates above 50 percent.
These early and persistent achievement differences are no doubt largely due to the
differences between the childhood environments experienced by children from more and less
affluent families. Higher-income families are able to provide safer and more nurturing home
environments and tend to have different parenting styles (Bassok et al., 2016; Phillips et al.,
1998). There are racial and socioeconomic differences in exposure to a range of influences that
affect cognition and learning—for example, Sampson et al. (2008) and Currie et al. (2014)
document racial differences in exposure to violence and pollution (see also Chapters 5 and 9).
Higher-income families are also able to invest more in supporting their children’s education,
spending an average of $8,000 more annually than lower-income families on educational

73

enrichments such as books, computers, high-quality child care, summer camps, and private
schooling (Kaushal et al., 2011). All of these differences contribute to kindergarten-entry
achievement gaps across racial/ethnic groups, as well as to differences in learning throughout the
educational process. The differences in out-of-school environments make it very difficult for
public schools to equalize educational opportunities across groups.
Importantly, gaps in out-of-school environments tend to accompany gaps in the quality of
K–12 schools. While many states have modified their school funding systems in recent years to
ensure that schools serving low-income students are as well funded as those serving high-income
students, other states have not (Lafortune et al., 2018). Moreover, schools serving low-income
students face higher costs (for safety, remedial education, special education, students’ basic
needs, and so on), so even equal funding cannot equalize the quality of educational inputs
(Duncombe & Yinger, 2005). By nearly any metric, average school quality is lower at schools
serving high-poverty populations. As a result, while in principle the formal education system
could help to close preexisting gaps, it often seems to magnify them instead (Chetty et al., 2023;
Hashim et al., 2023; Reardon, 2011).
Given achievement gaps throughout K–12, it is unsurprising to see parallel gaps in
completed schooling. The top panel of Figure 4-4 shows rates of fall college enrollment among
previous spring high school graduates, while the bottom panel shows the fractions of all young
adults (defined here as people between ages 25 and 29) holding college or advanced degrees as
of 2019. More than 70 percent of Asian young adults had completed college, compared with 45
percent of White, 29 percent of Black, and 21 percent of Latino young adults and 14 percent of
young adults in the Native American category. It is encouraging to note that among Black and
Latino people as well as White people, these rates were more than 10 percentage points higher
than they had been two decades earlier (earlier data are unavailable for Asians). In the case of
American Indians/Alaska Natives, however, the rates were lower in 2019 than in 2000.

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FIGURE 4-4 College enrollment and BA+ attainment rates, by race/ethnicity.

NOTE: The top panel shows the share of new high school graduates who are enrolled in college
the following fall. The bottom panel shows the share of 25–29-year-olds who had BAs.
SOURCE: Graduation rates are for 2019 and are taken from the Digest of Education Statistics,
2019, Table 104.20. Enrollment rates are for 18-24-year-olds in 2015 and are taken from L.
Musu-Gillette, C. de Brey, J. McFarland, … and S. Wilkinson-Flicker, Status and Trends in the
Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2017 (NCES 2017-051) (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch, Figure 18.2.
CONCLUSION 4-1: By imparting skills and other capacities valued by employers,
the education system is a key driver of upward intergenerational mobility for low-
income children. Large gaps in school achievement and completed schooling persist
across socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic subgroups, pose a key challenge for policy
makers seeking to reduce intergenerational poverty, and underscore the importance
of education-related interventions.

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EARLY-LIFE EDUCATION, CARE, AND PARENTING
The early years of life lay the groundwork for a child’s healthy cognitive and behavioral
development (Knudsen et al., 2006). From the time of conception, early development is a
complex interplay between the child’s genetic blueprint and the early experiences that are
essential for subsequent learning and development (Shonkoff, 2010). Children thrive when they
are well nourished, protected from disease and violence (see Chapter 5 for more details regarding
health), and have caregivers who are responsive to their needs and provide them with learning
opportunities from birth onwards (Black et al., 2017). Extensive evidence documents the
importance of responsive and stimulating caregiving during a child’s first five years, as social
and academic skills are developing (Shonkoff, 2010). The importance of these early experiences
appears to be universal, but their impacts vary and depend on the family’s culture (Rogoff,
2003).
Early childhood educational programs can enhance children’s early development (Black
et al., 2017; Shonkoff, 2010). Early care and education programs in which caregivers form
responsive and supportive relationships with the children in their care and provide stimulating
and engaging learning opportunities promote healthy development (Hamre & Pianta, 2010).
Children from impoverished families experience lower-quality community-based ECE; however,
programs like Head Start and public pre-kindergarten have been funded by federal, state, and
local governments to ensure access to higher quality programs for low-income children (Kraus-
Friedman et al., 2020; Zigler & Styfco, 2010). In theory, these programs should provide children
with the skills they need to succeed in school (Bailey, 2021; Deming, 2009; Garces et al., 2002;
García et al., 2021).
Similarly, home-visiting programs promote infant and child health, foster educational
development, and help prevent child abuse and neglect by arranging for trained professionals or
paraprofessionals to pay regular visits to parents, typically mothers, and to provide coaching on
parenting issues (Duncan et al., 2023). The home visitors offer a wide variety of supports,
ranging from facilitating access to public services and modeling positive behavior management
to addressing discipline issues to promoting stimulating learning activities and interactions
(OPRE, 2021). Some of these programs have demonstrated long-term impacts (Olds et al., 1997;
Olds et al., 1998).
In light of such compelling evidence, early childhood education programs are widely
regarded as one of the most effective means to promote success in school for low-income
children (Heckman, 2011. Despite the proven potential of these kinds of programs, however, for
reasons detailed in Appendix C: Chapter 4, the committee was unable to propose expansions of
existing programs or new programs that would meet the evidentiary standards the committee has
set for itself. There were two reasons for this: First, many of the programs that showed long-term
benefits, such as the Perry Preschool Project, Abecedarian Project, and Nurse Family Partnership
programs, were designed and run by researchers. Scaling up demonstration programs to serve
hundreds of thousands of children and families, in the face of relentless pressures to cut costs,
can significantly dilute program quality. Indeed, the classroom experiences in programs like
Head Start, which in the early years showed long-term impacts (e.g., Bailey, 2021), are quite
different from classroom experiences in today’s programs (Markowitz & Ansari, 2020).
Second, the families of children not selected into these programs (including Head Start in
its early years) faced much worse conditions than do the families of children today who do not

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participate in such programs. During those early years, safety-net programs like Food Stamps
and Medicaid were not yet universally available, center-based child care choices were more
limited, and parental schooling levels and spending on children’s “enrichment goods” were much
lower than they are now (Duncan et al., 2014). It was therefore much easier for early programs to
demonstrate long-run effectiveness.
Because of the ambiguity of the evidence, the committee was unable to identify the best
ways to expand early childhood education and home visitation programs in order to reduce
intergenerational poverty. While it is certainly possible that expanding or reforming our current
patchwork of early childhood and home visitation programs would reduce intergenerational
poverty, we do not know enough about how to do so in a manner that is very likely to generate
long-run benefits.
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
Educational quality can be measured in many ways, but at the most basic level it reflects
the extent to which students are receiving instruction that matches their skill level, supports and
is responsive to their needs, and helps them advance to the next level of proficiency. This is
difficult to do in crumbling buildings (Lafortune & Schonholzer, 2022), with teachers who are
poorly qualified or inexperienced (Goe, 2007), or in overcrowded classrooms (Krueger, 1999).
Children in households living in poverty are more likely than more affluent children to attend
struggling public schools that repeatedly fail to meet accountability standards, are burdened by
crumbling physical infrastructure and high levels of violence, and are staffed with less
experienced, lower-quality teachers (Kozol, 1991, 2005; Lankford et al., 2002). These schools
have fewer enrichment courses, are often unable to offer even the minimum courses needed to
prepare their students for four-year colleges, and provide far fewer extracurricular activities.
Moreover, even if instruction is expertly delivered in an up-to-date facility by excellent
teachers, students will struggle to learn if they are unstably housed, lack regular and appropriate
meals or adequate medical, dental, or vision care, or are threatened by crime and violence on
their way to and from school (Rothstein, 2004). Many of these barriers to learning are outside the
purview of traditional education, although recent movements to follow a “community schools”
model or establish school-based health centers, as well as other expansions of the usual school
mission, have attempted to broaden that purview to address students’ multiple needs (Maier et
al., 2017). All these challenges are much more difficult to address in schools serving high
concentrations of children in poverty. Persistently high levels of neighborhood and school
economic and racial segregation therefore represent a real barrier to student progress.
If schools are to provide a high-quality educational environment, they need adequate
funding. Traditionally, low-income schools have had fewer resources than schools serving
wealthier students, despite their students’ greater needs. Many states have reformed their school
finance systems to ensure that funding in low-income districts equals or even exceeds that in
higher-income districts, although others have not. Several recent studies of these reforms show
that directing more funding to low-income schools raises students’ test scores in the short run
(Jackson & Mackevicius, 2021; Lafortune et al., 2018) as well as boosting their longer-run
earnings and health (Jackson et al., 2016; Rothstein and Schanzenbach, 2022). Other studies
show shorter-term positive impacts of spending on capital improvements (Lafortune &

77

Schonholzer, 2022); however, longer-term impact estimates for these kinds of investments are
not yet available.
Of course, funding is closely related to school segregation. Predominantly non-White
schools tend to have less funding, fewer resources, and less skilled teachers (Bischoff & Owens,
2019; Elder et al., 2021). The Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision
and subsequent court orders resulted in the desegregation of school districts around the country,
which led to slow but substantial racial integration throughout the United States. (Orfield et al.,
2016; Reardon & Owens, 2014; Reardon & Yun, 2003; Reardon et al., 2012). One set of studies
using national data compared the educational and occupational attainment of students enrolled
before and after courts issued desegregation orders in the 1960s and 1970s, and it found that the
resulting desegregation improved educational and occupational attainment among Black adults
(Johnson, 2011; Johnson & Nazaryan, 2019). Specifically, each additional year after court-
ordered desegregation led to a 1.8-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of high school
graduation, and the average effects of five years of exposure to court-ordered school
desegregation led to about a 15 percent increase in wages. This study used the same comparisons
to examine the ways in which schools may have changed in response to the court orders and
found two potential mechanisms: increased per-pupil spending and reduced class sizes.
However, Supreme Court decisions since 1991 have made it easier for school districts to be
released from prior court orders to desegregate, and they provide limited guidance on
maintaining integration after those orders are lifted. This, coupled with rising income inequality
and residential segregation, has contributed to school segregation levels that are, by many
measures, as high as they were before the school desegregation movement began (Reardon &
Owens, 2014; Reardon et al., 2012).
Context, school composition, and funding are obviously important. In addition, students
will learn more when instruction is more effectively delivered. Efforts to identify the active
ingredients of school quality have had mixed success, however. Some “structural” factors that
are easy to measure and screen for, such as teacher experience and educational credentials, fail to
show consistent links with student achievement (e.g., Papay & Kraft, 2015). However, smaller
class sizes in the early grades—which are closely related to school resources—have been linked
to better outcomes (Chetty et al., 2011; Krueger, 1999), and recruiting STEM-trained college
graduates to teach math and science classes has been shown to correlate with better student
grades and test scores in these subjects (Backes et al., 2018).
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 refocused federal education policy to hold schools
accountable for student performance, and some evidence indicates that this accountability had
modest but positive impacts on student outcomes. A related movement has been the rapid growth
of charter schools, which provide alternatives to public schools that can test different
instructional or organizational strategies. Evidence indicates that on average, charter schools are
neither better nor worse at promoting student achievement (CREDO, 2013) than conventional
public schools. However, a subset of charter schools known as “no excuses” schools have been
found to have substantial positive effects on students’ test scores and four-year college
enrollment, relative to traditional public-school alternatives (Angrist et al., 2016). This is
particularly important because these types of charter schools disproportionately serve low-
income urban students, use a very different educational model (more school time, drilling,
testing, and emphasis on behavior) than is typically found in schools serving middle- and upper-
class students.

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Both charter and traditional public schools have tested several new strategies for
increasing student learning, many of which show promise. For example, rigorous evaluations
have been conducted of tutoring programs that provide for frequent one-on-one or small-group
interactions with struggling students (e.g., Fryer et al., 2016). Although these programs are
generally too new to have demonstrated long-term impacts, early evidence of short-run impacts
is promising, suggesting that personalizing instruction to students’ specific skills and needs may
be beneficial.
The nature of the match between students and their teachers may also matter for student
learning. Causal evidence shows that having a Black elementary school teacher has positive
effects on high school graduation and two-year college enrollment for low-income Black boys—
a population of particular interest in this report (Gershenson et al., 2022). These effects appear to
be generated by some combination of role modeling, fewer disciplinary actions, and higher
teacher expectations (Gershenson et al., 2016; Lindsay & Hart, 2017). Moreover, a recent study
found that enrollment in Ethnic Studies courses improved rates of high school graduation and
engagement, and may also increase college enrollment (Bonilla et al., 2021). These courses focus
on social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, and social movements in U.S. history led by people
from various racial and ethnic minority groups, spanning the period from the late eighteenth
century to the 1970s.
The content of course offerings and the labor market skills they can impart to students
also appear to be significant. For students who might not go directly from high school to college,
career and technical education in high schools offers an alternative path to better jobs over time,
although it can also divert students—particularly low-income students and students of color—
from a path toward traditional college enrollment. Many young adults who begin full-time work
after completing their schooling return to take advantage of vocational training and adult
programs, often through community colleges, that provide job skills outside of a traditional
academic setting. Evidence indicates that these programs, when implemented well, can also
increase earnings (Brunner et al., 2021; Hemelt et al., 2021).
As seen in the case of charter schools, school policies beyond direct instruction can have
large impacts on student outcomes. Research shows that harsh school discipline, such as
suspensions and expulsions, leads to long-term negative outcomes for children. One study, for
example, found that students who were randomly assigned to schools with higher suspension
rates were more likely to be arrested or incarcerated as adults, more likely to drop out of high
school, and less likely to attend a four-year college. The effects on arrest and incarceration were
substantially larger for Black, Latino, and male students, and especially for Black and Latino
males (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2019; also see Chu and Ready, 2018). No studies have examined the
long-term effects of interventions to reduce harsh school discipline; however, Appendix C:
Chapter 4 discusses some promising strategies with documented shorter-run beneficial impacts.
POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION
Although the bottom panel of Figure 4-4 (above) shows widely disparate rates of college
completion across racial/ethnic groups, the top panel shows that the rates of fall college
enrollment across different groups of recent high school graduates are more similar. Thus, Figure

79

4-4 points to a key challenge in seeking to reduce intergenerational poverty through post-
secondary education: Many of those who enroll fail to graduate with four-year degrees.
An important factor underlying differences in enrollment rates is success in secondary
school. One recent study found, for example, that Black students are more likely to enroll in
college than are White students with similar family backgrounds and prior academic
performance (Ciocca & DiPrete, 2018).
Two-year colleges offer a wide range of associate degrees and certificates (along with
noncredit programs), many of which have significant labor market value (Backes et al., 2015;
Holzer and Baum, 2017). But they can also be complicated institutions for students to navigate,
and they often provide too little structure or guidance (Bailey et al., 2015; Holzer and Xu, 2021;
Scott-Clayton, 2011). Not only do students need to make many high-stakes academic decisions
(major or program, classes to take each term, whether to transfer, and if so, where), they also
have to navigate a wide range of needlessly complex processes (transferring credits if they take
classes at more than one institution, navigating financial aid, arranging for parking, obtaining
support services). These challenges are not intellectually or academically important, but failing
to complete them can mean not being able to continue in a program.
Among those who aspire to earn a bachelor of arts degree, students starting at two-year
rather than four-year institutions are less likely to complete their studies. More general
differences in post-secondary success are driven by a range of factors, including weaker
academic preparation, as a result of having attended lower-quality K–12 schools; a lack of family
financial resources and the necessary information for choosing the institution that best suits their
needs; the need to work full-time while attending college, making it very difficult to be a full-
time student; a lack of social capital and guidance on accessing available resources or studying
effectively; and a lack of support services at their current institutions (Baum & McPherson,
2022; Holzer & Baum, 2017). Low-income students of color may face cultural and social
barriers at predominately White institutions. All these factors lead to higher dropout rates, lower
grades, and a lower probability of success in majors leading to highly compensated employment
(Bleemer & Mehta, 2021). It should be noted, however, that minority-serving institutions (MSIs)
offer culturally relevant support and encouragement, and there is evidence that they are more
successful than non-MSIs at facilitating upward mobility for low-income students of color
(Espinosa et al., 2018; NASEM, 2019b).
Cost is another important barrier for low-income students as they seek access to colleges
in general and to high-quality colleges in particular. The National Center for Education Statistics
(2019) finds that in 2015–16, the average out-of-pocket net price for a full-time, low-income
student was $7,100 per year, which constitutes 70 percent of the total income of a very low-
income family of 3. The primary federal program designed to make college more affordable is
the Pell Grant, which offers funding of up to $6,495 (in 2022 dollars) to students from lower-
and moderate-income families. Although the research evidence on Pell grants is mixed,
substantial increases in the value of these grants have generated notable increases in degree
attainment (Denning et al., 2019; Dynarski et al., 2022). Other recent evidence (Angrist et al.,
2022) shows that generous and well-targeted financial aid, especially when it allows higher-
achieving low-income students to enter four-year programs to which they would otherwise lack
access, can substantially increase the rates of BA attainment.

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CAREER TRAINING
Much of our K–12 schooling system is oriented toward providing students with skills and
other capacities that will enable them to attend and graduate from four-year post-secondary
universities. At the same time, there are many well-paying industry-specific occupations that do
not require a bachelor’s degree, are in strong local demand and offer opportunities for
advancement. Placing students from disadvantaged backgrounds into these jobs can help to
reduce the likelihood that they will remain mired in persistent intergenerational poverty. So too
can educational opportunities aimed at enabling adults to participate in retraining for these jobs
in mid-career.
Community colleges can provide some of the needed training through traditional degree
programs. But so too can other kinds of training-related interventions, and strong evaluation
evidence points to a number of promising approaches. The first consists of career and technical
education pathways in high schools. The second involves sectoral programs that provide
occupational skills training resulting in credentials that are valued by prospective employers in
local labor markets.
While evidence on training programs in general is mixed, there is clear evidence that
high-quality training programs that target certain high-demand sectors of the economy that need
particular occupational skills can generate strong labor market returns (Katz et al., 2022).
Sometimes these programs (such as Project Quest, which provides training in health care
occupations) are offered at community colleges, while others (such as Per Scholas for IT
training) use other providers. Completing these programs can take anywhere from six months to
two years, and they can cost between $5,000 and $12,000. But the best of these programs are
clearly cost-effective.
CONCLUSION 4-2: The vast U.S. education system is a potentially important
factor in enabling individuals to escape from poverty. However, it fails to equalize
educational opportunities for students across socioeconomic and racial/ethnic
groups. Research points to many possible ways to improve the quality of educational
experiences offered to students in K–12 and post-secondary school settings, to create
high-quality job training programs, and to prepare young people for the labor
market.
EDUCATION INTERVENTIONS
There are many possible interventions for promoting child and youth learning in
educational settings as well as encouraging young people to complete more years of education.
Our discussion of such interventions is presented in the same order as above: K–12 schooling;
post-secondary schooling; and career training, with many of the details relegated to Appendix C:
Chapter 4. For reasons discussed above, the committee does not offer policy and program ideas
for the early childhood period.
Where possible, we structure the policy and program ideas in a way that enables us to
provide a rough estimate of their costs. Smaller or larger scale versions of the policies or
programs would reduce or increase these cost estimates accordingly. As discussed in Chapter 1,

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we characterize the evidence on some of the programs or policies as “strong” and denote them
with an “*.” This indicates that the program or policy’s impact on intergenerational poverty is
scaled-up program.
K–12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
K–12 Spending in Low-income School Districts

Recent impact studies have found that when increased school funding is directed at
under-resourced districts, this improves both student achievement and rates of completed
schooling, both of which have been linked to reductions in intergenerational poverty (Jackson &
Mackevicius, 2021). This argues in favor of increasing federal funding for school districts with
the highest concentrations of low-income students (details in Appendix C: Chapter 4):
• * Increase K–12 school spending in the lowest-resourced districts.

Increase annual spending by $1,000 per pupil in the 20 percent of districts
with the lowest average family incomes. These districts serve one-third of
free and reduced-price lunch (a proxy for poverty) students in the country.
The committee estimated that this would cost $15 billion, with the
assumption that states would use some of this money (or their own money
that this would supplement) for other purposes.
Racial disparities are relevant for virtually any intervention aimed at reducing
intergenerational poverty, so the committee looked for evidence about types of programs
specifically designed to reduce them. It found three related to K–12 schooling that passed
the committee’s direct evidence test:
• * Increase teacher workforce diversity, based on strong evidence of the

positive effects of Black teachers on the high school graduation and
college enrollment of Black students.
• * Reduce exclusionary school discipline practices, based on strong
evidence that such exclusionary school discipline increases students’
chances of dropping out of high school and their contact with the criminal
justice system in young adulthood and reduces their college enrollment.
• Increase access to Ethnic Studies courses, based on strong evidence of
the positive effect of Ethnic Studies course-taking for high school
graduation.
The evidence supporting these three policy areas is detailed in Appendix C:

Chapter 4. The committee was unable to identify specific evidence-based ways of
implementing them, nor could it determine how responsibilities for funding and
implementing these policies should be allocated across federal, state, and school district
entities responsible for public education. That said, the committee felt that the strength of

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the direct evidence supporting these policies warranted bringing them to the attention of
policymakers.
K–12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence
A complementary approach to improving K–12 education outcomes is to focus on

specific educational practices and policies that school districts could adopt, given additional
resources, to achieve their educational goals. The federal government has little control over the
spending decisions of states and districts. This can be a virtue, as local policy makers are often in
the best position to judge local needs. In any event, because the education system is constantly
evolving, evidence of long-term effects of specific practices or policies is scarce. That said, a
number of promising educational strategies have proved effective in promoting short- to
medium-run gains in student achievement (evidence is detailed in Appendix C: Chapter 4):
• Introduce or expand high-dosage tutoring for struggling students, with educated

young adults serving as tutors and following carefully crafted instructional plans;
• Improve teacher quality, focusing on teachers of Black, Latino, and Native American
students. This might be done, for example, through university programs that
encourage and facilitate the certification of STEM undergraduate majors and Black,
Latino, and Native American undergraduates as public-school teachers;
• Reduce class sizes, particularly in the early grades; and
• Expand high-quality (“no excuses”) charter schools.
Other curricular programs are still in the earlier stages of the evidence life cycle; there is
only short-run evidence of the effectiveness of pilot programs that have not yet been
implemented or studied at scale. This category includes small high schools, double-dose algebra
courses, and reading curricula that emphasize phonics for early readers. Again, the committee
reviews several of these programs in Appendix C: Chapter 4.
Last, there is strong evidence that integrating schools by race/ethnicity, and probably by
socioeconomic status (SES) as well, brings both short-run benefits in achievement and
attainment and long-run improvements in adult life outcomes for Black students and low-SES
students. As pointed out above, with the decline in court-ordered desegregation plans, schools
are as segregated now as they were before the desegregation movement. Reversing this trend is a
complex challenge, affected by both logistical hurdles and a complex legal environment. The
committee is unaware of specific interventions that have been shown to be effective at increasing
integration and that could be implemented at the federal level. Nevertheless, this is an important
issue, and the committee believes that continued experimentation in this area (e.g., via changes in
local school assignment processes) might yield evidence that could lead to meaningful reductions
in intergenerational poverty.
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
Interventions to improve postsecondary attendance and completion for low-income

students can focus on the demand side, or institutions of higher education; as well as the supply

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side, or the students. Interventions focused on higher education might pursue three different
goals:
1. Increasing the fraction of students who attend college, through both demand-side
changes that make it less expensive for colleges to enroll low-income students and
supply-side interventions that provide incentives for students or further financial
support to attend college;
2. Improving instruction and student support services at institutions with large low-SES
enrollments by providing additional resources to raise completion rates; and
3. Incentivizing students to enroll at higher-value institutions and in higher-value
programs of study within institutions.
They include these interventions:
• *Increase federal funding for higher education by $10 billion annually for
supply-side programs like financial aid that targets low-SES students (while
limiting crowding-out of state and local funding). For instance, spending $10
billion on college scholarships (with $5 billion each spent on community and
four-year programs) could support an extra one million full-time community
college students per year (spread evenly across two or three yearly cohorts at an
annual cost of $5,000 per year) and a half million for four-year programs (also
spread evenly across yearly cohorts at a cost of about $10,000 per year).
• *Increase federal funding by $8 billion to $10 billion a year for institutional

supports to improve completion rates among low-income students. Spending
an additional $8 billion on proven student support programs (with $4 billion for
community colleges and $4 billion for four-year programs) would cover a half
million community college students.
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence
Other approaches to help achieve the three broad goals defined above—but with less rigorous
research support to date—could include these:
• Increase maximum Pell awards, with limits imposed on states or institutions
regarding offsetting these increases with other cuts in aid;
• Provide matching federal funds for state higher education allocations, conditional on
a maximum tuition threshold and a minimum level of low-SES enrollment;
• Expand support for minority-serving institutions (MSIs), which currently raise
attainment of college degrees but to a lesser degree earnings;
• Simplify financial aid applications, which are intrusive and difficult for students and
their parents to complete, by limiting the information required to that already
collected by the IRS;
• Adjust federal aid formulas and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
(IPEDS) data on specific colleges and programs to provide more information to
students applying for admission (for instance, on their “expected family

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contributions” before they apply to college and on required grade point averages in
specific institutions if they wish to major in certain fields);
• Target aid to programs with high labor market value—through grants to institutions
that provide such programs; and
• Expand “Gainful Employment” regulations to limit the eligibility for receiving
federal student financial aid to attend institutions or programs that show poor
outcomes in their graduates’ post-program earnings and debt-to-income ratios.
Career Training Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence
Much of the evaluation research concerning career training programs is based on random
assignment, which provides strong, direct evidence on a number of promising approaches to
career education and training. The first area of research involves career and technical education
pathways in high schools. The second includes sectoral programs that provide occupational skills
training leading to credentials that are valued by prospective employers in local labor markets.
High school career and technical education (CTE)
• * Provide (through reforms of the federal Perkins Act and by allocating

additional funds) both formula and competitive funding for states and
localities to expand high-quality career and technical education. Three models
of CTE can be prioritized: (1) Career Academies, which provide education and
training focused on a specific high-demand economic sector (such as health care,
IT, or finance) within comprehensive high schools; (2) technical high schools, or
newer approaches (like Innovation Pathways in Massachusetts) to create
programs similar to technical high schools within comprehensive schools; and (3)
Grade 9–14 pathways, modeled after P-Tech, which would combine work-based
learning and work experience with rigorous academics.
Post-secondary sectoral training programs
“Sectoral programs” train people for well-paying jobs in specific industries and
occupations that do not require a bachelor’s or associate degree for which there is strong local
demand and that offer opportunities for advancement. The programs that the committee
discussed scaling up combine intensive screening, career readiness services, specific
occupational skills training that yields credentials valued by prospective employers, and post-
training counseling in the interest of maximizing job retention and advancement.
Several such programs—including Year Up (for youth), Per Scholas (for youth or adults),
and Project Quest (all for community college students)—have been evaluated using rigorous
methods and found to be effective. The estimated impacts of these programs on earnings are
generally large and persist over time. In the interest of reducing intergenerational poverty, the
committee discussed scaling up sectoral programs that have proven impacts for youth:
• *Offer sectoral training for youth. Offer scaled-up versions of Year Up, Per
Scholas, and other proven sectoral training programs to 250,000 youth each year

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who come from low-income families and appear unlikely to earn postsecondary
credentials. This would cost roughly $7.5 billion annually.
In addition, the committee suggests considering the following, which would help low-
income youth indirectly by raising the incomes in their households (while also providing models
of labor market success and information on how to achieve success):
• *Offer sectoral training for low-income parents. Each year, offer scaled-up
versions of Project Quest, Per Scholas, and other proven sectoral training
programs to 1 million low-income adults with children, which would indirectly
reduce intergenerational poverty by raising the incomes of parents and
households. This would cost roughly $10 billion annually.

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5
Child health is an important driver of intergenerational mobility. Children whose families

live in poverty experience worse health early in life than children growing up in higher-income
families, and this disparity worsens as they age. Better health in childhood promotes greater
educational attainment and leads to better health in adulthood, both of which are important
determinant of earnings—a key driver of mobility out of poverty.
Evidence reviewed in this chapter demonstrates that child health has a strong causal
connection with future earnings. Moreover, the United States has seen significant reductions both
in child mortality, an important measure of child health, and in the association between income
and child health (called the income “gradient”), particularly in the case of child mortality (Currie
& Schwandt, 2016). Multiple public programs have contributed to these improvements,
underscoring the effectiveness of public investments in child health. However, the United States
continues to be characterized by higher child mortality rates than other high-income countries,
and the income-based gaps in child health, although smaller than they used to be, remain large,
suggesting scope for additional investments.
In its investigation of the role child health plays in intergenerational poverty and whether
further public investments in child health can effectively increase intergenerational mobility, this
chapter begins with a discussion of differences in child health across incomes and racial and
ethnic groups. It then presents evidence on the importance of child health as a key determinant of
adult earnings. In so doing, the chapter is organized around three main determinants of child
health: access to medical care (i.e., family planning services, health insurance coverage, mental
health care, and public care providers such as school-based clinics and Indian Health Services);
environmental influences, including pollution, stress and violence; and nutrition.
After presenting the evidence regarding the importance of the three factors, we discuss
promising interventions for which there is evidence of direct impacts on both child health and
future earnings.
HEALTH DIFFERENCES ACROSS INCOME, RACIAL, AND ETHNIC GROUPS
Children growing up in households with incomes below the poverty line are born in
worse health than other children. This disparity in health increases as they age (Case et al.,
2002), culminating in a strong relationship between childhood poverty and adult health (Figure
5-1). In the United States, adults who spent their early childhoods in low-income families are
nearly three times more likely than those from higher-income families to rate their adult health as
“fair” or “poor” and four times more likely to report health-related restrictions on their daily
activities. They are also 30 percent more likely to have been born with low birthweight, and they

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report more psychological distress in adulthood.
FIGURE 5-1 Adult health and early childhood income status, for individuals born between 1968
and 1975.
NOTE: Income is measured between the prenatal year and age 2 and is expressed in 2010
dollars. Adult health responses are averaged between ages 30 and 41. Percent in fair or poor
health is based on a subjective health rating scale asking respondents whether their current health
is excellent, very good, good, poor, or fair. Limitations on activities is measured by the Activity
of Daily Living (ADL) scale and multiplied by 100. Psychological distress is measured by the
Kessler Screening Scale for Psychological Distress (K6). All differences are p<.001.
SOURCE: Data from Ziol-Guest et al. (2012), based on data from the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics.
The links to adult health begin in childhood. Children living in poverty are twice as likely
as other children to be hospitalized, miss 22 percent more school because of sickness, are 18
percent more likely to have asthma, and are 33 percent more likely to have a mental health
condition (Figure 5-2). They are also three-and-a-half times more likely to have high blood lead
levels (Braveman et al., 2010; Larson and Halfon, 2010; Wood, 2003) and suffer worse oral
health (Seirawan et al., 2012). While these disparities in child health by parental income are
present in other developed nations, they are more pronounced in the United States (Chen et al.,
2016).

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FIGURE 5-2 Health of children living in poverty vs. other children, 2001–2005.
NOTE: Low birthweight is defined as birthweight of less than 2500 grams (or 5.5 pounds).
“Mental problem” includes learning disability, developmental delay, Down Syndrome, and
Autism. “Poverty” is measured by the Official Poverty Measure.
SOURCE: Data from Currie (2009), based on data reported in the National Health Interview
Survey 2001-2005.
There are important racial and ethnic differences in child health as well. The rate of
preterm and low-birthweight births is 50 percent higher among Black families relative to White
families and 30 percent higher for Native American families (Figure 5-3). Significant disparities
are also observed for maternal mortality and for infant and child mortality. In particular, Black
and Native American children have considerably higher mortality than all other groups in every
age category (infancy, childhood, and adolescence). These disparities in child health are apparent
across a range of other measures, including prevalence of asthma and limitations on amount of
play, which are similar for Latino and White children but 50 percent higher for Black children
(Mehta et al., 2013). Interestingly, Black and Latino children with asthma are much more likely
than White children to visit the emergency room, a result that is consistent with racial/ethnic
differences in the prevalence and severity of this condition but also in access to care. One
measure along which Black children fare better than White or Latino youth, and much better than
Native American youth, is suicide, as discussed later, though rates of suicide among Black youth
have recently grown more quickly.1 These racial and ethnic differences in child health translate
1
It is important to note that health outcomes for American Indian children are often difficult to measure for
multiple reasons, as detailed elsewhere (Stratford, 2018).
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into adult disparities in health, with significant labor market consequences. Differences in
income across racial groups contribute to, but cannot fully explain, these racial and ethnic
disparities in health and suggest that poverty alleviation efforts alone will not close these gaps.
FIGURE 5-3 Maternal and infant health disparities by race/ethnicity.

NOTE: Infant mortality statistics are from 2018. Maternal mortality statistics are from 2007-
2016. Both rates of low birthweight and premature births are from 2020. Infant mortality is
defined as the death of an infant before their first birthday. Low birthweight is defined as
birthweight of less than 2500 grams (or 5.5 pounds). Premature birth is defined as birth prior to
37 weeks gestation.
SOURCE: Kaiser Family Foundation (2023a). https://www.kff.org/report-section/key-facts-on-
health-and-health-care-by-race-and-ethnicity-health-status-outcomes-and-behaviors.
Sources of the observed racial and ethnic disparities in child health beyond income
include exposure to pollution and violence, as well as access to high quality medical care.
Regarding the former, a history of residential segregation by race has resulted in Black children
being more likely to live in highly polluted areas (Jbaily et al., 2022; Kodros, 2022; Woo et al.,
2019). Regarding disparate access to high-quality medical care, there are multiple causes. Child
health insurance coverage does not differ appreciably for Black and White children, largely
because of the Medicaid program. Rates of uninsurance are much higher for the Native

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American and Latino population.2 Other important sources of disparate access to medical care
include differences in geographic access, distrust of the medical system based on past injustices,
and racial discordance between patient and provider (Alsan & Wannamkaer, 2018; Alsan et al.,
2019). Programs and policies that fail to address such sources are unlikely to eliminate racial and
ethnic gaps in child health.
HOW HEALTH AFFECTS THE ECONOMIC MOBILITY OF CHILDREN
There are many reasons why child health might vary with parental income that would not
necessarily imply the causal relationship needed to establish that health is a driver of
intergenerational poverty. To isolate the causal impact of parental income on child health,
researchers have relied upon natural experiments, including changes in policy that can raise or
lower family income, keeping all other characteristics constant. For example, work based on
expansions in tax credits to low-income working families through the EITC show that this
increase in family income during pregnancy significantly improved newborn health (Hoynes et
al., 2015). Taking advantage of variation in the earned income of workers between strong and
weak labor markets, researchers have found that an additional dollar in earnings yields greater
gains in child health at lower levels of family income (Doyle et al., 2007).
Where might these connections between family income and child health come from? A
direct route runs from child health to adult health, which in turn affects future earnings via
disability, employment, and wages. That is, healthy children grow up to become healthy adults
who are more productive in the labor market, generating greater earnings and reducing reliance
on public programs. Evidence for this is based on comparisons of siblings (who share the same
family and neighborhood environment) showing that less healthy siblings are more likely to
grow up to be unhealthy adults and to work less, earn less, and have less income (Smith, 2007,
2009; Stephens & Toohey, 2022). Other evidence relies on expansions to Medicaid, the public
health insurance program for low-income families in the United States, which improved access
to medical care but kept other family characteristics unchanged. Not only did Medicaid
expansions improve child health (Currie & Gruber, 1997), but the effects were long-lasting,
reducing adult disability and improved earnings in adulthood (Brown et al., 2020).3
An indirect route is based on the facts that child health can affect cognitive development
and schooling, which in turn also affect adult earnings. This evidence is likewise based on
sibling comparisons and Medicaid expansions. An example of the former includes a comparison
of twin siblings born in Norway between 1967 and 1997 documenting that the twin with higher
birthweight (an important marker of prenatal health) grew up to score higher on IQ tests,
complete more schooling, and earn more than their lower-weight twin (Black et al., 2007). Other
work has confirmed this relationship in U.S. data (Conley & Bennett, 2000, 2001; Royer, 2009).
The above-mentioned Medicaid expansions have also been shown to improve educational
attainment.
Why does parental income matter for child health? One channel, alluded to above, is
access to health insurance and medical care, which is lower for families living in poverty. But
2
Native American and Latino children have rates of uninsurance that are 13.3 and 8.6 percent, respectively,
compared with 5.4 percent overall as of 2021 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022).
3
Medicaid expansions for families have also been found to improve financial well-being by reducing medical
debt, which has led to reduced borrowing and even evictions (Allen et al, 2019; Baicker et al., 2013; Hu et al., 2018).
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there are other ways in which parental income affects child health. Child, and ultimately adult,
health is a function of the child’s health at birth, and all subsequent adverse “shocks” to and
investments in the child’s health (Currie, 2009). Shocks might include exposure to pollution,
food insecurity, stress, and violence, all of which are more common for families living below
poverty. There is also evidence that, conditional on an exposure or medical condition, income is
protective (Case et al., 2002; Currie & Stabile, 2003). In other words, poverty magnifies the
adverse impacts of such shocks on child health. This can also be true even when children have
access to medical care. As an example, in an RCT for cancer treatment at a major cancer institute
where children received equivalent, high-quality medical care, five-year survival rates were
significantly lower for children from neighborhoods with high poverty rates (Bona et al., 2021).
Though the subject of ongoing work, the researchers have hypothesized that this disparity is
likely attributable to a combination of worse underlying health prior to diagnosis and treatment,
greater barriers to treatment adherence, or increased stress among the families experiencing
poverty.
ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE: FAMILY PLANNING, MEDICAID, INDIAN HEALTH

SERVICES, AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Access to Family Planning Services
Low-income families currently have the highest fertility rates, the lowest use of
contraception, and the highest unmet need for family planning services. Eighteen percent of
sexually active low-income women (below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL)) report that
they are not using contraception even though they are not trying to conceive, compared with 14
percent nationally (Frederiksen, 2021). This finding is consistent with that of unintended
pregnancies, which are higher among women who are adolescents, low-income, racial and ethnic
minorities, or single. Those with unintended pregnancies have delayed prenatal care access and
have higher rates of preterm birth, an important marker of newborn health with long term
consequences (Haider et al., 2013).
The causal research on the impact of access to family planning services has established
that family planning services improve the short- and long-term outcomes of affected families.
Bailey (2013) estimates the impact of Title X, the federal legislation in the 1970s that increased
financial access to family planning services for low-income mothers, on the long-term outcomes
of mothers and their children. To do so, she takes advantage of the roll-out of Title X across
counties and over time by comparing the outcomes of families that gain local access to Title X
before others. She finds that within a given county, children born after the roll-out of Title X
were more likely to complete high school and college, had 2 percent higher earnings as adults,
and were 7.4 percent less likely to live in families with incomes below the poverty line than
children born before roll-out (Bailey et al., 2019).
This reduction in poverty caused by access to family planning services operates in part
through improved economic outcomes for mothers. Women who gained legal access to family
planning services in their early childbearing years earned 5% to 11% more per year in their mid-
40s than those who did not (Bailey et al., 2012). In other more recent work comparing the
outcomes of women who sought an abortion just before reaching the gestational limit for legal
abortion with those who just exceeded the gestational limit (and therefore did not receive an

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abortion), researchers have found that those denied an abortion experience a large increase in
financial distress that persists for at least 10 years (Miller et al., 2023).
Access to family planning services also leads to delays in childbearing and reductions in
teen parenting. Severe funding cuts to the family planning program in Texas in 2011–2013 led to
a 3.4 percent increase in the teen birth rate, or 2,200 additional teen births over four years
(Packham, 2017). Estimating the impact of teen parenting on child outcomes is complicated by
the fact that teen mothers tend to be drawn from the most disadvantaged families. To address
this, researchers have relied on “sister comparisons,” comparing the children of sisters one of
whom gave birth as a teen and one who did not. Unfortunately, U.S. data for this kind of analysis
is largely inadequate due to the small sample sizes of surveys and a lack of long-term follow-up
information. Exploiting the wealth of administrative data available in Scandinavian countries
such as Norway that enable such an analysis, researchers have found that compared with the
child of a sister who delayed childbearing, a child born to a teenaged mother completes fewer
years of schooling and has lower long-term earnings (Aizer et al., 2022).
Health Insurance Coverage During Pregnancy and Childhood Through Medicaid
A major source of health insurance for low-income families is the Medicaid program, a
means-tested public health insurance program that is funded via a combination of federal and
state funds. Medicaid has expanded significantly over time since its establishment in 1966 as part
of the War on Poverty.4 Medicaid covered 17.5 million children in 1995, and by 2019 this
number had doubled to 36 million. Medicaid is a major source of coverage for pregnancy,
covering 42 percent of all births in 2019.
Pregnancy and Post-Partum Care

Even with Medicaid expansions, women with lower socioeconomic status are still
significantly less likely to have continuous health insurance for their pregnancies (Admon et al.,
2021). If one considers preconception and postpartum coverage as well, only 40 percent of low-
income pregnant women have continuous coverage over this period. This lack of continuous
coverage during pregnancy is due to significant churn in the Medicaid program combined with
postpartum coverage being limited to only two months. Recent legislation made permanent the
12-month extended postpartum coverage option provided by the American Rescue Plan Act in
2021 and utilized by 23 states. Although the option is too new to generate evidence on long-term
outcomes, evaluation of the program in Texas suggests it improved access to care, especially
contraceptive, preventive, and behavioral health services, and reduced short-interval pregnancies
in the first year (Wang et al., 2022).
Childhood
Historic expansions in eligibility for the Medicaid program among children have
contributed to significant declines in rates of uninsurance for low-income children over time. For
4
In 1966, when Medicaid was founded, the program covered only those families enrolled in the AFDC program.
Between 1985 and 1990, Medicaid expanded eligibility to low-income pregnant women and children who were not
enrolled in AFDC. In 1997, as part of the SCHIP program, states could further expand Medicaid eligibility and
finally the 2014 Affordable Care Act (ACA) further increased Medicaid eligibility in those states that opted into the
ACA.
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children with household incomes below the poverty line, the share with health insurance rose
from 60 percent in 1987 to 85 percent by 2012 (Buchmuller et al., 2016). Despite the large
expansions in Medicaid, there are still disparities in child health insurance coverage by income,
race, and ethnicity.
Children below 250 percent of the FPL have an uninsurance rate of 7.7 percent,
compared with 3.8 percent for those above 250 percent of the FPL. Broken down by race and
ethnicity, uninsurance rates are much higher for Native American (13.8%) and Latino children
(9.2%) than they are for White and Black children.
Among children who lack health insurance, two-thirds are eligible for Medicaid but not
enrolled, suggesting that efforts to increase health insurance coverage by targeting the already
eligible and simplifying enrollment and re-enrollment processes are likely to be highly effective.
Indeed, increases in the uninsurance rate of low-income children between 2018 and 2020 have
been linked to changes in federal guidance that increased administrative requirements for
reenrollment (Arbogast et al., 2022). Other work has identified administrative barriers as
important in explaining low take-up of public programs, including health insurance (Aizer, 2007;
Herd & Moynihan, 2019; Sugar et al., 2021). Finally, work showing that among children eligible
for Medicaid, those whose parents are also eligible are more likely to be enrolled which suggests
that parental ineligibility for Medicaid also contributes to lack of child take-up (Dubay &
Kenney, 2003).
A large body of rigorous research links Medicaid expansions in pregnancy and childhood
with better health at birth and throughout childhood and even improved future labor market
outcomes. To establish this, researchers have taken advantage of the roll-out of Medicaid
expansions for pregnant women and children in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The federal
government increased Medicaid eligibility levels, but states had discretion in the timing of these
expansions as well as the size of the expansion. Examining this variation in the timing of the
Medicaid expansions across the states, researchers have linked expanded Medicaid eligibility to
improved birthweight and child health (Currie & Gruber, 1996a, 1996b). Given the established
causal relationship between newborn health and future economic outcomes, it is not surprising
that researchers have also linked these Medicaid expansions in childhood to higher school
attainment and earnings later in life (Brown et al., 2020). Expanding Medicaid access to older
children is also beneficial: childhood Medicaid expansions reduced the mortality of Black
children ages 15–18 by 13 to 20 percent (Wherry & Meyer, 2016). Recent research has
established further intergenerational effects: Access to Medicaid in-utero improves the newborn
health of the next generation (East et al., forthcoming).5
Lacking continuous coverage including preconception and postpartum is associated with
worse health outcomes for new mothers and their children, including maternal deaths, one-third
of which occur in the postpartum period (Johnston et al., 2021). Medicaid expansions through
the ACA are associated with lower maternal mortality, with the effects concentrated among non-
Latino Black mothers and in later maternal deaths (Eliason, 2020).
5
Medicaid was introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s and disproportionately improved the health of low-
income mothers and children. Subsequent Medicaid expansions have been shown to have reduced disability and
receipt of disability transfers and mortality (Goodman Bacon, 2021).
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Access to Publicly Provided Health Care Via the Indian Health Service (IHS)
Native American children experience the worst health along many measures and are more
likely to be uninsured than the rest of the U.S. population. Infant mortality, for example, was 60
percent higher for the Native American population than it was for the United States overall.
Youth suicide is also highest among this group (see Figure 5-4). Access to health care likely
contributes to this disparity, as Native American children are more than twice as likely to be
uninsured (14%) as U.S. children overall (Roygardner et al., 2019). Native American children
are unique in that they are also served by the Indian Health Services (IHS), a direct provider of
health care services.6 However, according to U. S. Department of Human Health and Services,
Funding for IHS addresses only an estimated 48.6 percent of the health care needs of
Native American children and has historically been subject to year-by-year discretionary
allocations from Congress, which creates substantial long-term uncertainty in funding
and makes it challenging to maintain and modernize needed health care infrastructure
(Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2022, pg. 1).
Given the growing body of research linking access to medical care during childhood and the
prenatal period to children’s long-term health and economic status, the inability to adequately
serve all eligible Native American children likely contributes to the intergenerational poverty of
the Native American populations.
6
Not all Native Americans are eligible for services from the IHS. Out of every 5.7 Native Americans, 2.7 are
eligible. They include those who reside in geographic areas covered by the HIS.
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FIGURE 5-4 Average suicide rate per 100,000 among children and adolescents, ages 0–19, by
race/ethnicity, 2010-2020.
SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Data and statistics (WISQARS).
Injury Prevention & Control. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html
Access to Mental Health Care
One in five young people in the United States has a mental health disorder that will
persist into adulthood, with mental illnesses that emerge before adulthood costing 10 times more
than those emerge later in life (Lee et al., 2014). The five most common mental health disorders
emerging in childhood and adolescence are: attention deficit hyperactive disorder, conduct
disorder, anxiety and mood disorders, schizophrenia, and substance use disorder. Mental health
conditions are more prevalent among children with family incomes persistently below the
poverty line and with children making transitions into poverty (Fitzimons et al., 2017;
Wadsworth & Achenbach, 2005). Moreover, mental health conditions are an important predictor
of adult earnings. Multiple studies have linked attention deficit hyperactive disorder and other
mental health conditions in childhood with worse adult economic outcomes, including
employment, earnings, and welfare use (Currie et al., 2010; Fletcher, 2014; Smith & Smith,
2010).

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Between 2016 and 2020, anxiety, depression, and behavior and conduct problems
increased among children (Lebrun-Harris et al., 2022), with a pronounced increase in depression,
suicidal thoughts, and substance use during the Covid 19 pandemic (Mayne et al., 2021). It is
important to note that these increases were largely the continuation of an alarming trend in rising
rates of depression, suicide, and substance use among adolescents in the United States. In
contrast to declines in child and youth mortality more generally, youth suicide rates have
increased significantly over time for all racial and ethnic groups, with higher increases among
Native American and White youth. Importantly, the method of suicide has shifted to include
more use of firearms, which are deadlier.
Substance use disorders, such as the use of marijuana and alcohol, and overdoses among
teens also increased during the pandemic (FAIR Health, 2021; Romm et al., 2022). Substance
use can have long-term consequences as both the frequency and quantity of substance use during
adolescence are strongly associated with a risk of heavy use and misuse in adulthood (Moss et
al., 2014; Windle & Zucker, 2010). Substance use during adolescence and young adulthood is
associated with neurocognitive and psychological impairment and increased risk for academic
underachievement, chronic physical disease, and poor mental health outcomes (Atherton et al.,
2016; Kim et al., 2017a), which in turn lead to adult disabilities.
Mental health conditions are more highly predictive of school outcomes than physical
health conditions (Currie & Stabile, 2006). This is also true for outcomes related to employment,
marriage, and income in adulthood, with some estimates suggesting that childhood mental health
conditions are associated with a 28 percent decline in earnings at age 50 (Goodman et al., 2011).
Adolescents with serious mental health disorders or substance use disorders have seven times
greater risk of criminal justice encounters (Prince & Wald, 2018). However, establishing a causal
link is complicated by confounding factors.
Some of the strongest evidence of a causal link between mental health and important
medium and longer-term outcomes emerged from two studies based on natural experiments.
Examining the timing of school shootings and comparing short- and long-term outcomes of
children exposed to a school shooting with similar children living nearby but not directly
exposed, researchers established that fatal school shootings result in an immediate increase in
prescriptions to treat depression and anxiety that persists over time (Rosin Slater et al., 2020).
Using this same setting, researchers have in turn linked this to reduced high school graduation,
college enrollment and completion, and earnings and employment at ages 24–26 (Cabral et al.,
2021). Together, these two studies point to a causal link between mental health in adolescence
and future educational and economic outcomes. Though poor children are not more likely to be
exposed to a school shooting, they are more likely to be exposed to violence and to have mental
health conditions. We draw upon the research on school shootings in order to highlight the likely
causal relationship between poor children’s greater exposure to violence, mental health
conditions, and worse future economic outcomes.
Conversely, a separate study linked treatment for depression in adolescence with positive
schooling outcomes. A natural experiment caused by a 2004 Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) decision to issue warnings on anti-depressive medications for teenagers provides
evidence on long-term academic impacts of adolescent treatment of depression with selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The FDA warning resulted in a significant drop in the use of
antidepressants among teenagers, which in turn resulted in a significant decline in school
outcomes among those affected (Busch et al., 2014).

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Treatment for mental health conditions can be effective (see Appendix for more details),
but despite this, many children fail to receive treatment for mental health disorders. A 2016
survey covering 50,000 children in the United States found that of those with a mental health
disorder, nearly half did not receive needed treatment from a mental health professional, with
significant variation across the United States (Whitney & Peterson, 2019). Surveys suggest that
lack of treatment stems from a combination of internal (e.g., limited mental health knowledge,
perceived stigma) and external (e.g., costs and the availability of mental health providers) causes
(Radez et al., 2021). With 35 percent of the U.S. population living in an area with a shortage of
mental health professionals, it is unsurprising that adolescents often have to wait from one to
three months for an appointment with a provider of adolescent psychiatric care (Steinman et al.,
2015), with greater barriers to access for racial and ethnic minority individuals (Cook et al.,
2016).
CONCLUSION 5-1: Improving the health of children experiencing poverty has

been shown to improve economic status in adulthood as measured by future
educational attainment, employment, earnings, and reduced reliance on public
assistance. Two important mechanisms include access to family planning services
and health insurance coverage in pregnancy and childhood, both of which are key to
improving the short- and long-term health and economic outcomes of children. Yet
many low-income families are still without health insurance coverage or access to
family planning services. This is due in part to administrative barriers that reduce
child Medicaid enrollment, the fact that Medicaid coverage for pregnancy often
ends two months post-partem, an Indian Health Service that serves only half the
eligible population, and declines in funding for Title X over time. For access to
mental health, additional barriers include lack of providers.
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES AS A DRIVER: POLLUTION, STRESS, AND

VIOLENCE
Pollution
A strong causal link has been established between child health and exposure to pollution,
particularly during the in-utero period, based on both epidemiological and quasi-experimental
methods (Currie et al., 2011a). More recently, this research has been extended to show causal
impacts of childhood exposure to pollution on adult outcomes and even the health of the next
generation (Colmer & Voorheis, 2022; Isen et al., 2017). Pollutants that have been the subject of
the most study include air pollution (particulate matter or PM 2.5) and lead. While other
pollutants may exert a strong impact on child health, there is less research establishing this
connection, in part due to limitations in the number and kind of pollutants that are regularly
measured and monitored.7
Due in large part to federal action, childhood exposure to pollution (both air pollution and
lead) has declined considerably over time. As overall pollution has fallen, so too have income
and racial disparities in exposure to pollution, though disparities remain (Bell & Ebisu, 2012;
7
For example, the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) requires firms to disclose their use and emissions of listed
chemicals. The lists have grown sharply over time as additional research establishes their negative impact on health.
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Currie et al., 2023; Jbaily al., 2022; Liu et al., 2015). The major sources of pollution stationary
sources, such as power plants, refineries, and industrial facilities, and mobile sources, such as
cars, buses, and planes, which pollute areas near major roadways, along with residual lead (and
other toxins) that remains in the environment. Low-income and racial and ethnic minority
families have historically been (and continue to be) exposed to more pollution due to the high
degree of residential segregation by income and race in the United States, and the concentration
of polluting sources in low-income, high racial and ethnic minority neighborhoods (Alexander &
Currie, 2017; Teye et al., 2021). For example, children living in more racially segregated cities
are exposed to twice the pollution, as measured by fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), than those in
less segregated cities, and this difference increases to tenfold when one considers exposure to
more toxic metals (Kodros et al., 2022).
Multiple federal policy efforts have been shown to have effectively reduced pollution and
improved child health. These include the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970 and its 1990
amendments, the federal ban of lead from gasoline and paint, which dramatically reduced the
amount of lead in the environment in the decade between 1976 and 1986, and the federal clean-
up of Superfund sites, abandoned hazardous waste sites. We discuss the evidence linking each of
these policy efforts to reduced pollution and to important short- and long-term outcomes for
children. We follow this with a discussion of the evidence on other sources of pollution that are
more common and widespread, such as automobile exhaust.
The CAA and its amendments dramatically reduced exposure to particulate matter by
roughly 70 percent between 1970 and 1990.8 Researchers have linked the CAA and its
amendments to important short- and long-term outcomes for children. To do so, they took
advantage of variation across local areas in whether they were subject to the new CAA rules
regarding acceptable pollution levels. Those areas subject to the new pollution limits saw
dramatic declines in air pollution levels after the CAA while those already “in attainment” (that
is, within the new limit for pollution levels) saw no to little appreciable decline in pollution.
Reductions in pollution induced by the CAA were found to improve infant health (Chay and
Greenstone, 2003a, 2003b) as measured by infant mortality. More recently, researchers have
linked the CAA to long-term outcomes. Children born after the CAA in areas that saw a steep
decline in air pollution were found to have increased employment and earnings at age 30, driven
in part by reductions in those with earnings in the bottom of the distribution, consistent with
declines in disability (Isen et al., 2017, for the 1970 CAA and Colmer et al., 2022, for the 1990
amendments).
Lead is another major source of pollution that has been found to negatively affect child
development, with long-term consequences. Recent research has taken advantage of naturally
occurring variation in exposure to lead—as a result of federal and local policies that have sought
to reduce exposure—to generate causal impacts. It has found that providing incentives to
landlords to remediate lead in homes reduced children’s blood lead levels and increased child
test scores in reading and math, especially among low-income and racial and ethnic minority
households (Aizer et al., 2018). Moreover, work shows that remediating lead paint in homes
increases their value (Billings & Schnepel, 2017). Examining variation in exposure to lead over
8
In 1990, the EPA estimated that between 1970 and 1990, “Americans received 20 dollars of value in reduced
risk of death, illness and other adverse effects for every one dollar spent to control air pollution.” (EPA, 1996). It is
estimated that the CAA amendments of 1990 prevented over 230,000 early deaths (mostly adult deaths) and reduced
the number of lost school days by 5.4 million by 2020.
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time due to the de-leading of gasoline, by federal mandate, which disproportionately reduced
lead levels in children living near roadways, researchers have documented reduced in-school
disciplinary infractions, juvenile detention, and adult crime (Aizer & Currie, 2019; Groqvist et
al., 2020), important predictors of adult earnings.
However, air pollution and toxic chemicals including lead are still present in the
environment. For example, PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter that poses the greatest risk to health),
while declining continuously between 1970 and 2016, increased by nearly 6 percent between
2016 and 2018 (Clay et al., 2021). Likewise, lead, while continuing to decline, still remains in
the environment. It is present in water because of lead drinking pipes, is concentrated in the air
and the soil near roadways, and remains in homes built before 1978. As a result, low-income and
racial and ethnic minority children who are more likely to live near roads and in older homes are
still more likely to be exposed to air pollution and other toxic substances including lead than
their more advantaged counterparts.
A third area where federal policy has reduced exposure to pollution is the Superfund
program. The program, established in 1980, allocates resources to abating the most hazardous
sites in the United States. Twenty-one million Americans, 7 percent of all children under the age
of five, were living within a mile of a Superfund site as of 2020. This population is
disproportionately living in poverty and is disproportionately Black and Latino (EPA, 2020).
Research has linked Superfund clean-up with improved infant health and student test scores
(Currie et al., 2011b; Persico et al., 2020), as discussed in Appendix C: Chapter 5. Other long-
term benefits are likely but have not yet been the subject of research.
Other sources of pollution that are more common and generally below federally
determined limits (e.g., automobile exhaust, pollution from coal-fired plants, release of toxic
chemicals from manufacturing facilities) have also been linked to important outcomes in
children, both short- and medium-term. The installation of EZ-pass tolls on New Jersey and
Pennsylvania highways significantly reduced exhaust and air pollution around toll plazas.
Researchers linked this decline in pollution with improved infant health, as measured by an 11
and 12 percent reduction in prematurity and low birthweight (Currie & Walker, 2011). Public
transportation is another important source of pollution for urban populations. A recent study
estimated the impact of EPA transit bus emissions standards on infant health. Examining EPA
requirements that new buses meet increasingly lower PM thresholds, Ngo (2017) took advantage
of variation in bus fleet vintage over the period 1990–2009 in New York City to estimate the
impact of proximity to pollutants on infant health. Mothers exposed to the oldest buses gave birth
to newborns nearly 100 grams lighter. Still other research, using quasi-random variation induced
by declines in coal-based energy production over time and across areas, has linked pollution with
child test scores (Gilraine & Zheng, 2022). Given the similar magnitudes of the short-run
impacts of the CAA of 1970 and these more common sources of pollution today, it is reasonable
to assume they likely have similar long-term consequences given the link between newborn
health, child school performance, and long-term outcomes. However, this has not yet been
directly established.
Finally, children in families living below poverty and Black children are more likely to
live near one of the 300,000 facilities that emit toxic chemicals, known as toxic release inventory
sites (Perlin et al., 1999). There is research linking childhood exposure to toxic chemicals at
these sites to short-term and (though more preliminarily) to long-term outcomes, including
educational attainment and wages. This evidence is discussed in Appendix C: Chapter 5.

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Increased Stress in Utero and During Childhood
Lower-income families are exposed to more stressful events than other families, and
repeated exposure to stress can result in a greater allostatic role, the physiological response to the
body’s neuroendocrine response to stress (Taylor & Seeman, 1999). This can result in the
development of maladaptive behaviors and adverse physical and mental health outcomes in
childhood (McLoyd, 1997, 1998). Over time, this can make the child more vulnerable to future
stressors (Boyce et al., 2021; Shonkoff & Garner, 2012; Taylor et al., 1997). Stress can affect
children indirectly as well, through parental exposure to stress. Parental stress can harm children
either by changing parental behavior or through “prenatal programming,” the process by which
exposure to environmental influences in utero can affect fetal development, with long-term
implications for health and development. In this chapter we focus on in-utero exposure to stress
and its impact on offspring outcomes not because it is more important than childhood exposure,
but because the finite nature of the in-utero period makes it easier to control for potential
confounding, enabling causal inference.
In animal studies, experimental exposure in utero to elevated levels of stress and the
stress hormone cortisol leads to worse outcomes for offspring (Harris & Seckl, 2011). Evidence
of a causal impact of in-utero stress on child outcomes is new and somewhat mixed, with some
work finding negative effects on cognitive development, mental health, and educational
attainment (Aizer et al., 2016a; Persson & Rossin-Slater, 2018; Torche, 2018), and another study
finding no effect (Black et al., 2016). These studies are based on sibling comparisons in which
one sibling is exposed to high levels of maternal stress in-utero and the other is not. There is
causal evidence that income transfers via the EITC reduce maternal stress (Evans & Garthwaite,
2014), underscoring the role that poverty and income can play in perpetuating elevated stress in
families experiencing poverty.
Researchers have identified racism and discrimination as additional sources of stress
faced by Black, Latino and Native American families in the United States (Collins et al., 2014;
Nam et al., 2022; Paradies et al., 2015; Sawyer et al., 2012). This has been confirmed in lab
experiments in which human subjects are brought into a lab and some are subjected to racist
stimuli, which generates a heightened physiological stress response, including increased blood
pressure and heart rate, relative to control subjects who are not subjected to the stimuli (e.g.,
Sawyer et al., 2012). Researchers have long hypothesized that higher rates of stress from racial
discrimination may explain the worse child and maternal health outcomes experienced by Black
mothers that cannot be explained by differences in income and education (see Braveman et al.,
2021).
Establishing a causal link is challenging, as it is difficult to isolate the impact of stress
from the stressor itself. Recent work has sought to do so using a somewhat idiosyncratic source
of stress: formal complaints of excessive police force in women’s neighborhoods. Black women
living in neighborhoods with excessive-use-of-force complaints are 1.2 times as likely to have a
preterm birth and 1.4 times as likely to develop cardiovascular disease as women in the same
neighborhood before and after an incident, or neighborhoods with otherwise equivalent levels of
neighborhood disadvantage and crime. The negative effects for Black women were larger and
more precise than those for white women. These results are unchanged when one limits
comparisons to two births to the same mother at different points in time, further reducing the
possibility of confounding (Freedman et al., 2022). This finding is consistent with discrimination
resulting in greater stress and worse health among Black families. While this has not yet been
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linked with long-term outcomes of the child, indirect evidence suggests that it likely will have
long-term consequences given the relationship between newborn health and long-term outcomes.
Underlying sources of stress in the lives of low-income and racial and ethnic minority
families include uncertainty, income volatility, victimization, and discrimination, among others.
Policies and interventions that promote stability and reduce discrimination have the potential to
reduce stress and improve health, particularly newborn health, an important determinant of adult
economic outcomes. 9 So too do policies that reduce violence and victimization, as discussed
briefly below and in greater detail in the chapter on neighborhood crime.
Greater Exposure to Violence, Especially Gun Violence
Children living in poverty are more likely to be exposed to violence in their communities
and their homes (Sedlak et al., 2010). Being a victim of violence affects child health directly
through increased mortality and morbidity. Firearm-related injury has risen significantly over
time and is now the primary cause of death among children in the United States, surpassing
motor vehicle accidents and accounting for 20 percent of all child deaths (Figure 5-5). There are
significant disparities by income and race. Youth in counties with the highest poverty rates had
firearm-related mortality rates that were nearly five times higher than those living in counties
with the lowest poverty rates (Barrett et al., 2022) and Black children experienced rates of
firearm-related deaths (12 per 100,000) that were nearly six times higher than the rates among
White children and three times higher than those among Native American children in 2021
(KFF, 2022a).
9
Practitioners and researchers have developed interventions to reduce the stress response in affected families.
However, the evidence linking such interventions to the short- or long-term social and economic outcomes of
children is not yet sufficiently developed.
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FIGURE 5-5 Annual death rates for the four most common causes of death in the United States
among children and adolescents, ages 1 to 19, 1999–2020.
NOTE: Death rates are reported per 100,000. This figure was adapted from Goldstick et al.
(2022) using data from the CDC.
SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). About underlying cause of death,
1999—2022. CDC Wonder. U.S. Department of Health & Human
Services. https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html
Evidence shows that even indirect exposure to neighborhood or family violence (i.e.,
witnessing or knowing victims of violence) can result in significant long-term harm related to
physical and mental health, problem behaviors, and poor academic performance and educational
attainment (for reviews see Osofsky, 1999; Rivara et al., 2019; Sharkey, 2018; for more evidence
see Bor et al, 2018, and Chapter 9). Perhaps the best evidence of a causal impact of exposure to
gun violence on children’s long-term outcomes is the work linking school shootings to short-
term mental health outcomes and long- term economic outcomes. That research addresses
confounding in exposure to violence by examining the timing of school shootings and comparing
children living closest to the affected schools, and therefore exposed, with those living slightly
further away and therefore similar but not exposed themselves (Cabral et al., 2021; Rosin Slater
et al., 2020).
To the extent that exposure to violence leads to premature death as well as stress to those
indirectly exposed, thereby contributing to intergenerational poverty, we discuss interventions to
reduce violence in Chapter 9, which discusses crime and the criminal justice system.
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CONCLUSION 5-2: A child’s environment (pollution, stress, and violence) exerts a

strong influence on child health and development, with long-term economic
consequences. Federal regulation of pollution has led to significant improvements in
infant and child health and, ultimately, adult income. Due in large part to federal
action, disparities in exposure to pollution by income, race, and ethnicity have
declined significantly over time. While child mortality has been falling over time,
firearm-related violence is on the rise and is now the leading cause of death among
all children in the United States, with significant disparities by income, race, and
ethnicity. Direct exposure to violence or victimization resulting in premature death
and disability, as well as indirect exposure resulting in increased stress, anxiety, and
depression with long-term consequences, both contribute to the intergenerational
persistence of poverty.
NUTRITION AND FOOD INSECURITY AS A DRIVER
Adequate nutrition during infancy and early childhood (first 1,000 days), the most critical
and rapid time for neuronal proliferation, is essential for growth, health, and development for
children to reach their fullest potential as adults (Schwarzenberg & Georgieff, 2018).
Malnutrition, which includes both undernutrition, or the inadequate provision or intake of micro-
and/or macronutrients, and overweight or obesity, or the provision/intake of excessive calories,
both lead to unhealthy nutritional status.

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FIGURE 5-6 Food insecurity among children, by race and ethnicity of household head, 2008–
2021.
SOURCE: Calculated by the USDA, Economic Research Service, using Current Population
Survey Food Insecurity Supplement data. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-
assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/interactive-charts-and-highlights/#disability.
Many low-income communities and racial and ethnic minority individuals are more
likely than others to experience food insecurity, meaning a lack of adequate access to affordable,
high quality, nutritious food (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2022). Food insecurity is defined by the
USDA as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to
adequate food” and is monitored through regular household surveys by the USDA (USDA,
2021). Children living in households experiencing food insecurity might not have food insecurity
themselves, as parents often compensate. Though household food insecurity has fallen for all
groups over time (see Figure 5-6), it is still the case that children in poverty are twice as likely
(28% versus 14%) to live in a household that has experienced food insecurity. As compared with
White children, Black children are 3.5 times more likely and Latino children almost 3 times
more likely to live in a household that has experienced food insecurity.
Food insecurity during childhood is associated with worse physical health (Gunderson &
Kreider, 2009; Thomas et al., 2019) and mental health (McIntyre et al., 2013), and lower
academic achievement in childhood (Jyoti et al., 2005), and worse psychological distress and
physical health during adulthood (Fertig, 2019). Although the evidence linking food insecurity to
overweight and obesity is clear for adults, the evidence for the association in children is mixed
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(St. Pierre et al., 2022). It is important to note that most of this evidence is based on comparisons
of children in food-secure and insecure households controlling for family background
characteristics.
To establish the causal impact of nutrition in-utero and during childhood on short- and
long-term outcomes, researchers have taken advantage of policy changes that increased low-
income families’ access to federal nutrition programs (see Box 5-1 for a description of the main
programs). Examining the initial roll-out of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP) during the 1960s and 1970s, researchers have compared the short- and long-
term outcomes of children born before and after SNAP became available in their county of birth.
The staggered nature of the roll-out allows researchers to compare the long-term outcomes of
children born in the same county before and after SNAP became available but also compare
those born in same the year but different counties, one with SNAP and one not yet with SNAP.
Researchers have found that SNAP availability led to improvements in newborn health,
improved child outcomes, reductions in poverty, reductions in criminal activity, and improved
economic and health outcomes in adulthood (Almond et al., 2011; Barr & Smith, 2023; Bailey et
al., 2020; Hoynes & Schanzenbach, 2015; Hoynes et al., 2011; Hoynes et al., 2016). This body
of research did not determine the comparative role of SNAP’s nutritional and general economic
supplementation.10
One might be concerned, however, that evidence on the long-term benefits of SNAP
availability based on the 1960s and 1970s might not generalize to the experience of children in a
more recent setting. The current nutritional status of children may differ, and the impact of the
creation of the SNAP program may be larger than the impact of marginal increases in SNAP
benefit levels. One way to assess this is to compare results for child and adult health based on the
roll-out of SNAP in the 1960s and 1970s with evidence from a more recent period. A study
based on the period 1996–2003, during which the state of California first eliminated and then
restore SNAP eligibility for immigrant parents, shows moderate medium-term effects associated
with increases in SNAP benefit levels that are very similar to the effect sizes from the historic
roll-out of SNAP, East (2018) (see Appendix C: Chapter 5 for details). This evidence suggests
that SNAP benefits today are likely to have similar long-term positive benefits for children as
they did in the 1970s.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC),
the other major federal food program for children, is also associated with better nutrition, dietary
intake, food security, and health, including birth outcomes. To estimate a causal impact of WIC
receipt during pregnancy on newborn health, Currie and Rajani (2015) compared the health of
newborns born to the same mother who received WIC for one pregnancy but not the other. In
this way, Currie and Rajani controlled for underlying differences in mothers who did and did not
use WIC but could otherwise bias estimated effects. She documents significant improvements in
newborn health under WIC, as measured by birthweight. This is an important finding given that
birthweight is causally associated with educational attainment and later economic outcomes
(Black et al., 2007; Royer, 2009).
10
The issue of the “fungibility” of resources from cash and in-kind programs is a general one. In the SNAP studies
cite above, we do not know if cash payments equal in value to the SNAP payments would have generated the same
benefits for children. Similar issues arise with housing vouchers (Jacob et al., 2015) and the Medicaid program benefits
reviewed above.
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BOX 5-1
Federal Food Programs Serving Children
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as “food

stamps,” is a federal program that provides nutrition benefits to low-income individuals and
families <130% of the federal poverty level (FPL) that are used at participating stores to
purchase food. The maximum monthly benefit for a family of four in 2023 is $939. One in five
children received SNAP benefits in 2017.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
provides nutritious foods to supplement the diets of low-income pregnant and lactating
individuals as well as infants and children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk, and also
provides information on healthy eating and referrals to health care. Families with incomes below
100% or 185% of the FPL (depending on the state) are eligible for WIC. WIC serves half of all
infants in the United States, but take-up falls as children age, declining from 98% to 26% from
infancy to age 4.
The National School Lunch Program provides free lunches to children in families below
130 percent of the FPL and reduced-cost lunch to children between 130% and 185% of the
FPL. In FY 2020, the program provided 2.46 billion free or reduced priced lunches to school
children.
Despite the positive impact of federal nutrition programs on children, many pregnant
individuals and children do not benefit from them. There are two main reasons: lack of take-up
among the eligible (relevant for WIC, less so for SNAP), and reduced eligibility in the immigrant
population (more relevant for SNAP), as discussed in Appendix C: Chapter 5.
One thing that does not appear to influence child nutrition among low-income families is
geographic proximity to high quality, nutritious foods (i.e., the problem of “food deserts”). While
low-income families are more likely to live in food deserts, their nutrition does not improve
when high quality supermarkets enter the local market or when they move to “healthier”
neighborhoods (Allcott et al., 2019).
CONCLUSION 5-3: Today, children living in poverty are still more likely to reside
in households that experience food and nutrition insecurity than their better-off
counterparts. Evidence from the introduction of the SNAP program in the 1960s
and 1970s suggests that food supplements for children in low-income families, both
in utero and during childhood, can contribute to intergenerational mobility,
improving child health and ultimately future adult health and earnings. Evidence on
the impact of SNAP from a more recent period shows similar effects on child health,
at least in the short to medium term, suggesting that long-term outcomes of
enhancing child nutrition today may be similarly effective in promoting
intergenerational mobility. Barriers to take-up in WIC and reduced eligibility
among immigrant families limit the ability of children in the United States to benefit
from federal nutrition programs.

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INTERVENTIONS INVOLVING CHILDREN’S HEALTH
Our discussion of potential mechanisms focuses on child health interventions for which
there is strong direct evidence that they will improve adult earnings and increase mobility. These
include the family planning and Medicaid interventions. With regard to pollution, there is direct
evidence that reductions in pollution improve child health and future earnings, but many of the
current sources of pollution differ from historical sources on which the direct evidence is based,
influencing the types of interventions we explore. Finally, the direct evidence on child nutrition
is based on historical data, the roll out of the food stamp program in the 1960s. There is no
evidence from more recent time periods of effects of nutrition programs in childhood on adult
earnings, but the evidence on medium term effects of nutrition programs in more recent periods
are similar in magnitude to the medium- effects of the historical program, suggesting that longer
term effects are also likely to be similar.
As discussed in Chapter 1, we characterize the direct evidence for some of the programs
or policies as “strong” and denote them with an “*.” This indicates that the program or policy’s
impact on intergenerational poverty is supported by random-assignment evaluation evidence that
has been replicated across several sites or by compelling quasi-experimental evidence based on
national or multi-state data or a scaled-up program. We also considered evidence to be direct if
strong post-1990 evidence of impacts on pre-adult mediators is coupled with strong pre-1990
evidence on long-run adult impacts in the same domain.
Increasing Access to Health Care Based on Direct Evidence
Family Planning
The main sources of funding for family planning are private health insurance, Medicaid,
and the Title X Family Planning program. Recently, low-income families’ access to family
planning services has declined due to changes in both public programs. Given the strong causal
evidence linking mothers’ access to family planning services to improvements in their children’s
long-term outcomes, including teen childbearing, the committee developed the following ideas to
increase access to family planning services among low-income families:
• * Funding could be increased for Title X from its current level of $286
million per year to at least $500 million per year. Were Title X funds to
have increased with inflation since the program’s inception in the 1970s,
funding today would be slightly over $1 billion. However, the significant
increases in Medicaid coverage since Title X’s inception suggest that more
modest funding for the program is needed to maintain access.
• * Because all Medicaid beneficiaries are eligible for family planning

services from any willing qualified provider, the Center for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) could ensure that these requirements are being
met in all states.

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Medicaid
Strong direct evidence has shown that Medicaid expansions during the prenatal period
and childhood lead to better health, greater educational attainment, and higher earnings later in
life. With 2.8 million children currently eligible for Medicaid but uninsured, enrolling those
already eligible through outreach and continuous enrollment requirements is the most effective
way to increase health insurance coverage for low-income families (KFF, 20223b). The
committee developed the following ideas to increase Medicaid enrollment among low-income
women and children:
• * States to provide continuous child Medicaid/CHIP eligibility for a period

of 12 months even if the family experiences a temporary change in income
during the year.
• * Make the federal continuous eligibility requirements following

pregnancy from 60 days to 12 months mandatory instead of optional. The
annual cost of this nationwide was estimated at $466 million in FY22,
increasing to $786 million by FY30 (CBO, 2022).
Improving the Environment Based on Direct Evidence
Reducing Maternal and Child Exposure to Pollution

Strong direct evidence has shown improvements in child health and increases in adult
earnings stemming from the 1970 CAA and its 1990 amendments, as well as the de-leading of
gasoline and paint. The current challenges to reducing children’s exposure to pollution, going
forward, include the increasingly local phenomenon of pollution, the EPA’s inability to monitor
very local and common pollution sources, the high levels of indoor air pollution that are not
monitored by the EPA, and climate change, which is disproportionately affecting low-income
communities and communities of color (EPA, 2022). To address this, the committee developed
the following ideas:
• The EPA could work with local communities to develop and maintain more local
monitoring of air quality using less expensive technologies.
• The federal government, through the CDC and EPA, could provide information
and resources to state and local governments to encourage the most efficient lead
monitoring and abatement activities and provide appropriate funding.
Reducing Gun Violence

Direct-evidence studies have established that gun violence is both a crime issue and a
health issue. That evidence and interventions to address are detailed in Chapter 9.

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Improving Nutrition Based on Direct Evidence
SNAP
Numerous studies have shown that the SNAP programs promote intergenerational mobility
out of poverty. Changes to several federal policies could address these gaps in coverage and
increase food security among low-income children:
• * To increase food security for children, the five-year waiting period of

eligibility for legal permanent-resident parents could be removed.
• To ensure that all children are adequately covered, the proration of SNAP
benefits for children with undocumented parents could be eliminated.
HEALTH INTERVENTIONS BASED ON INDIRECT EVIDENCE
Increasing Access to Medical Care Among Native American Families
There is no direct evidence linking the Indian Health Service (IHS) to adult poverty,
However, the direct evidence on Medicaid likely applies to IHS as both operate by increasing
access to medical care. In order to meet the considerable unmet health care needs of Native
American children, there is a need to increase funding for the IHS to levels that would
adequately support the provision of services to all eligible children:
• To provide care to all mothers and children eligible for IHS services,
federal funding could be increased to eliminate the funding gap for direct
health care services. In 2018, that gap was estimated to cost approximately
$7.8 billion.
Increasing Access to Mental Health Care
Given the established link between child mental health and reduced educational
and labor market outcomes and the evidence showing significant barriers to receiving
care among youth, the CDC could pilot multiple ways to increase child and adolescent
access to mental health care, including these:
• The CDC could establish and/or expand school-based health clinics so that
they include more mental health providers.
• The CDC could pilot tele-health access for children and youth in
underserved areas.
As noted previously, barriers to youth receiving mental health care include the
constrained supply of mental health providers which can result in either a lack of willing
providers or, even if providers are available, long wait times. To increase the number of

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mental health and substance use disorder providers available to serve youth, the federal
government could consider the following:
• Increasing funding for physician residency and fellowship positions in

psychiatry and expanding Medicare’s Health Professional Shortage Area
bonus program to attract more mental health providers to underserved
areas.
• Expand funding for pediatric mental health integration and supporting

mental health care telehealth access programs.
• The Government Accountability Office could be directed to report on

Medicaid payment rates for mental health services compared with medical
and surgical services across multiple states and, if justified, raise payment
rates for the former.
Reducing Child Exposure to Pollution
• To increase the monitoring of air quality in indoor settings and reduce indoor air
pollution, particularly in schools, the CDC should develop guidelines and
recommendations for schools to follow based on their needs and resources.
Partnerships could be established between the EPA, the states, and local schools,
so that air filtration systems are installed/improved as indicated.11
• The EPA could consider more stringent regulations of air pollution from vehicles,
especially public transportation in dense areas.
• The EPA could strengthen its monitoring of Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) sites
and consider regulating them to reduce children’s exposure to toxic chemicals.
Increasing Child Nutrition via WIC
Several steps could be taken to increase WIC enrollment among low-income women and
children and eligibility for children who do not yet have access to school meals:
• Infant certification could be extended to two years to prevent churn

and increase participation rates within the first 1,000 days. The cost
estimate is $380 million.
• Adjunctive eligibility could be allowed for infants, children, and

pregnant and postpartum individuals in households that participate in
11
Gilraine (2023) shows that air filtrations in schools reduces pollution and increases student test
scores by 20% of a standard deviation. While this has not yet been linked with long term outcomes,
the evidence linking outdoor air pollution to greater mobility likely generalizes to the indoor setting.
111

CHIP, Head Start, Early Head Start, or the Food Distribution Program
on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). The committee was unable to
develop a cost estimate for this policy change.
• Remote services could be provided, including virtual appointments through

telephone and video conferencing, as well as remote benefits issuance. Based
on COVID-19 changes to WIC rules, the committee estimates the additional
cost of continuing remote services to be $53.8 million.

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6
Children’s Family Income, Wealth, and Parental Employment
Family economic resources and parental employment during childhood play an important
role in shaping the family, schooling, and neighborhood contexts where children develop. These
contexts, in turn, are key for children’s academic skills, health, and opportunities to secure good
jobs when they become adults. Persistently low levels of family income, wealth, and
employment may therefore be important drivers of intergenerational poverty, while policies that
increase parental incomes, wealth, and employment may increase intergenerational mobility.
In assessing the role of family economic factors as a driver of intergenerational poverty,
we begin with data on trends in U.S. incomes and wages and comparisons of the extent of child
poverty in the United States and other industrialized Anglophone countries. Employment rates
and earnings for lower-skilled workers in general—and for the women and people of color in this
group in particular—remain lower than for other populations, despite wage growth for the
bottom quintile in the late 2010s and early 2020s and supplementation from the work-based
safety net. Moreover, gaps between workers and families at the bottom (and middle) of the
income distribution and workers and families in the top tier grew substantially.
We then provide a brief review of the literature on the correlational and causal
connections between children’s household income, parental employment, and well-being in
adulthood. With regard to household income, we point out that the introduction of safety net
programs such as SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as
Food Stamps) and more recent changes in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) appear to have
reduced intergenerational poverty. However, the intergenerational impacts of further expanding
safety-net benefits are less certain, especially if doing so does not also increase parental
employment. Furthermore, rigorous evidence suggests that increased parental employment
improves child outcomes only when it also raises family incomes. Evidence on the causal impact
of wealth on intergenerational poverty is suggestive, but does not support strong conclusions.
Given direct evidence linking reductions in intergenerational poverty to programs that
increase both family income and parental employment, the committee outlines several possible
expansions of the EITC (perhaps accompanied by other changes in tax credits) that appear to be
most likely to reduce intergenerational poverty. We then list a number of other program and
policy ideas that are supported by indirect evidence.

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TRENDS IN INCOME AND EARNINGS
Family Income and Child Poverty
To determine the extent to which family income is associated with intergenerational

poverty, it is important to examine how intergenerational mobility is affected by both the
absolute levels of family income and earnings and the degree of income and earnings inequality
between low- and higher-skilled parents. Poverty persistence across generations would seem to
relate most closely to the absolute levels of children’s family income, in both childhood and
adulthood. However, as reviewed in Chapter 2, evidence on trends in intergenerational mobility
presented in Chetty et al. (2017) shows that while trends in national income play an important
role, an even more significant factor is how the gains from economic growth are shared between
families at the top and bottom of the income distribution. Accordingly, we will focus on the
absolute levels of income and earnings as well as on inequality.
Trends in children’s family income can best be illustrated by showing the evolution of the
average household incomes of children whose families are in the bottom, middle, and top of the
income distribution. Figure 6-1 provides this information for 1967–2019, using data from the
U.S. Census Bureau. The income data include both the usual sources of cash income, such as
earnings, and in-kind income sources including tax credits and payments from programs such as
SNAP.1 The average annual household incomes of children in the bottom quintile increased
during this period by 80%, from about $20,000 to $36,000. For children in the middle of the
income distribution, the increase amounted to more than $40,000, but the percentage change
(+90%) was only a little larger than the increase for low-income children. Both absolute
(+$116,000) and relative (+146%) household income increases were largest for children in
families at the top of the distribution.
1
Dollars of cash and in-kind income received in different years are adjusted for inflation using the Personal
Consumption Expenditures Price Index. Inflation measured by the PCE over this period is more modest than when
measured using another popular inflation adjustment, the CPI-U-RS, and thus inflation-adjusted measures increased
more (or fell by less) than they would if we used the CPI-U-RS. Another possible adjustment for these kinds of
income comparisons is for family sizes, which were considerably larger in the 1960s and 1970s than they are today.
As noted in Chapter 5, cash and in-kind sources of transfer income, and the programs that provide them, may affect
total household resources in the same ways.

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FIGURE 6-1 Average U.S. household income of children in the bottom, middle, and top income
quintiles, 1967–2019.
NOTE: Figure 6-1 shows the average household incomes for children in the bottom, middle, and
top income quintile. Household income includes all post-tax cash income and in-kind resources
counted under the Supplemental Poverty Measure with the exception of nondiscretionary
expenses. Adjustment to $2021 are made using the PCEPI. Due to higher rates of nonresponse to
survey questions about income and resources at the top and bottom end of the income
distribution, and to changes in the U.S. Census Bureau’s top-coding procedure across time
(Bollinger et al., 2018), we do not include households in the top or bottom 2.5% of the
distribution when producing within-quintile averages in the top and bottom quintiles,
respectively. See Appendix C: Chapter 6 for a discussion of the sensitivity of the results to this
decision.
SOURCE: Data for 1967 to 2009 produced with the Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure
Data series (Wimer et al., 2022) and the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current
Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) data from IPUMS-CPS (2022). Results for 2010 to 2020
produced with the CPS-ASEC data from IPUMS-CPS (2022). Income adjusted to $2021 using
the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI), produced by the U.S. Bureau of
Economic Analysis and retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

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The near doubling of household incomes at the bottom end of the distribution over the
past half century has significantly reduced child poverty. Using an SPM-based poverty measure,
NASEM (2019a; Figure S-2) found that child poverty rates fell by 45% between 1967 and 2016.
The U.S. Census Bureau documents further declines through 2020, although it still counted 9.7%
of children as living in poverty in 2020 (Shrider and Creamer, 2023). Pandemic programs such
as the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) produced a dramatic further reduction in the
nation’s child poverty rate—from 9.7% to 5.2%—between 2020 and 2021. However, the CTC
expansion and other income-based pandemic programs ended in December 2021 and the SPM-
based child poverty more than doubled to 12.4% in 2022 (Shrider and Creamer, 2023).
International Comparisons of Child Poverty Rates
The income gaps among children living in low-income, middle-class, and affluent
families are larger in the United States than in other industrialized Anglophone countries. This is
most evident in international comparisons of child poverty provided by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which typically use a poverty line defined by
a certain fraction—often 50%—of each country’s median income. In the case of the United
States, median household income was about $68,000 in 2020. A poverty line based on 50% of
median income would thus be $34,000, so any child living in a household with income below
that amount would be counted as poor. In contrast to the poverty threshold approach to tracking
poverty in the United States, these international comparisons rely on a relative definition of
poverty based on the fraction of families whose income is low relative to overall income in the
country.2
Estimates of child poverty defined in this way for the United States and four English-
speaking comparison countries are shown in Figure 6-2. At 20.9%, the rate of child poverty is
much higher in the United States than in these peer countries—more than twice as high as in
Ireland and more than 5 percentage points higher than in Canada, the country with the second-
highest child poverty rate. More detailed analyses trace most of these differences to the much
lower fractions of GDP spent on safety-net programs such as child allowances in the United
States relative to the comparison countries (NASEM, 2019a, Chapter 4).
2
NASEM (2019a) also provides international data on absolute child poverty, which involve translating the
poverty thresholds in the U.S., measured in dollars, into comparable thresholds based on other countries’ currencies.
Countries with the lowest per capita income will tend to have higher child poverty rates using absolute (rather than
relative) poverty measure. As a result, relative to the U.S., absolute child poverty is found to be higher in the United
Kingdom and lower in other Anglophone countries. U.S. child poverty rates for 2021 are likely to compare more
favorably to other countries because of the resources provided to low-income families through the CTC expansion
and other pandemic relief measures.

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FIGURE 6-2 Child poverty in the United States and four other anglophone countries, 2016.
NOTE: Poverty is measured by the OECD-50 poverty rate, which is defined as 50% below each
country’s median income. All data are for 2016, the most recent year available.
SOURCE: Data from https://stats.oecd.org/ (OECD.Stats).
CONCLUSION 6-1: When tax credits, SNAP benefits, and other noncash
sources are counted as part of income, the family incomes of children on the
bottom rungs of the income distribution have nearly doubled over the past 40
years, and rates of child poverty have been cut in half. The family incomes of
children on the middle rungs have grown a bit faster, while those of children
on the top rungs have grown much faster. Child poverty in the United States
is considerably higher than in other Anglophone countries when poverty is
measured by relative income position.
Trends in Earnings and Employment
Parents’ employment has always been and remains one of the most important means of
avoiding intergenerational poverty. Over the last 50 years, earned income alone lifted the
incomes of between 70% and 75%of children above the poverty line (NASEM, 2019a, Figure 4-
1). Like family incomes, the earnings of low- and middle-skilled workers have risen more slowly

117

than the earnings of higher-skilled workers (Figure 6-3).3 Between 1973 and 2019, the average
hourly earnings for workers at the 10th and 50th percentiles grew by about 25%. Worker wages
at the 90th percentile grew by more than twice that amount. The gaps between the earnings of
workers in these various groups are generally larger in the United States than in most other
industrial countries, and for the most part they have grown more quickly here than elsewhere
over the past four decades (Bourguignon, 2022).
FIGURE 6-3 Average real wages in the U.S. for the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles, 1973–
2019.
NOTE: Average hourly wages are reported for those who are 16 years or older and are adjusted
into $2021 by the PCEPI.
SOURCE: Data from Economic Policy Institute, State of Working America Data Library,
“Wages by percentile and wage ratios,” 2022a. https://www.epi.org/data/#?subject=wage-
percentiles. Income adjusted to $2021 using the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index
(PCEPI), produced by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and retrieved from FRED, Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
3
The wage data presented in this chapter end in 2019 – just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
committee judged that it was too soon to interpret wage trends during COVID, given high inflation and large
fluctuations in unemployment.

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Causes of Labor Market Trends
To design effective policies to raise parental earnings among those living below poverty,
it is important to understand the causes of low levels of employment and earnings and their
impact on inequality. Although scholars continue to debate these causes, they point to three sets
of factors in the U.S. labor market:
• Competitive market forces, like technological change and globalization, that have favored
higher-skilled workers much more than their lower-skilled counterparts;
• Structural problems in labor markets, such as the fact that firms have more access to labor
market information than workers do and the often-high costs to workers of changing jobs,
both of which can increase the relative power of employers and lead to lower wages for
workers; and
• Weakening laws and institutions, leading to stagnant federal minimum wages and a
smaller share of workers who are union members.4
Technological change and globalization

Many economists believe that technological changes in the digital era (and earlier) are
behind the increasing gap between low- and higher-skilled workers, since many of these changes
have favored and rewarded workers with college degrees more than less-skilled workers.
Technological changes—and globalization—have restructured the labor market by reducing the
amount of “routine” work required by middle- and high-wage jobs. Today jobs in the middle of
the wage distribution—in technical aspects of health care or in advanced manufacturing or
information technology, for example—usually require some postsecondary skills and credentials,
making it much harder for many low-income workers to secure them (Holzer, 2015; Strain,
2020). Increasingly, the labor market also rewards a range of socioemotional skills—such as
interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate and work in teams (Orrell, 2021).
Globalization in its many forms—including an expansion of trade in goods and services,
as well as immigration—probably reinforces this trend, as good-paying jobs for workers without
college degrees in durable manufacturing and other industries have become scarcer as a result of
automation and foreign competition (Autor et al., 2008). Labor-market changes favoring higher-
skilled workers have laid the groundwork for the impressive successes of a number of career
training programs and form the basis for career training policies considered in Chapter 4.
The labor market that children in families living below poverty will enter will continue to
evolve, as new forms of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) become established throughout
the economy. Whether the same skills will continue to be compensated well over time remains
quite uncertain, as AI gains the ability to perform a much wider range of tasks that have
previously required human capabilities (Autor et al., 2022). Workers will need a solid base of
general skills—often referred to as 21st century skills (National Research Council, 2012)—if
These three factors help explain why less of the nation’s productivity growth in recent decades has gone to less-
4
educated US workers than to highly-educated workers and employers, compared with the period right after World
War II. Rising health care costs also help account for a growing gap between worker earnings and productivity (Saez
& Zucman, 2019); and US productivity growth has also slowed over time, and this slowdown still contributes to the
lower earnings growth of all workers (Stansbury & Summers, 2017).

119

they are to adapt to changes in the specific skills that the labor market demands and rewards at a
given time and place.
Structural problems in labor markets

A second set of explanations for low wages and labor-market inequality focuses on non-
competitive forces in the U.S. labor market, which give employers power to set lower wages than
they could if the labor market were fully competitive.5 The importance of these factors is
reflected in the substantial difference between the earnings of apparently comparable workers
who are employed by different firms. Many, but not all, firms have aggressively cut wages,
particularly for less-educated workers. At the other end of the spectrum are firms that choose to
pay above-market wages and create “good jobs” by investing heavily in worker skills and
performance (Osterman, 2018; Ton, 2014). Indeed, high-wage firms can create a “public good”
by raising worker productivity and wages. Economists argue that public goods might merit
public support (e.g., in this case subsidies or technical assistance)—although there is little
evidence to date on the effectiveness of strategies to encourage the creation of “good jobs.”
Weakening laws and institutions

A third set of explanations involves institutional factors, including legislation, that may
have slowed wage growth over time, particularly for workers without college degrees.
Historically, labor unions have helped to balance power in the labor market and enabled workers
to bargain effectively with their employers. Recent studies indicate that unions have increased
members’ wages by about 10% to 20% (Farber et al., 2018). However, the prevalence of unions
in the United States has declined precipitously. Today only 11.6% of U.S. workers are
represented by unions (Macpherson & Hirsch, 2021), as compared with 30% of U.S. workers in
the 1950s and the current average of 33.1% in countries belonging to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2019). U.S. unionization is increasingly
concentrated in the public sector with only 7.0% of private-sector workers are represented by
unions. Given the relatively high wage rates of unionized workers, the relevance of unions for
the economic status of parents who would otherwise be experiencing poverty remains subject to
debate, since it has always been very difficult for unskilled workers in the bottom decile or
quintile of earnings in the United States to unionize (Hirsch, 1980).
Legislatively mandated minimum wages have failed to keep pace with the cost of living,
contributing to wage stagnation among lower-skilled workers in general and workers of color in
particular (Brown & Hamermesh, 2019; Derenoncourt & Montialoux, 2021). The 2022 federal
minimum wage was $7.25 per hour, its lowest value in real terms (using the PCE inflation index)
since 2007 (and, before that, since 1996).6 By setting minimum wages above the federal level, a
number of states and some cities have offset this decline to some extent, although many U.S.
5
Economists refer to the power employers have to lower wages when they face limited competition for workers
as “monopsony power.” Monopsony can have many causes, ranging from a literal market concentration of
employers (e.g., in company towns) to frictions in the job search process or anti-competitive collusion among
employers through tools such as non-compete agreements (Nunn and Hunt, 2021; Card, 2022).
6
Using the CPI to measure inflation, the real value of the minimum wage is now at its lowest level since the
1950s.

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jobs are in states and localities that have not raised the statutory minimum above the federal
level.7
Economists continue to debate whether higher minimum wages reduce employment
among the youngest and least-educated workers—and if so, by how much (Burkhauser et al.,
2023; Cengiz et al, 2019). Some evidence (Clemens & Strain, 2021; Sorkin, 2015) suggests that
minimum wage increases have larger long-run negative effects, and that large increases are
particularly problematic, although there is disagreement about these conclusions as well.
Economists also disagree about the extent to which higher minimum wages can reduce poverty.
CONCLUSION 6-2: Low wages among less-educated workers (including

lower-skilled workers who are parents) over the last several decades in the
United States can be attributed largely to three factors: competitive market
forces, such as technological change and globalization, which have increased
skill requirements for middle-class jobs; structural problems, as limited
information for employees and the costs associated with changing jobs have
strengthened the bargaining power of employers and reduced the power of
employees; and weakening laws and institutions, such as federal minimum
wages and unionization.
Causes of Unequal Employment and Earnings by Gender and Race
Both wage levels and employment rates show important differences by gender and by
race. Figure 6-4 shows the median wages of full-time wage and salary workers by race and
gender, while Figure 6-5 presents employment rates for these groups. They show that:
• Median wages among Black and Latino workers are well below the wages of White
workers, and this holds true for both men and women. At the same time, wages for
women are below men’s wages for all subgroups.
• Employment among women continues to lag behind that of men within each racial group.
• Employment of Black men lags substantially behind that of other men.8
7
In 2022, more than 30 states raised their minimum wages above the federal statutory level of $7.25, as have
several major cities (New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and many others).
8
Figure 6-5 shows employment rates for the “noninstitutional” population, which excludes inmates. In 2018, 1.5
percent of Black men were incarcerated – a rate that was twice as high as for Latino men and five times as high as
the White rate https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in-
prison-2018-vs-2006/. Low-income Black men in the population are also significantly undercounted. As a result, the
official employment counts for Black men are biased upwards, and racial employment and labor-force gaps are
actually wider than those shown in Figure 6-5 (Holzer, 2021).

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FIGURE 6-4 Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by
race/ethnicity and sex, 4th quarter 2022 averages.
NOTE: Data are for wage and salary workers ages 16 and older. Persons whose ethnicity is
identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Data on Native American and Alaska
Natives are not reported.
SOURCE: Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2023).
https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earings/usual-weekly-earnings-current-quarter-by-race-
and-sex.htm.
While the wages and employment rates of women relative to men improved greatly
during the second half of the 20th century, progress largely slowed or ceased after 2000 (Blau &
Kahn, 2017). Many economists believe that the conflicting demands of employment and
caregiving responsibilities contribute to this persistent gender gap (Black et al., 2017; Goldin,
2021). This is a particular challenge for low-wage women, since the cost of child care relative to
their wages can be very high (Borowsky et al., 2022).

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FIGURE 6-5 Employment-to-population ratios by race and gender, November 2022.

NOTE: Data show the share of the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older who are
employed.
SOURCE: Data from Economic Policy Institute, State of Working America Data Library,
“[Employment-to-population ratio]” (2022b). https://www.epi.org/data/#?subject=epop.
Policies that increase maternal employment could have deleterious effects on child
development if parents are unable to secure high-quality child care. Rigorous evidence shows
that expansions of the federal Child Care and Development Fund’s child care subsidies prior to
the revision of that program in 2014 increased maternal employment, but also may have
worsened child development outcomes (Herbst & Tekin, 2010; see also Baker et al., 2019, and
Chapter 4). The 2014 revisions expanded access to higher quality child care, but whether they
have improved child outcomes remains uncertain (Johnson & Ryan, 2015). Increasing the
generosity of child and dependent care tax credit payments to low-income parents may also
increase employment, although the impacts of those types of increases have not been studied.
Substantial disparities in both employment and earnings remain between White workers
and both Black and Latino workers, at least partly because of discrimination (Charles & Guryan,
2008; see also Chapter 3). Owing to low employment and labor force participation rates, the
annual earnings of Black men are lower than those of White men (Bayer & Charles, 2018;
Holzer, 2021)—especially in the case of previously incarcerated people. The lower employment
rates and earnings of Black men reentering the labor market after incarceration reflect their lower
skills and work experience, but also their lack of access to social networks that might help them

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get jobs and, as confirmed in a number of rigorous studies, clear discrimination by employers
(Holzer et al., 2003; Pager, 2003). Employers tend to fear poor work performance or even
criminal conduct, even when the risks of recidivism are very low (Bushway et al., 2022).
However, tight labor markets are known to reduce discrimination against people of color (Holzer
et al., 2006) and vulnerable workers, including those with criminal records or disabilities
(Shambaugh & Strain, 2021).
CONCLUSION 6-3: Earnings and employment gaps by gender, especially

among less-educated women, can probably be attributed in part to
difficulties securing affordable and high-quality child care. Gaps by race,
especially between Black and other groups of men, reflect differences in skill
and experience, but also reflect discrimination and other barriers to
employment. Discriminatory barriers appear to be especially severe for
previously incarcerated men, particularly Black men.
DO FAMILY INCOME, PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT, AND EARNINGS DURING

CHILDHOOD DRIVE INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY?
Childhood Poverty and Intergenerational Outcomes
A child growing up below the poverty line experiences worse outcomes, on average, than
a child from a nonpoor family in virtually every dimension. In its review of the relevant
literature, the National Academies’ 2019 report, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty,
documented worse outcomes for children in poverty ranging from physical and mental health to
completed schooling and from labor market success to risky behaviors and delinquency
(NASEM, 2019a). But the largely correlational evidence on which that conclusion is based does
not prove that policy-driven increases in the family incomes of children who are in households
living below poverty would reduce intergenerational poverty. Income-based childhood poverty is
associated with a cluster of other disadvantages for children, including low levels of parental
education and living with a single parent (Currie et al., 2013). Are the differences between the
life chances of children living in poverty and other children a product of differences in childhood
economic resources per se, or do they stem from these other, correlated conditions?
It is easy to think of reasons why income itself matters. Families with higher incomes are
better able to meet their children’s basic needs and to invest in goods and services for their
families, such as toys and books that provide cognitive stimulation as well as higher-quality
nonparental child care and enrichment activities. Moreover, higher incomes may allow parents to
reduce or restructure their work hours to spend more time interacting with their children (Becker,
1991). A complementary “stress” perspective focuses on possible links between economic
hardship and parental psychological distress. Psychological distress can spill over into couple
relationships and can trigger harsher, inconsistent, and more detached parenting (Brody et al.,
1994; Conger et al., 1994). Such lower-quality parenting may, in turn, harm children’s cognitive
and socioemotional development (Conger et al., 2002; McLoyd, 1990).

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Causal studies
The NASEM (2019a) poverty report moved beyond the correlational literature to focus
its attention on studies that attempted to estimate the causal impacts of childhood poverty on
children. It considered studies of poverty impacts on both short- and longer-run outcomes, as
well as studies of programs such as Food Stamps (now SNAP) and Medicaid that were
introduced decades ago. The report’s overall conclusion was that
(t)he weight of the causal evidence indicates that income poverty itself causes negative
child outcomes, especially when it begins in early childhood and/or persists throughout a
large share of a child’s life. Many programs that alleviate poverty either directly, by
providing income transfers, or indirectly, by providing food, housing, or medical care,
have been shown to improve child well-being. (NASEM, 2019a, p. 89)
Of particular interest for the current report is the subset of studies that provide causal
evidence regarding intergenerational poverty; for example, those that link poverty in childhood
to children’s adult economic well-being. One example is the Aizer et al. (2016b) study of the
Mother’s Pension Program, which was rolled out during the first three decades of the 20th
century. The study found that receipt of benefits in childhood led to an increase in completed
schooling and earnings and improvements in adult health. A more recent example is the Hoynes
et al. (2016) evaluation of the county-based rollout of the Food Stamp program in the 1960s and
1970s, which linked the timing of the availability of Food Stamps during childhood to a strong
correlate of adult economic status: adult cardiovascular health. It found that the availability of
Food Stamps prior to conception or surrounding birth was associated with substantially lower
rates of cardiovascular symptoms in adulthood than when Food Stamps first became available
later in childhood or in adolescence.
Both the Aizer et al. (2016b) and the Hoynes et al. (2016) studies provide strong evidence
that cash or near-cash programs can reduce intergenerational poverty. In both cases, however, the
program benefits were first provided five or more decades ago—at a time when the economic
conditions faced by low-income families were far worse than they are today. Those conditions
set a much lower bar for improvement than was the case in the more recent past or would be
today.
An example of more recent research on the intergenerational impacts of safety net
policies is Barr et al.’s (2022) study of the availability of child tax credits like the EITC and CTC
very early in life. They took advantage of the fact that the families of children born just before
January 1 received the tax credits for the baby (which averaged $1,300) for virtually all the
child’s first year of life, whereas families of children born just after January 1 were not eligible
for the extra year of tax credit until the final (18th) year of the child’s eligibility. In this case, the
total amount of tax credits received for the two groups is the same, but the first group received
the extra benefits when the children were infants rather than adolescents. Using data on children
born during the 1980s and 1990s, the study found small but statistically significant adult earnings
advantages for the early-receipt group. This study reinforces the conclusions of the Hoynes et al.
(2016) food stamp study by highlighting the importance of income in the early years of life. Barr
et al. (2022) repeated their analyses using data from school records in North Carolina for
children born in the 1990s. Here again they found positive impacts for the extra income in the
first year of life, specifically on a number of achievement score and behavioral outcomes.

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Studies focused on the intergenerational impacts of the eitc

Yet another group of studies has taken advantage of the fact that, beginning in the mid-
1990s, many states enacted supplements to federal EITC payments (which are the same
regardless of where recipients live). Using this information, Bastian and Michelmore (2018)
found causal links between the timing and generosity of the state EITC supplement and
children’s completed schooling, employment, and earnings in early adulthood. Specifically, each
additional $1,000 of state EITC availability during adolescence was associated with a 4.2%
increase in children’s completing college, a 1.0% increase in their employment, and a 2.2%
increase in their early-adult earnings. In contrast to the Barr et al. (2022) tax credit study and the
Hoynes et al. study of the roll-out of the Food Stamp program, Bastian and Michelmore (2018)
found that EITC-induced income increases in adolescence were more potent predictors of
children’s adult outcomes than were income increases earlier in childhood.
As described in Appendix C: Chapter 6, other EITC studies based on variation in cross-
time or cross-state payment generosity have found impacts on childhood correlates of adult well-
being: children’s test scores (Dahl & Lochner, 2012), behavior problems (Hamad & Rehkopf,
2016), college enrollment (Manoli & Turner, 2014), birthweight (Hoynes et al., 2015), and food
insecurity (Batra & Hamad, 2021). EITC-based studies generally show both short-run and
intergenerational impacts for children, but they differ in their conclusions as to whether effects
are larger for EITC payments received while young or later in childhood. Some EITC-based
studies suggest that the benefits of the EITC to families and children may be larger for Black
individuals than other recipients. For example, Komro et al. (2019) and Batra et al. (2022) found
larger effects of state and federal EITC benefits for birth outcomes among Black mothers. Racial
and ethnic differences in the literature linking EITC receipt to adult outcomes have not been
reported.
When looking at this EITC evidence, it is important to bear in mind that the program
creates powerful work incentives for most recipients, and research has shown that it does in fact
increase employment among poor single mothers (Nichols & Rothstein, 2016; Schanzenbach &
Strain, 2021). The program’s simultaneous impacts on both household income and parental
employment make it difficult to determine just how much of the program’s beneficial impact on
children comes from its boost to household resources and how much from an increase in parental
employment or work hours.
Other noteworthy causal studies of the intergenerational impacts of income supplementation

Among the relatively few recent studies of the possible intergenerational benefits of
increases in family income, in the absence of increases in employment, is the Jacob et al. (2015)
comparison of children in families that won the lottery to receive Section 8 housing vouchers in
Chicago with children in families that lost that lottery. These researchers found virtually no
differences between the two groups in educational achievement and attainment, criminal
involvement, or health care utilization, even in the case of children who were very young at the
time of the lottery.
Other researchers have taken advantage of actual lotteries that are structured to pay out
large prizes in installments over many years, thus creating random variation in household income
between lottery winners and losers. Cesarini et al. (2017) find that Swedish lottery wins lead to
more health care utilization by winners’ children but have no effect on academic performance.

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Bulman et al. (2021) examine impacts of lottery wins on college attendance in the United States.
Impacts are modest at best and no larger for children in low- than those in high-income families,
even when the money was won when the children were young. This suggests no more than a
modest role for pure income supplementation, at least with regard to promoting college
attendance.
Other studies provide more support for causal impacts of income supplementation. In
particular, using data on children from western North Carolina with an oversample of Cherokee
Indians, Akee et al. (2010) and Akee et al. (2018) find that unexpected income increases from
the distribution of casino winnings to Cherokee youth and their parents reduce symptoms of both
behavioral and emotional disorders and also increase the probability that the Cherokee youth
would graduate from high school.9 The intergenerational evidence on income supplementation
does not allow for unambiguous conclusions; EITC-based studies suggest that children benefit
when income supplementation is coupled with increases in parental employment, but they may
or may not benefit from pure income supplementation.
A different interpretation of the evidence concludes that children may benefit more when
parents perceive that the income supplementation is intended for their children. The CTC clearly
encourages that perception, and qualitative accounts of parents who receive the EITC also
suggest that many believe that EITC dollars are “kids’ money” that should be disproportionately
directed toward children’s consumption needs (Sykes et al., 2015). Emerging evidence from a
clinical trial of a monthly cash supplement labeled “4MyBaby” indicates that parents allocate a
much larger fraction of the cash supplement, relative to other income sources, to child-related
expenditures such as books and toys (Gennetian et al., 2022). Messaged connections between
income supplementation and child expenditures are weaker in the case of lotteries and assistance
from programs providing Housing Choice Vouchers.
CONCLUSION 6-4: Evidence suggests that income transfer programs

during childhood and adolescence have the potential to improve children’s
educational and labor market attainment, as well as their physical health, in
adulthood. Studies examining policy changes over the past 30 years provide
the strongest evidence for intergenerational impacts of expansions of the
Earned Income Tax Credit, which increases both employment and income.
Parental Employment and Intergenerational Outcomes
As noted above, programs like the EITC increase both family incomes and parental
employment, and it is unclear which effect is responsible for its beneficial impacts on children.
Studies of the effect of incomes on intergenerational poverty are reviewed above. Here, we focus
on parental employment. Higher levels of parental employment might reduce intergenerational
poverty by
• Increasing childhood access to public benefits from the work-based safety net
• Creating positive parental role models and social networks that boost the future
employment and earnings of children, and
9
The strength of the evidence of income effects on completed schooling is weakened by the fact that the
structure of payouts to youth required that they earn high school degrees prior to age 21.

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• Increasing neighborhood employment or earnings, thereby perhaps expanding children’s

access to job networks and role models.
These are reviewed in turn.
Increased Access to Work-Based Safety-Net Benefits
Because so much of the U.S. safety net is tied to work, increasing employment and
earnings among parents living below poverty may also increase family income by increasing the
family’s access to benefits from programs such as the federal EITC and state supplements to that
program. As shown above, strong evidence links parental receipt of the EITC to improved child
outcomes and children’s earnings in adulthood, presumably through some combination of
increased parental income, employment, and earnings (during the EITC’s phase-in range of
income).10 On the other hand, employment-based benefits are, by design, not provided to low-
income families whose members are unable or unwilling to work, which can limit the
intergenerational mobility of children growing up in these families.
Role modeling
Parental employment might benefit children by creating positive role models or by
expanding parents’ social networks in ways that improve their children’s access to better jobs.
On the other hand, children’s development, especially in the case of young children, might be
compromised if children are placed in substandard child care or if the often-erratic work
schedules of parents provide less continuity at home and limits the time parents can spend
interacting with their children. While there is very little evidence on the mechanisms of role
modeling and social networks, the possible benefits or harms to children from parental
employment per se have been studied for years. On balance, this literature shows neither strong
benefits nor harm to children from parental employment.
Some of the most rigorous evidence on the effects of parental employment comes from
random-assignment evaluations of state welfare reforms made during the 1990s. Some reforms
increased maternal employment, but because benefits were reduced dollar-for-dollar as earnings
increased, they did not raise family income. Others boosted both maternal employment and
family income. There was no evidence from the first set that income-neutral increases in
maternal employment either hurt or helped children’s school achievement. Consistent with the
EITC-based evidence reviewed above, however, the second set of reforms—which increased
10
Barr et al. (2022) show impacts of the EITC on children's earnings in adulthood that are larger than can be
attributed solely to increases in parental employment. On the other hand, Dahl & Lochner (2012) estimate education
gains that are larger than can be attributed to earnings and income increases alone. Some policy makers consider the
EITC and other work-based public benefits (like subsidized child care) to be preferable to unconditional cash
assistance to the poor, which can reduce the work effort of parents. The estimated wage and income elasticities of
labor supply in the U.S. suggest that employment will rise when the wages of the poor are subsidized, but fall if
these subsidies are replaced with unconditional cash transfers, including child tax credits. Corinth et al. (2021) argue
that the Child Tax Credit expansion of 2021 would be likely to substantially reduce maternal employment. Using
similar methods but different assumptions about the magnitude of wage elasticities, Goldin et al. (2021) estimate a
much smaller labor supply response. Ananat (2022) showed very small, if any, negative effects on employment rates
associated with the increases in the Child Tax Credit of 2021, though a permanent increase in the CTC might have
larger employment effects than the temporary 2021 credit; and Baker et al. (2021) find virtually no negative effects
of child allowances on maternal employment in Canada.

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both work and family income—produced positive benefits for children, at least in the short run
(Duncan et al., 2011). Schildberg-Horisch (2016) provides a more general review of the literature
and concludes that most studies fail to find any effect of maternal employment per se—positive
or negative—on a child’s short- or long-term educational attainment.
Some evidence suggests that parental employment may have different impacts on child
outcomes by child gender and that a mother's employment very early in the life of a child can
have negative impacts on the child (Hill et al., 2005). Furthermore, involuntary employment loss
among mothers and fathers may have different impacts on children: Mothers spend more time
with their children after losing a job, which offsets the negative effects of their lost income. In
contrast, loss of employment does not appear to induce fathers to spend more time with their
children or to improve child outcomes (Lindo et al., 2013; Page et al., 2016).
Neighborhood employment effects

As discussed in Chapters 2 and 8, increasing parental employment at the neighborhood
level might benefit children in the ways suggested by Wilson (1987, 1996)—perhaps through
peer effects on behavior as well as through social networks. Correlational evidence shows
positive associations between neighborhood employment and the mobility of children later in life
(Chetty & Hendren, 2018; Chetty et al., 2016), but there has been no rigorous research on this
question.
CONCLUSION 6-5: Higher parental earnings and employment among low-

income families can potentially reduce intergenerational poverty by raising
family income, increasing access to the EITC and other safety-net benefits,
and—at both the family and neighborhood levels—providing positive role
models and access to good jobs through social networks. Interventions such
as the EITC that promote employment and increase income improve
children’s long-run outcomes; interventions that promote employment in the
absence of increased income do not appear to improve child outcomes; and
evidence on whether income supplementation alone improves long-term child
outcomes is inconclusive, with some studies showing positive effects and
others showing no improvement.
WEALTH AND INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
Wealth and income are distinct from one another, and each may play an independent role
in the perpetuation or alleviation of intergenerational poverty. A common economic measure of
wealth is net worth, which is the sum of a household’s financial assets (e.g., savings) and
nonfinancial assets (e.g., housing equity) minus the sum of all debts or liabilities. In other words,
net worth is a point-in-time accounting of assets and liabilities. In contrast, household income
refers to the flow of economic resources received by a household over some period, typically a
calendar year. Elderly-couple households often have relatively modest annual incomes but may
have accumulated substantial net worth, particularly if they have owned a house in an area with
rapidly rising housing prices. The families of children, particularly young children with parents
in the early stages of adulthood, often have both modest incomes and low (or even negative) net

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worth, when total debt surpasses total assets, for example if they have accumulated debt to
finance their post-secondary education.
Black and Latino families have much less wealth, on average, than White families
(Figure 6-6). In the case of Black families, some of these differences may be traced to
discriminatory policies like redlining that prevented the accumulation of wealth among Black
people (Chapter 3). Black households hold less than 3% of the nation’s wealth, despite
constituting 14% of the nation’s population. Their wealth position is also more fragile.
Moreover, they are significantly less able to transfer an improved wealth position to their
children (Pfeffer & Killewald, 2019). Kerman & Wong (2021) also show that distressed sales of
homes, often associated with unstable household income, contribute significantly to the gap in
housing wealth between Black and White families.
FIGURE 6-6 Median net worth of U.S. families in 2019.

SOURCE: Data from Federal Reserve Board, 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm.
In the short term, wealth can buffer families against unexpected events such as
unemployment, whereas wealth accumulated over the life course can provide economic security
in older age or be passed on to children. In the case of intergenerational poverty, low-income
families with higher net worth may be able to use their wealth to pay for their children’s
education or provide a more stable, safer, or healthier environment for them as they grow up;
this, in turn, might reduce the children’s chances of being poor in adulthood. By the same token,

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wealth-augmenting interventions such as “baby bonds” (described below) might help parents
overcome financial obstacles that stand in the way of their children’s success.
Because surveys rarely ask about wealth and its components, wealth is rarely included in
discussions of child poverty. Income and wealth are often presumed to be highly correlated, and
a low-income household is also assumed to be a wealth-poor household. Using a definition of
“net-worth poverty” defined as possessing assets worth just one-fourth of the federal poverty line
and data from the Surveys of Consumer Finances, Gibson-Davis et al. (2021) find that three
times as many households with children are in poverty when it is defined by net worth rather
than income, and that the fraction of households that are in poverty based on both net worth and
income is considerably higher among Black (16%) and Latino (14%) households with children
than White households (5%).
Household Wealth and Intergenerational Outcomes
Correlational studies
Parental wealth or its components are highly predictive of child outcomes, based on a
number of correlational studies. Most studies focus on post-secondary schooling outcomes, since
parents may use their financial resources to help their children attend postsecondary institutions,
contribute to meeting college expenses, and incur debt on behalf of their children (Hotz et al.
2021). This may be a contributing factor explaining why college attainment has also become
increasingly unequal, as children from higher-net-worth families are more likely to attend
college and graduate with four-year degrees (Pfeffer, 2018). In an international context,
Karagiannaki (2017) in Britain and Hällsten and Pfeffer (2017) in Sweden found similar
relationships when they examined parental wealth and adult child educational and labor
outcomes.
The amount that parents are able to save for their children’s college is positively
associated with household income. About one-third of households with less than $35,000 in total
annual income reported saving for college; this was true of almost all (91%) households making
more than $150,000 (Black & Huelsman, 2012). Parental wealth is associated with increased
college enrollment and attendance (Conley, 2001; Doren & Grodsky, 2016; Williams, Shanks &
Destin, 2009), choosing a four-year selective college over a four-year nonselective one (Jez,
2014), and with less undergraduate student debt (Addo et al., 2016; Jackson & Reynolds, 2013).
Parental savings earmarked for higher education are associated with increases in attendance
(Charles et al., 2007) and college retention (Elliott & Beverly, 2011), as well as reductions in the
child’s education debt (Elliott et al., 2014).
Children from wealthier families are more likely to attend college and complete their
degrees (Conley, 1999; Jackson & Reynolds, 2013). It is also very common in the United States
for parents to provide financial transfers to their children for educational purposes, which are
facilitated by greater familial wealth (Taylor & Meschede, 2018). When wealth was
disaggregated, liquid assets predicted the likelihood of college graduation (Zhan & Sherradan,
2011), and unsecured debt was negatively associated with graduating (Nam & Huang, 2009;
Yeung & Conley, 2008; Zhan & Sherradan, 2011).
Fewer studies focus on links between parental wealth and child labor outcomes in
adulthood. Toney and Robertson (2021) connect familial wealth to children’s income returns and

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document a positive correlation between parental and grandparental wealth and younger
generations’ income levels. Fox (2016) found heterogeneous associations between parental
wealth and income mobility among Black and White households, with increasing upward income
mobility for low-income White families but not low-income Black families.
Causal studies
Evaluating the likely impacts of wealth interventions requires an understanding of the
causal relationship between parental wealth and child outcomes. Causal studies are typically
based on the effects of wealth changes that are beyond the control of individual households. One
approach is to relate changes in local housing market values to child outcomes. Lovenheim
(2011) and Lovenheim and Reynolds (2013) took this approach, focusing on the consequences of
housing-market-induced changes in parental wealth a few years before children would be
expected to start college. Lovenheim (2011) found that students from low- and middle-income
families were more likely to attend college when families experienced gains in housing wealth.
An additional $10,000 of housing equity increased college attendance by 6 percentage points. It
was also associated with families selecting higher-quality schools, and children graduating with a
four-year degree. Lovenheim and Reynolds (2013) found that an increase in home equity is
associated with sending children to flagship universities over non-flagship schools. Using a
similar causal-modeling approach, Hotz et al. (2021) found that greater housing equity increased
college attendance and completion, but did not reduce children’s student debt. Cooper and
Luengo-Prado (2015) found that parental wealth increases children’s labor income when they
become adults.
Because lotteries can be thought of as a wealth transfer paid in monthly or annual
installments, the aforementioned Bulman et al. (2021) study of lottery-winning households is
relevant to the discussion of the effects of wealth and income. As discussed above, it found no
more than weak linkages to college attendance among children of low-income parents, and it
failed to generate strong support for a wealth-effect hypothesis.
While these studies come closer to estimating causal relationships, there are reasons to be
concerned about whether the results for lottery winners or homeowners generalize to low-income
families. All told, the literature offers no strong evidence as to whether increases in the wealth of
low-income families might be expected to reduce intergenerational poverty.
CONCLUSION 6-6: Controlling for income, family wealth is strongly

correlated with children’s adult outcomes. There is mixed evidence on the
causal impact of wealth transfers on children’s long-run outcomes. Black
families, having significantly less wealth than White families, are more likely
to be both income- and wealth-poor, and more likely to experience
downward intergenerational wealth mobility. No causal studies have
examined differential wealth impacts by race.

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INTERVENTIONS INVOLVING CHILDREN’S FAMILY INCOME AND WEALTH

AND PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT
The committee’s key task is to use the evidence reviewed above to identify income- and
employment-based policies and programs with the potential to reduce intergenerational poverty.
As explained in Chapter 1, we characterize the evidence on some of the programs or policies as
“strong” and denote them with an “*.” This indicates that the program’s or policy’s impact on
intergenerational poverty is supported by random-assignment evaluation evidence that has been
replicated across several sites or by compelling quasi-experimental evidence based on national or
multi-state data or a scaled-up program. In this case, the evidence supporting all three of our
direct-evidence policy ideas was judged to be “strong.”
However, this section also lists policy and program ideas for which supporting evidence
is indirect and therefore less certain.
Expanding the earned income tax credit

The committee’s review of the literature on the intergenerational impacts of policy-
induced changes in children’s family income and wealth, as well as parental employment,
reveals several promising approaches, but few have been proven to be effective. The strongest
direct evidence on the likely intergenerational effects for children is found for programs that
increase both family income and parental employment during childhood and adolescence. This
leads us to consider potential expansions to tax credits that would produce such increases. The
policy research literature does not tell us from which income levels increases are most effective
at reducing intergenerational poverty, nor does it identify the most powerful combinations of
increased income and employment for enhancing intergenerational mobility. Accordingly, we
present three options for reforms with different features. All are presented as modifications to the
EITC program, although it would also be possible to link such reforms to other tax credits (such
as the CTC). The first option scales up the existing EITC proportionally. The second
concentrates the expansion among very low earners. The third adjusts the credit to provide
income to nonworkers while still strengthening the incentive to work that is a key feature of the
current EITC.
• * EITC Option 1: Expand the EITC by increasing payments by 40%

across the entire schedule, keeping the current range of the phase-out
region. This option is the most straightforward because it would simply
increase the amounts of existing credits by 40%. It is illustrated in the upper-
left panel of Figure 6-7 for the example of a single mother with two children
and detailed in Appendix C: Chapter 6. This EITC reform was also included
as “EITC #2” in the NASEM (2019a) report. That report estimated the annual
cost of this EITC expansion to be $20.4 billion and predicted that it would
increase employment among low-income adults by 548,000 and reduce short-
run poverty among children by 15%.

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• * EITC Option 2: Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit by increasing

payments along the phase-in and flat portions of the EITC schedule. This less
expensive ($8.5 billion annually) option would increase the phase-in rate and thus
expand the incentive to work, while increasing resources available to the lowest-
income families with earnings. A version of this idea is also included as “EITC #1” in
the NASEM (2019a) report. There is a real-world precedent: California supplements
the federal EITC with a payment schedule of this type. If this option is implemented,
the policy will need to be designed to address low take-up among low-income filers,
since those below the IRS filing threshold often forgo filing taxes (Hamad et al.,
2022), and the administrative burdens of filing may therefore limit the access of the
lowest-income families that need the benefit the most.
FIGURE 6-7 EITC expansion options.

SOURCE: Based on committee-created simulations under different policy options for structuring
an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansion.
• * EITC Option 3: Increase generosity throughout the schedule, as in

Option 1, but also make available an annual credit of $1,000 per child to
families without earnings, phasing this out as earnings approach the first
threshold. A key feature of this policy is that it is available to families
without work, which are entirely left out of both the EITC as it currently

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stands and the first two options. These families tend to have the lowest level
of resources, and a transfer to such families was a feature of the 2021 Child
Tax Credit expansion. In this option, the maximum credit is increased
sufficiently to ensure that the incentive to work is greater than in the status
quo. As for Option 2, the committee considered policy design that could
facilitate the access of low-income earners and those with zero income who
are not required to file taxes. The precise cost of Option 3 is unknown,
although it would be considerably more expensive than either Option 1 or
Option 2.
A number of additional policy and program ideas are supported by indirect

evidence, though not by direct evidence. They are listed here, with details provided in
Appendix C: Chapter 6.
Combining expansions of the EITC with other programs

To increase the stability of monthly incomes for low-income families with children, the
EITC expansion could be combined with other programs. As detailed in Appendix C: Chapter 6,
three possible options are as follows:
• Combine an expansion of the EITC with expanding coverage of the Child Care and
Development Fund block grant to help address the problem of a mismatch between
the timing of child care expenses and EITC receipt during a child’s first year of life.
• Combine an expansion of the EITC with restructuring the Child and Dependent Care
Tax Credit (CDCTC) to provide more generous and timely reimbursement for the
child care expenses of low-income parents.
• Combine an expansion of the EITC with a monthly refundable Child Tax Credit
along the lines of what was implemented temporarily for the 2021 tax year.
Steps to address low wages

The education chapter (Chapter 4) spells out several policy ideas for addressing wage
stagnation among low-skilled workers by improving the education and labor market skills of
parents in poverty. These include broadening supports for low-income students at community
colleges and expanding sector-based training. All these policy ideas are supported by direct
evidence on intergenerational effectiveness. Other approaches to reduce inequities associated
with growing employer market power and weakening worker institutions, all of which rely on
indirect evidence, include these:
• Increase the federal minimum wage to $11 per hour or to $15 per hour, in 2023
dollars.
• Encourage the expansion of union representation in the labor force.
• Assist and incentivize the creation by private employers of more good jobs.
To improve labor market opportunities for people of color living below poverty
(including those who have been formerly incarcerated):

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• Improve disadvantaged workers’ access to more or better jobs.
Steps to increase the labor force participation of young mothers

Improving the labor market opportunities of low-income mothers could be
accomplished with two policy approaches, which were also included above in the EITC
section:
• Expand coverage of the Child Development Block Grant.
• Restructure the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to provide more
generous and timely reimbursement for the child care expenses of low-income
parents.
Steps to increase the wealth of low-income households

Attempts to increase the wealth of low-income households and improve the short-term
outcomes of these families and longer-term outcomes of their children have focused on
encouraging the accumulation of savings, for example through child development accounts
(CDAs), and the acquisition of assets, such as by becoming a homeowner (see Appendix C:
Chapter 6). To raise wealth among low-income households, especially those of color, the
committee views baby bonds as promising:
• Create baby bonds for children born in the United States, with the value of the
bonds determined by the family’s income and net worth at the time of the child’s
birth and targeting families with incomes below the SPM poverty thresholds and
total net worth in the bottom quintile of the U.S. net worth distribution.

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7
Children’s Family Structure
Trends in child poverty over the past half century have been shaped by a number of
demographic changes (NASEM, 2019a, Chapter 4). Increases in both educational attainment and
employment among low-income mothers, coupled with reductions in teen births, have lowered
the child poverty rate. At the same time, the declining share of children living with married
parents has led to an increase in child poverty. Much less is known about the impact of these
demographic factors on the subject of this report—intergenerational poverty.
For several reasons, this chapter focuses on family structure as a possible driver of
intergenerational poverty. First, significant changes have taken place in the structure of families
with lower levels of schooling and in Black families. Second, there has been voluminous
research linking family structure during childhood to intergenerational outcomes such as
completed schooling. And third, some recent research suggests that family structure at the
neighborhood level might influence intergenerational outcomes, independently of the structure of
children’s immediate families.
TRENDS IN FAMILY STRUCTURE
The share of children living in homes with married parents has fallen considerably over
the past five decades, dropping from 77% in 1980 to 63% four decades later (Figure 7-1). Most
of the decline had occurred by the turn of the millennium. Increases in family structures
characterized by unpartnered mothers, cohabiting parents, or more complex arrangements have
all contributed to a decline in the fraction of children living with married parents.

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FIGURE 7-1 Percent of children living with married parents and in other arrangements, 1980–
2019.
NOTE: A married-parent family is defined as a living arrangement in which the child’s mother
and father are married and present in the home, a mother and her married spouse are present in
the home, or a father and his married spouse are present in the home. This includes biological
parents, step-parents, adoptive parents, and both same- and opposite-sex married couples. An
unpartnered-mother household is defined as one in which a mother is present in the household,
but no other parental figure is present in the household. A cohabiting parent(s) household is
defined as one in which a child’s mother or father and an unmarried partner are present in the
household.
SOURCE: Adapted from Figure 1 in Kearney (2022) and based on data from the American
Community Survey.
Family structures differ markedly by race/ethnicity and education levels. The dark bars in
Figure 7-2 show that in 2019, the largest proportions of children living with both married parents
could be found among Asian children (88%), followed by White (77%) and Hispanic (62%)
children, while only 38% of Black children were living with married parents (Kearney, 2022).
All these fractions are considerably lower than they had been four decades earlier. In the case of
White, Hispanic, and Black children, rates of married-parent family structures were all more than
10 percentage points higher in 1980 than in 2019.
Rates of married-parent family structures are also markedly different across maternal
education levels. Figure 7-2 shows differences between mothers with college degrees and
mothers who had not completed high school; more complete data can be found in Kearney
(2022). Rates of married-parent family structures are 28 percentage points higher for White
college graduates than White high school dropouts. Corresponding differences amount to 17

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percentage points for Hispanic children, 30 percentage points for Black children, and 9
percentage points for Asian children.
FIGURE 7-2 Percent of children living with married parents, by race/ethnicity and education,
2019.
NOTE: A married-parent family is defined as a living arrangement in which the child’s mother
and father are married and present in the home, a mother and her married spouse are present in
the home, or a father and his married spouse are present in the home. This includes biological
parents, step-parents, adoptive parents, and both same- and opposite-sex married couples.
SOURCE: Adapted from Figure 4 in Kearney (2022) and based on data from the American
Community Survey.
Children reared in single-parent homes are much more likely than other children to be
living in poverty. In 2019, 8% of children living in homes with married parents had family
incomes below the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) poverty line, compared with more
than a quarter of children living with single mothers (Figure 7-3). It is important to note that, at
least in the United States, what seems to matter is that parents are married and not merely
cohabiting, as marriage tends to be associated with greater stability. Among nonmarried,
cohabiting couples, the probabilities of family dissolution before a child turns 12 for parents with
a high school education or less, some college, or a bachelor’s degree or more were 41%, 45%,
and 49%, respectively, between 2006 and 2010. For married parents, those probabilities were
26%, 27%, and 18% (Strain et al., 2022).

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FIGURE 7-3 SPM child poverty rates by family composition, 2019.

NOTE: SPM poverty rates apply to the calendar year 2019 as reported in the March, 2020
Current Population Survey. Estimates produced with the Census Bureau's public-use weights
which adjust for survey nonresponse related to the COVID-19 pandemic. See Rothbaum and Bee
(2021) for additional details regarding these weights. We identified the marital status of
children's parents by linking them to their parents and then determining their parents' marital
status. "Two-parent, married" includes children living with both of their parents who are married
to each other. "Single mother" includes children living with their mother, and their mother is
neither married nor cohabiting. Children in all other family types are in the "other" category.
SOURCE: Data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population
Survey (CPS-ASEC) data from IPUMS-CPS (2022).
FAMILY STRUCTURE AND INTERGENERATIONAL CHILD WELL-BEING
Many studies have found that children growing up in families with two married parents
tend to fare better during both childhood and adulthood. Children raised in married-parent homes
earn higher grades and are less likely to be suspended from school (Autor et al., 2016; Kearney
& Levine, 2017; Tillman, 2007). Living in a married-parent home is positively associated with
completing high school and both attending and graduating from college (Kearney & Levine,
2017). These correlates are all linked to skill acquisition, which itself is associated with better
adult economic outcomes.

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In their study of intergenerational outcomes, Lopoo and DeLeire (2014) found that
children growing up in stable married households completed 1.6 more years of schooling than
other children. In addition, they found that these children’s adult family incomes were $52,000
higher than those of children in families with never-married parents. Differences in these
intergenerational outcomes were smaller, yet still notable, when children in stable married
families were compared with children who were born into married-couple families but
experienced marital dissolution while they were growing up. Indeed, the effects of divorce may
offer a window into the benefits of marriage. Gruber (2004) found that adults who, as children,
experienced the easing of legal requirements for divorce were less well educated, had lower
family incomes, separated from a partner more often, and were at higher risk of suicide than
those who had grown up in areas that had maintained stricter divorce laws.
An obvious possible reason why married-parent family structure is associated with better
child outcomes is that having two adults in the home means twice as many potential income
earners relative to single-parent families. Hastings and Schneider (2021) find this pattern of
income differences in the Consumer Expenditure Survey data and go on to show that families
with married parents spend nearly twice as much on enrichment goods and services (e.g.,
daycare centers, private-school tuition, lessons, and other extra-curricular activities) for their
children than either cohabiting or single parents. Family income accounted for virtually all of
these expenditure differences between married and single parents but, interestingly, for only
about half of the differences between married and cohabiting parents.
Chen, Hill, and Holzer (2009) found that wages and educational attainment (among other
outcomes) are negatively associated with growing up in a single-mother household. When they
control for income, the association between growing up in a single-mother household and later-
life outcomes of youth falls by one-third to one-half. On the other hand, conditional on parent
income, Chetty et al. (2020) find little association between children’s adult earnings and their
parents’ marital status.
If parental family income explains most of the associations between family structure and
intergenerational outcomes, this does not imply that differences in child outcomes would
disappear if families without two married parents in the home were simply given more money.
Factors associated with a married, two-parent family structure, such as stability, a nurturing
home environment, health insurance coverage, home ownership, and paternal involvement, may
have independent effects on intergenerational mobility (Ribar, 2015). Marriage increases the
likelihood that these factors will be present in the home. Even after holding them constant,
however, Ribar (2015) found a direct positive association between child well-being and
marriage. Children growing up in a two-parent home may also enjoy substantially more time
with a parent (Hamermesh, 2022), which could complement parental financial investments
(Lundberg & Pollak, 2014).
DOES FAMILY STRUCTURE AFFECT INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY?
Associations between family structure and longer-run outcomes, even after adjustments
for income and other demographic differences, do not prove that family structure itself is the
active ingredient. Estimating the causal effect of marriage on child outcomes, including

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intergenerational poverty, is notoriously difficult because the true causes may lie in unmeasured
differences across family types, rather than in family structure itself.
In their review of the evidence on the effects of a father’s absence, McLanahan et al.
(2013) report that the most rigorous studies tend to show detrimental impacts on child outcomes,
although the impacts are smaller than those suggested by correlational studies. They argue that
the most convincing evidence of impacts concerns high school graduation and adult mental
health. The review by Kearney and Levine (2017) observed that while no study yields truly
convincing causal evidence, the persistence of impacts across so many different kinds of studies
is, in their words, “strongly suggestive of a causal relationship.”
A notable recent working paper by Pope et al. (forthcoming) uses data from U.S. Census
and tax records to compare siblings who experience a parental divorce at different ages to
estimate the effect of the duration of living in a post-divorce household on children’s adult
outcomes. These researchers find that the changes in family structure associated with divorce
lead to reductions in adult earnings and college attendance and increases in teen births and
incarceration. Exposure to divorce prior to age 11 is associated with a reduction of more than 6%
in children’s family income in adulthood. In addition, Pope et al. (forthcoming) find larger
effects for children who experience a divorce at younger ages and children of low-income
families.
Neighborhood Differences in Family Structure
Thus far, we have concentrated on the structure of a child’s immediate family. As

described in Chapter 2, however, the Chetty et al. (2014) correlational study of intergenerational
mobility finds lower mobility for low-income children in neighborhood areas with a large
fraction of single parents in the neighborhood. Family structure appears to operate independently
at the family and neighborhood levels; for example, children of single parents have higher rates
of upward intergenerational mobility if they grow up in a neighborhood with fewer single-parent
households. Importantly, this study also controls for household income.
Chetty et al. (2020) find that these neighborhood effects are particularly strong for Black
males. While differences in family characteristics explain little of the Black-White income gap
across generations, there is a striking association between Black father presence in neighborhood
and second-generation outcomes for Black males. Although not a causal study, the specific
nature of these correlations rules out broad mechanisms that would affect both genders and races
(such as differences in the quality of schools). Instead, it points to channels that affect Black
boys in particular, such as mentoring by Black male role models in the community or differences
in the way Black men are treated by their peers and adults in areas where Black fathers are
involved in their children’s households.
Incarceration and Family Structure Differences
A possible cause of trends toward single-parent family structures is the striking increase
in incarceration over the last quarter of the 20th century (Wilson & Neckerman, 1986; National
Research Council, 2014). Lopoo and Western (2005) found sharply lower rates of first marriage
among individuals who have been incarcerated, and they observed that negative associations
between incarceration and marriage are stronger for White men than for either Hispanic or Black
men. However, simulations based on their correlational evidence show that marriage rates for

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Black men would change very little in the absence of incarceration. This is consistent with the
analyses of Schneider et al. (2018), which finds that prior incarceration accounts for only about
8% of the decline in marriage rates among Black men. The more general conclusion of Lopoo
and Western (2005) is that men at risk of imprisonment are very unlikely to marry, whether or
not they are actually incarcerated.
CONCLUSION 7-1: Single-parent families have become much more

prevalent over the past 50 years, though largely among parents who lack
community college or four-year college degrees. Rising rates of incarceration
account for some but not most of these trends. There is a strong association
between growing up in a single-parent family and low-income status in
adulthood. Evidence on causal links between growing up in a single-parent
family and being poor as an adult is strongly suggestive.
FAMILY STRUCTURE INTERVENTIONS
A number of social policies might influence the decisions that teens and adults make
about family composition, but recent reviews conclude that the existing literature on marriage
incentives and disincentives provides little reason to believe that current social policies have had
a substantial impact (e.g., NASEM, 2019a, Chapter 7).
An alternative approach to promoting married, two-parent families is to develop
interventions that are specifically intended to increase the share of children living in two-parent
households (Haskins, 2015). An ambitious attempt to develop and evaluate a number of such
programs was undertaken during the George W. Bush administration, but recent reviews have
concluded that all failed to boost marriage rates or improve longer-run child well-being
(NASEM, 2019a, Chapter 7). A recent meta-analysis of clinical trials of a broader range of
education programs designed to improve couple relationships showed modest but statistically
significant impacts on relationship skills and quality, but not on the key family-structure
outcome: the stability of the relationship (Hawkins et al., 2022). These results do not prove that
couple relationship programs are without value—but simply that we have not yet discovered a
program model which, if scaled up, is actually effective at promoting married, two-parent
families.
CONCLUSION 7-2: While it appears that married, two-parent family

structures may, in fact, reduce intergenerational poverty, we lack direct
evidence of policies and programs that are capable of promoting such
structures.

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8
Children’s Housing and Neighborhood Environments
The places where children live are strong correlates of their own poverty later in life.
Both the homes and the broader neighborhoods in which they live, learn, and grow can provide
stability, safety, and opportunity to enable children to thrive. Alternatively, they can present
obstacles and risks to their healthy development and socioeconomic futures. This chapter begins
with a discussion of research in the housing field and then turns to the research on
neighborhoods. Each respective section describes the housing and neighborhood conditions for
low-income families and reviews the evidence on how housing and neighborhood factors are
linked with intergenerational poverty. The final section provides evidence on specific
interventions targeting these factors. The role of neighborhood crime and crime-related
interventions are covered in Chapter 9.
HOUSING AS A DRIVER OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
School-age children spend a majority of their time on activities (including sleep) within
their families’ housing unit (Hall & Nielsen, 2020). That housing is a foundational environment
for their health, education, and development, and a strong correlate of their long-term outcomes.
Housing here refers to the physical unit itself—the walls, the systems, the stairs, the windows—
and the ways families occupy, use, pay for, and change housing. Children in low-income families
experience considerably more housing problems than children in higher-income families. In this
section, we review the evidence on five key dimensions of these housing problems, from the
most micro level of housing quality to the more global issue of homelessness, which is the
product of many factors related to housing.
Housing quality is the factor most closely linked with children’s outcomes, representing
the physical character and maintenance of the housing unit. Housing crowding refers to the
number of people within a housing unit, which is relevant for things such as noise levels and
study spaces. Housing stability and tenure are tightly related, since homeowners tend to move
less frequently than renters, and frequent moves can be disruptive. Housing affordability affects
the availability of household financial resources to pay for children’s development. Finally, a
lack of housing, or homelessness, reflects critical housing needs that make other investments in
children more difficult. While there are consistent findings about the importance of these factors
for children’s long-term outcomes, much of the research on housing is correlational in nature.

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Housing Quality
Low-income households are more likely to experience “inadequate housing,” defined by

the federal government as housing “with severe or moderate physical problems, including
plumbing and heating deficiencies; rodent and cockroach infestations; and structural issues such
as cracks and holes in walls and ceilings, water leaks, broken windows, and crumbling
foundations”1 (Lew, 2016; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2014). Figure
8-1 shows the distribution of those experiencing inadequate housing by poverty status and
race/ethnicity. Households with cash incomes below the official poverty line are more than twice
as likely as nonpoor households to experience inadequate housing, and Native American, Black,
and Latino households are disadvantaged relative to White households. Homeownership, which
we discuss in greater detail below, is related to better housing quality (Haurin et al., 2002).
Exposure to household and environmental toxins (e.g., mold, asbestos, dust mites, lead, smoke,
heavy metals, nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter) is also greater for low-income and
racial/ethnic minority groups (Adamkiewicz et al., 2011; Hauptman et al., 2021; Vivier et al.,
2011). Further evidence on lead exposure and its effects is provided in the neighborhood section
below and in Chapter 5, which covers children’s health.
1
For full typology, see American Housing Survey, 2019, Appendix A: Subject Definitions, and Table Index, A-
15-16 (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau)
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/2019/2019%20AHS%20Definitions.pdf

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FIGURE 8-1 Inadequate housing by poverty status and race/ethnicity.

NOTE: See text for the definition of inadequate housing according to the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Poverty is measured with the Official Poverty
Measure.
SOURCE: Data from U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey, 2019.
https://www.census.gov/programs-
surveys/ahs/data/interactive/ahstablecreator.html?s_areas=00000&s_year=2021&s_tablename=T
ABLE1&s_bygroup1=1&s_bygroup2=1&s_filtergroup1=1&s_filtergroup2=1.
Housing quality is positively correlated both with children’s health and with cognitive
and social development (e.g., Barros et al., 2018; Coley et al., 2013; Dunn, 2020; Leventhal &
Newman, 2010). Exposure to household lead, pollutants, and allergens harms children’s health
and development (Huang et al., 2021; Maciag et al., 2022; and see Chapter 5). The “Healthy
homes” policy and grant initiatives at the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) all recognize the relationship between household quality indicators and
children’s well-being. Researchers and healthy housing advocates have identified a number of
interventions—such as air filters, education on pollutants, remediation, and smoking bans—that
can improve children’s health (Butz et al., 2011; Morgan et al., 2004; National Center for
Healthy Housing, 2009; Reddy et al., 2017). However, there are no studies that establish a direct

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causal link from housing quality during childhood to adult socioeconomic outcomes, and the
indirect pathways are based on correlational studies.
Housing Crowding
Moving from the unit itself to the density of people who reside within it, research on
household crowding hypothesizes that in a given household, more people per room increases the
household’s stress and interrupts children’s study, sleep, and play. Crowding is frequently
defined as more than one person per room or per bedroom (Blake et al., 2007). Household
crowding is more common among low-income and non-White households (Cross, 2018; Kunesh,
2021; Mateyka, 2015). Longitudinal studies have found negative short-term (Solari and Mare,
2012) and long-term (Conley, 2001; Lopoo & London, 2016) impacts of household crowding on
educational attainment and on youth criminal convictions (Blau et al., 2019). Similarly, living
with extended kin and non-kin adults during childhood is associated with lower high school
graduation and college attendance rates (Harvey, 2020). However, sensitivity to ethno-racial
diversity in household composition is important. Native American, Asian, Black, and Latino
households are more likely than White households to be multigenerational and to include
extended kin, and these arrangements may be beneficial for other outcomes (Cross, 2018).
Housing Stability and Tenure
The evidence suggests that housing stability—or low residential mobility—improves

children’s long-term outcomes. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, “Low-income
Americans are more likely to move…, with 14% of people in the bottom income quartile moving
between 2017 and 2018, compared with 11% of those in the top income quartile” (Frost, 2020, p.
1). Frequent moves harm children’s educational attainment, health, and delinquency in short- and
long-term studies (Metzger et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2018; Simsek et al., 2021). A large-scale
population study in Norway using sibling fixed-effects models found weak but significant effects
of residential moves on dropping out of high school, lower adult incomes, and early parenthood
(Tønnessen et al., 2016).
Evictions are one driver of housing instability that has been shown to harm children and
their families. Each year, there are six eviction filings nationally for every 100 renting
households (Eviction Lab, 2018), and rates are higher among female-headed households,
families with children, and Black and Latino families (Desmond et al., 2013; Desmond, 2014;
Desmond & Gershenson, 2017). Families experiencing an eviction order are at higher risk of
homelessness, and have reduced earnings and consumption (Collinson et al., 2019; Collinson et
al., 2022). Studies have shown that evictions increase the odds of losing Medicaid coverage, with
subsequent disruptions in health care access (Schwartz et al., 2022). They have also found that
exposure to evictions in utero is associated with higher rates of preterm birth and low
birthweight among infants (Khadka et al., 2020), and that greater neighborhood-level eviction
rates are associated with higher rates of child maltreatment, particularly among older children
(Bullinger & Fong, 2021). Families that are already vulnerable—for example, because of a child
with special health needs—are more likely to be evicted (Schwartz et al., 2021). Conversely,
during the COVID-19 pandemic state policies that protected renters from eviction were
associated with improvements in renters’ mental health (Leifheit et al., 2021). While these
studies do not establish causation, they suggest an important relationship between housing

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instability and negative impacts on children that have been shown to worsen later adult
outcomes.
Home ownership, in contrast, increases residential stability, including for low-income
families (Kull et al., 2016). This may be one explanation for the correlational research that finds
positive short-term (Cordes et al., 2023) and long-term effects on children of living in an owned
home (Aarland et al., 2021; Blau et al., 2019; Galster et al., 2007; Harkness & Newman, 2003;
Rostad et al., 2019), although some research finds that differences may be due to selection into
home ownership and are thus weaker than previously estimated (Cordes et al., 2023; Holupka &
Newman, 2012). For low-income White families, home ownership seems to be beneficial for
children’s outcomes, but this does not hold true for Black families (Holupka & Newman, 2012).
It should also be noted that low-income homeowners are more likely to exit from home
ownership than higher-income homeowners (Herbert & Belsky, 2008), thereby losing whatever
benefits home ownership may have conferred on their children.
There are sizable disparities in home ownership rates by income and race/ethnicity
(Figure 8-2). Households of all races with incomes below 50% of area median income (AMI)
have lower home ownership rates than their counterparts further up the income distribution.
Notably, White households with incomes below 50% of AMI are just as likely to be homeowners
as Black households earning between 80% and 120% of AMI. Racial disparities in asset
ownership and housing wealth may explain racial gaps in intergenerational mobility (Fox, 2016;
Toney & Robertson, 2022), a topic explored further in Chapter 6. While there is some evidence
to support home ownership as a housing intervention (as opposed to an asset intervention) to
improve low-income children’s outcomes, there is no strong causal evidence. Indeed, the
relevant operating mechanisms may be residential stability and housing and neighborhood
quality, rather than ownership per se. Furthermore, there are significant financial risks of
homeownership for low-income households that may lead to greater stress and more residential
moves for families (Bostic & Lee, 2008; Tyuse & Birkenmaier, 2006; Wainer & Zabel, 2020).

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FIGURE 8-2 Homeownership rates based on household income as a percent of area median by
race/ethnicity, 2019.
NOTE: White, Asian, Black, and Native American householders are non-Latino. Latino
householders may be of any race(s).
SOURCE: Data adapted from Figure 18 of Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard
University (2022) with the original source using data from the US Census Bureau, 2019
American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates.
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/interactive-
item/files/Harvard_JCHS_State_Nations_Housing_Figures_1.pptx.
Housing Affordability
Low-income households are less likely than high-income households to be able to afford
their housing. The standard measure of affordability is “housing cost burden,” or the condition of
paying more than 30% (or 50%, defined as severe housing cost burden) of gross income toward
housing. Figure 8-3 shows housing cost burdens for 2020 by income, home ownership status,
and race/ethnicity. Renters are more burdened than owners, low-income households are more
burdened than higher-income households, and Black, Latino, and Asian households are more
burdened than White households. Native American households experience slightly higher rates
of housing cost burden than White households, but this fact is accompanied by significantly
higher rates of overcrowding and lower housing quality in tribal areas (U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development, 2017). Over 70% of households earning less than $30,000 a
year pay more than 30% of their income towards rent or mortgages, and roughly half pay more
than 50% of their income.

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FIGURE 8-3 Housing cost burden, by tenure, income and race/ethnicity, 2020.
NOTE: Moderately cost-burdened households pay more than 30% and up to 50% of their
household income for housing. Severely cost-burdened households pay more than 50% of their
household income for housing. White, Asian, Black, and Native American householders are non-
Latino. Latino householders may be of any race(s).
SOURCE: Data from Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University (2022) with the
original source using data from the US Census Bureau, 2019 & 2020 Experimental American
Community Survey 1-Year Estimates.
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/interactive-
item/files/Harvard_JCHS_State_Nations_Housing_2022_Appendix_Tables_0.xlsx.
Limited research has been done on the direct impacts of housing affordability (without
housing assistance) on short-run child outcomes (Holme, 2022), and to our knowledge no
research has been done on later-life outcomes. Using propensity score matching and instrumental
variable techniques, Newman and Holupka (2014) found an inverted U-shaped pattern for the
effects of housing cost burden on children’s cognitive outcomes. That is, as housing becomes
more expensive relative to families’ resources, children’s math and reading scores improve, but
then they decline as housing cost burden exceeds 30% to 40%. Newman and Holupka (2015)
find a similar inverted-U relationship between housing cost burden and parental investments in
child enrichment. In other words, very low-cost and very high-cost housing relative to income
seems to be associated with poor short-term child educational performance. The negative effect
of low-cost housing may be due to the correlation of such housing with poor housing quality.

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Housing unaffordability may also contribute to other housing-related factors that affect
children’s long-term outcomes, such as housing quality and stability (Holme, 2022). We found
no studies on the direct relationship between housing costs and intergenerational poverty.
Homelessness
Being without housing entirely is the most severe form of housing deprivation. The 2020
Annual Homeless Assessment Report (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,
2021) estimates the population living in unhoused families with children to be 171,575, or 30%
of the total population without housing. This represents a decline from a peak of over 240,000
people in unhoused families with children in 2010. All non-White groups, with the exception of
Asian Americans, are overrepresented among unhoused families relative to their proportion of
the total U.S. population (see Table 8-1). Native American and Pacific Islander families are
overrepresented by a factor of more than 7. Point-in-time counts of people without any form of
shelter underestimate the total number of families in precarious housing situations or who may
experience homelessness over the course of the year. For example, the U.S. Department of
Education reports that over the course of the 2019–2020 school year, 52,307 enrolled school
children were unsheltered, 146,769 lived in shelters or other transitional housing, and 991,300
lived doubled-up with other families (National Center for Homeless Education 2021, Table 3).
TABLE 8-1 Families Without Housing, by Race/ethnicity, 2020

Race or Ethnicity Unhoused Families (%) U.S. Population (%) Ratio
White 35.0 75.8 0.5
Asian 1.1 6.1 0.2
Latino 29.2 18.9 1.5
Black 53.1 13.6 3.9
Native American 2.3 0.3 7.7
Pacific Islander 2.1 0.3 7.3
Multiple Race 6.5 2.9 2.2
NOTE: Racial categories include Latino people in both columns.
SOURCE: Data from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (2021); U.S. Census
Bureau (2023).
Correlational studies find negative effects of being unhoused during childhood on

children’s education and health (Perlman & Fantuzzo, 2010; Sandel et al., 2018) and on high
school graduation, adult employment, and the likelihood of being stably housed as an adult
(Bassuk et al., 2014; Cobb-Clark & Zhu, 2017; Parpouchi et al., 2021). Most studies cannot
distinguish between the unique effect of being unhoused from the general effect of growing up in
a poor household (Buckner, 2008). However, an experimental policy treatment showed that
giving unhoused families permanent housing reduced homelessness, food insecurity, the number
of schools that children attended, school absences, and child behavior problems (Gubits et al.,
2018). Many of these measures are correlated with later adult outcomes. For example, childhood
food insecurity is related to poorer adult outcomes (see Chapter 5 for more detail), and school
mobility correlates with lower educational attainment, lower occupational prestige and greater

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likelihood of arrest in adulthood (Herbers et al., 2013). Hence, there is indirect evidence that
reducing homelessness in childhood would increase the likelihood of upward mobility.
Permanent housing subsidies have been shown in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) study to
reduce family homelessness (Gubits et al., 2018); accordingly, we discuss housing choice
vouchers later as an intervention to interrupt this pathway of intergenerational poverty.
CONCLUSION 8-1: The evidence on the effects of housing on

intergenerational poverty is nearly all correlational or drawn from
longitudinal panel surveys. The most consistent correlational evidence is on
the effects of housing quality on children’s short-term outcomes, with the
strongest evidence on the long-term effects of lead exposure. There is also
correlational evidence on the negative effects of homelessness, overcrowding,
residential mobility, and very low or high housing costs on children’s short
and long-term outcomes.
NEIGHBORHOODS AS A DRIVER OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, the neighborhood environments of low-income

children and non-White children differ significantly from those of high-income and White
children and are an important correlate of intergenerational mobility. Residential segregation by
income has increased since at least the 1980s (Logan et al., 2020; Reardon et al., 2018),
particularly among families with children (Owens, 2016). This means that struggling and affluent
families are more likely to live in separate neighborhoods and more likely to live close to
families of a similar socioeconomic status now than in the past.
The racial residential segregation of Black and White people has declined steadily since
about the 1970s, but it is still high in many large cities. Residential segregation between Latino
and White households has remained steady or increased slightly in some areas (Elbers, 2021;
Logan, 2013). Because of residential segregation by both race and class, poverty is
disproportionately concentrated in the neighborhoods in which non-White families and children
live. Black and Native American children are more than seven times as likely and Latino
children more than four times as likely as White children to live in neighborhoods with poverty
rates of 30% or more (see Figure 8-4). The child poverty rate on Native American reservations
was 42% in 2010 (Akee & Taylor, 2014). Children who grow up in high-poverty neighborhoods
have worse adult outcomes than children living in low-poverty neighborhoods (Chetty et al.,
2016).

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FIGURE 8-4 Children living in high-poverty areas by race and ethnicity in the United States,
2017-2021.
NOTE: High-poverty area is defined as living in a census tract with 30% or more of the
population having an income below the federal Official Poverty Measure thresholds.
SOURCE: Data from Kids Count Data Center (2023) with the original source using data from
the U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2010 to 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-year data.
https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/7753-children-living-in-high-poverty-areas-by-race-
and-
ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/2454,2026,1983,1692,1691,1607,1572,1485,1376,1201/10,11,9,12
,1,185,13/14943,14942.
Children in families with incomes below poverty and children living in poor
neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to lead through air pollution, soil-based lead,
leaded water pipes, and lead paint and dust in older housing structures (Hauptman et al., 2021;
Vivier et al., 2011). Children in families below poverty experience greater negative cognitive and
physiological effects from living in census tracts where the risk of lead is high (Marshall et al.,
2020). As discussed in more detail in the chapters on health (Chapter 5) and crime and criminal
justice (Chapter 9), childhood lead exposure is linked with greater delinquency in adolescence
and young adulthood (Aizer & Currie 2019; Manduca & Sampson, 2019; Wright et al., 2008)
and with lower adult IQ, higher rates of teenage pregnancy, and declines in occupational status
and income relative to parents (Reuben et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2013; also see Boyle et al.,

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2021; Manduca & Sampson, 2021). While the magnitude of the impact seems to be the same for
Black, White, and Latino children, the levels of exposure are much higher for Black and Latino
children (Manduca & Sampson, 2021). More research on household and environmental
exposures in Native American communities is needed (Barros et al., 2018).
Concentrated poverty also increases young people’s exposure to violence, which is
negatively correlated with children’s educational, labor market, and delinquency outcomes
(Beland & Kim, 2016; Burdick-Will et al., 2021; Eitle & Turner, 2002; Nader et al., 1990;
Sharkey, 2010) and reduces intergenerational mobility (Chetty et al., 2014; Sharkey & Torrats-
Espinosa, 2017). We review this literature more fully in Chapter 9.
Experimental and quasi-experimental evidence demonstrates that exposure to “better
neighborhoods” during childhood has a significant association with children’s outcomes in
adulthood. But what is a better neighborhood? Experimental interventions to improve the
physical quality of neighborhoods show that beautifying vacant lots and fixing abandoned homes
significantly reduce crime rates (see Chapter 9). Just as housing quality seems to matter, so does
the physical quality of the neighborhood. However, understanding which aspects of
neighborhoods matter most—e.g., poverty levels, crime rates, labor markets, or residential
segregation that decreases resources for racial/ethnic minorities in particular—is challenging, as
these factors are often highly correlated. As discussed in Chapter 2, a literature has emerged
using geographic variation and following families that move across neighborhoods to understand
what factors explain differences in intergenerational mobility across areas (Chetty 2014; Chetty
et al., 2020; Chetty et al., 2022). Studies have found several systematic predictors of differences
in intergenerational mobility, such as poverty rates, school quality, the degree of inequality, the
fraction of children living with single parents, connectedness to high-income people, and
historical factors such as redlining and Jim Crow laws. Because many of these factors can be
interrelated, most studies therefore consider a single dimension of neighborhood disadvantage—
often neighborhood poverty—or examine a composite measure of a few facets of disadvantage.
Much of the experimental evidence on the importance of neighborhood factors comes
from HUD’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment, which began in the 1990s and has since
been revisited by numerous researchers using contemporaneous data to measure participants’
long-run outcomes along a range of dimensions. This work has revealed that some of the
children who moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods as part of MTO experienced positive
effects not only on their average earnings and educational prospects (Chetty et al., 2016), but on
their physical and mental health as well (Pollack et al., 2021). Importantly, it was young children
in particular whose long-run outcomes improved after they moved, suggesting that the age prior
to adolescence may be a key point to intervene on the children’s neighborhood environment;
similar benefits were not observed for older children or adults in this study.
These results have been replicated in many quasi-experimental and observational studies
of children who move across areas at different ages using larger samples. Using de-identified tax
records covering more than five million children whose families moved across counties between
1996 and 2012, Chetty et al. (2016) showed that, on average, children whose families move to a
better neighborhood have better outcomes, and the beneficial effect increases as the amount of
time they spend growing up in the better area increases. This pattern holds for a range of
outcomes including earnings, college attendance, incarceration rates, and teenage birth rates.
Similar findings were documented for children who moved out of severely distressed public
housing projects in Chicago (Chyn, 2018).

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Analogous exposure effects on educational and economic outcomes have been shown in
datasets covering movers in international settings, including Australia, Canada, and Denmark,
(Deutscher, 2020; Faurschou, 2018; Laliberté, 2021). Researchers have observed similar patterns
for health. A series of studies examined the effects of quasi-randomly assigned neighborhoods of
arrival among refugee children and adults in Denmark and Sweden (Foverskov et al., 2022a;
2022b; Hamad et al., 2020; White et al., 2016) and found that relatively more disadvantaged
neighborhoods were associated with poorer long-run physical and mental health outcomes.
Yet despite the importance of high-opportunity neighborhoods for children’s prospects of
achieving upward mobility, the vast majority of low-income families in the United States,
including those that receive housing assistance, live in neighborhoods with relatively low rates of
intergenerational economic mobility (see Figures 2-8 and 2-9 in Chapter 2; Mazzara and
Knudsen, 2019; Metzger, 2014). A recent randomized experiment conducted in Seattle showed
that families stayed in low-opportunity neighborhoods largely because of barriers that impede
residential choice, such as limited time and resources to search for housing, challenges in
communicating with landlords, and a lack of information about neighborhood opportunities
(Bergman et al., 2019).
Some interventions aimed at increasing neighborhood opportunity and reducing
residential segregation have proved effective at helping low-income families access better
neighborhoods regardless of their racial background (Bergman et al., 2019). Nevertheless,
Native, Black, and Latino families currently disproportionately live in high-poverty, low-
opportunity neighborhoods. Recent quasi-experimental work has demonstrated the adverse
effects of residential segregation on intergenerational mobility, academic achievement, and
teenage birth rates (Chyn et al., 2022). Expanding access to high-opportunity neighborhoods
therefore has the potential to narrow racial disparities, although this will not eliminate them
entirely, because disparities persist even within higher-opportunity neighborhoods (Chetty et al.,
2020).
CONCLUSION 8-2: Strong evidence shows improvements in low-income

children’s long-term economic, educational, and health outcomes when they
move to less disadvantaged neighborhoods. Less is known regarding which
characteristics of neighborhoods foster upward mobility.
HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOOD INTERVENTIONS
The main public policies that address housing problems and neighborhood characteristics
involve housing assistance. Housing assistance can be in many forms, such as subsidies for the
construction and maintenance of housing units, which result in lower rents for low-income
households, or vouchers issued to low-income households who use them in the private rental
market to pay the difference between the asking rent (up to a certain threshold) and what they
can afford, which is set at roughly 30% of their gross income. Housing assistance may improve
low-income children’s outcomes as adults by freeing up parental income for investments in
children, by improving housing quality and stability, and by reducing homelessness. Access to
neighborhoods that promote upward mobility also requires being able to afford the often-higher
costs of housing in such neighborhoods.

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We first discuss the intervention of housing choice vouchers (HCVs) with supports for
moving to low-poverty neighborhoods, for which promising causal evidence of direct effects on
long-term outcomes is available. Then we discuss housing choice vouchers alone, which shows
promising evidence for improving children’s outcomes in the short term, specifically for
unhoused families, but mixed evidence for addressing intergenerational poverty. (In Appendix C:
Chapter 8, we give additional information on housing choice vouchers alone and housing
assistance beyond vouchers, and we discuss the limited evidence on the effects of housing
production, neighborhood improvement, and targeted initiatives for Native American families.
Neighborhood interventions associated with reductions in neighborhood crime are reviewed in
Chapter 9.)
As discussed in Chapter 1, we characterize the evidence on some of the programs or
policies as “strong” and denote them with an “*.” In the case of our direct-evidence housing
choice voucher program idea, the evidence is “promising” but not “strong” because this program
has not been scaled up and tested in other cities.
Enhancing the Housing Choice Voucher Program

The housing choice voucher program allows low-income households to lease an
apartment in the private market using subsidy funds allocated by the federal government to the
local public housing authority. The HCV program ensures that households pay no more than
30% of their income toward housing costs. The evidence that an enhanced version of the housing
choice voucher program generates positive later-life outcomes for children is robust.
Specifically, pairing the HCV program with enhanced and customized mobility services is a key
evidence-based intervention for increasing mobility out of poverty. The Family Stability and
Opportunity Vouchers Act (FSOVA) is one example of bipartisan, evidence-based legislation
aimed at this goal. Originally introduced in 2019, and reintroduced in 2021, the FSOVA bill
would expand rental assistance to 500,000 families with young children. In addition to providing
a 25% increase over the current 2.2 million families served annually in the HCV program, the
bill also includes provisions aimed at bolstering low-income families’ access to higher-
opportunity neighborhoods. The legislation would provide families with access to customized
counseling and case management services designed to overcome barriers to residential choice. It
would also provide housing authorities with new resources to engage landlords in the HCV
program and to partner with community-based supports to support the moving process.
Additionally, the FSOVA bill includes provisions for voucher programs to reduce administrative
burdens and to employ “small-area fair market rents”2 to align vouchers with the cost of living in
specific neighborhoods.
2
Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) are FMRs calculated for ZIP Codes within metropolitan areas. The
use of Small Area FMRs is expected to give HCV tenants access to areas of high opportunity and lower poverty
areas by providing a subsidy that is adequate to cover rents in those areas, thereby reducing the number of voucher
families that reside in areas of high poverty concentration.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr/smallarea/index.html; https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/public-
housing/small-area-fair-market-rents/

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The FSOVA bill is built on evidence of positive outcomes that result from opportunity
moves. Its design was based on research-backed practices from the Creating Moves to
Opportunity (CMTO) program, a housing mobility intervention in the Seattle area (Bergman et
al., 2019). Run as a randomized controlled trial, CMTO showed that it was barriers, not
preferences, that caused the majority of HCV participants to reside in low-opportunity areas. The
CMTO program, which provided customized services to families along with flexible financial
assistance, resulted in a dramatic increase in opportunity moves: 53% of families assigned to
receive CMTO services moved to high-opportunity areas, as compared with 15% of families in
the control group (who also received a voucher but without additional supports). The annual
program cost was $2,700 per family—an amount that would be offset by anticipated lifetime
earnings increases and other positive outcomes among participants who moved to high-
opportunity neighborhoods. The elements included in the FSOVA bill, such as a streamlined
search process, landlord mediation, and customized support from housing navigators are all
based on program elements shown to be effective in CMTO.
Although expanding enhanced voucher assistance meets the committee’s criteria for
being supported by direct evidence, it is not yet supported by evidence that has been replicated
across several sites. As explained in Chapter 1, we therefore characterize its supporting evidence
as “promising” rather than “strong.”
• Expand and enhance choice-based residential mobility assistance.

Expand the housing choice voucher program’s rental assistance to an
additional 500,000 families with young children (at an estimated cost of $5
billion) and couple it with customized counseling and case management
services to facilitate low-income families’ access to higher-opportunity
neighborhoods.
Expanding the Housing Choice Voucher Program Alone

Expanding the HCV program alone is supported by both correlational and indirect
evidence on the potential to reduce intergenerational poverty. Currently, housing subsidy
programs reach less than 25% of income-eligible households. In the mid-2010s, an estimated 6.5
million households were on waitlists for public or voucher housing (Collinson et al., 2019).
Nationally, families who received vouchers had spent nearly two and half years on a waitlist
(Acosta & Gartland, 2021). Of the 16 million currently unserved households, 5.2 million are
families with children. Collyer et al. (2020) estimated that the total cost to make the HCV
program an entitlement would be roughly $96.7 billion, or $74.5 billion above current funding.
Since families with children comprise roughly a third of currently unserved households
(Gartland, 2022), prioritizing them would cost roughly $24.6 billion.
Expand the housing choice voucher program to serve all eligible families with
children. Such an expansion would build on substantial correlational research and an
RCT intervention with unhoused families that show positive long-term outcomes for
children.

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Most correlational evidence on the efficacy of the HCV alone for improving long-term
outcomes for children in households below poverty is positive (e.g., Pollakowski et al., 2022; see
Appendix C: Chapter 8). However, a study based on an HCV lottery in Chicago and a multicity
random assignment voucher study found no long-term impacts on a host of child educational
outcomes (Jacob et al., 2015; Wood et al., 2008). Still, for unhoused families in a randomized
controlled trial intervention, permanent housing subsidies like vouchers improved children’s
behavioral outcomes and increased school stability (Gubits et al., 2018), both of which are
correlated with later adult outcomes. Therefore, there is causal evidence for the indirect effects of
vouchers on intergenerational mobility, specifically for homeless families. We discuss the
potential role of housing assistance in reducing intergenerational poverty further in Appendix C:
Chapter 8.

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9
Crime and the criminal justice system both play important but complicated roles in
hampering the ability of children raised in poverty to escape poverty as adults. On the one hand,
low-income youth are especially likely to report being victims of crime in their neighborhoods
and schools, and research has shown that victimization in childhood can harm children’s health,
well-being, and achievement, with lasting consequences.
On the other hand, changes in policing tactics and increases in incarceration since the late
1970s (with small declines in recent years), despite declining crime rates for much of this period,
have also disproportionately involved low-income children and families, with negative
consequences for their development and long-term economic success (National Research
Council et al., 2014; New York Civil Liberties Union, 2013).
In evaluating whether crime and the criminal justice system are key drivers of
intergenerational poverty, this chapter begins by reviewing evidence on how these factors affect
the well-being, development, and intergenerational mobility of children, devoting particular
attention to disparities by race and ethnicity. Given the strong potential for confounding—that is,
the possibility that the relationship with intergenerational poverty can be explained by other
factors that are correlated with crime, victimization, and criminal justice involvement—the
committee was careful to rely on evidence that points to a causal relationship.
The first part of this chapter is organized into two sections. In the first, we discuss
victimization and exposure to violence as a driver of the intergenerational persistence of poverty.
In the second, we discuss how youth crime and the criminal justice system itself contribute to
worse economic outcomes for poor youth. The last section of the chapter suggests policies and
programs that might limit harmful youth interactions with the criminal justice system and reduce
child victimization and violence more generally. The committee confines its discussion of ways
to reduce the disruptive nature of adult and caregiver interaction with the criminal justice system
to Appendix C: Chapter 9, owing to the more speculative nature of the interventions considered
by the committee.
VICTIMIZATION AND EXPOSURE TO VIOLENCE AS A DRIVER OF

Low-income and younger people are much more likely than higher-income and older
people to report being victims of crime in their neighborhoods and schools (Figure 9-1; GAO,
2020; Kearney et al., 2014). Since the mid-1990s, sharp declines in crime, especially violent
crime (FBI, 2019), have reduced victimization among low-income children, improving their

159

prospects for healthy development and future economic success. But violent crime has been
rising again since 2014, though it remains far below the levels of earlier decades.1
FIGURE 9-1 Violent crime victimization rates (per 1,000) in 2019, by income, age, and
race/ethnicity.
NOTE: Figures are the proportion of a group reporting being a victim of a violent crime in 2019.
Income data are on crimes reported to police. Age and race/ethnicity data are based on survey
reports. Income refers to the household income levels of the victims.
SOURCE: Data from the Supplemental Statistical Tables of the Bureau of Justice Statistics’
Criminal Victimization, 2020 (Morgan & Thompson, 2020).
Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children in the United States (see
Chapter 5 for more detail), surpassing motor vehicle accidents.2 Rates of gun violence are
highest in low-income communities and in Black, Latino, and Native American communities
1
Reported violent crimes fell from 1.9 million in 1992 (the peak) to 1.15 million in 2014 (the nadir), then
increased to 1.3 million in 2021 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019).
2
Two-thirds of the fatalities from gun violence among 15- to 24-year-olds between 2007 and 2016 were
homicides; the remaining third were suicides.

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(Barrett et al., 2021).3 The premature deaths of low-income children obviously impede upward
mobility. More generally, crime victimization is strongly correlated with future depression,
anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Kilpatrick & Acierno, 2003; Simons et al., 2002), all
of which can adversely affect healthy child and adolescent development.
Exposure to Neighborhood Violence
Beyond direct victimization, children’s exposure to violence and violent crime in their
neighborhoods is traumatic and can have a negative effect on their development, reducing future
educational attainment and earnings (Nader et al, 1990; Sharkey, 2010). Sharkey and Torrats-
Espinosa (2017) show that in the case of adolescents growing up in low-income families, lower
exposure to neighborhood crime during adolescence increases intergenerational mobility as
measured by their family-income ranking at age 26 (also see Chetty et al., 2014).
Estimating the causal impact of exposure to violence on future outcomes is complicated
by the fact that crime tends to be concentrated in neighborhoods characterized by high poverty
and racial segregation, factors that can independently worsen children’s trajectories. To address
this problem, researchers have taken advantage of the timing of violent incidents in a
neighborhood and compared the outcomes of children before and after a violent incident. Such
research shows that exposure to community violence just before an assessment negatively affects
children’s sleep patterns and stress responses (Heissel et al., 2018) and reduces their attention
and impulse control (Sharkey et al., 2012). Other studies linking exposure to violence with
medium-term outcomes have found that exposure to violence increases the likelihood of school
dropout (Burdick-Will et al., 2021), increases the risk of offending in young adulthood (Eitle &
Turner, 2002), and reduces performance on standardized tests, especially for Black students
(Schwartz et al., 2022; Sharkey, 2010; Sharkey et al., 2014).
Some of the strongest evidence on the relationship between exposure to violence and
future outcomes comes from school shootings. Such shootings are largely random and
uncorrelated with underlying characteristics of the neighborhood or of the students. This allows
researchers to estimate the impact of exposure to violence independent of underlying
neighborhood or student characteristics. Comparing the outcomes of affected youth with
outcomes of nearby similar youth who were not directly exposed to school shootings, researchers
have documented negative effects of fatal school shootings on mental health and long-term
economic outcomes, including reduced educational attainment and earnings at age 26 (Cabral et
al., 2022; Rossin-Slater et al., 2020).
Predictors of Neighborhood Violence
What is known about the predictors of neighborhood violence? Concentrated poverty and
racial segregation both contribute to higher rates of violent crime (Cox et al., 2022; Peterson &
Krivo, 2010). Historical efforts to segregate Black families through the red-lining maps drawn by
the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s predict both racial segregation and
high rates of neighborhood violence today (Mehranbod et al., 2022; Chapters 3 and 8). Research
3
Over a nine-year period ending in 2016, there were 34,000 more firearm deaths among 15-24 year olds in the
poorest counties in the U.S. than in the richest counties.

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suggests that underinvestment in the community and policing are also highly predictive (Love,
2021). We discuss each of these issues in turn.
Community-level physical disorder, as evidenced by dilapidated buildings, trash, graffiti,
and vacant lots, is strongly correlated with crime (Branas et al., 2012; Chen & Rafail, 2022;
O’Shea, 2006; Wei et al., 2005). Branas et al. (2018) found causal evidence for this link: In a
randomized controlled trial in Philadelphia, some vacant lots were cleaned up and improved,
while control lots were left untouched. Over a three-year period, the intervention resulted in
significant declines in overall crime and a 29% reduction in violent crime in the poor
neighborhoods where the vacant lots were improved. Other work (Kondo et al., 2016; South et
al., 2021) supports these findings, with South et al. (2021) finding impacts on homicide.
Strong correlational research finds a connection between public and private investments
and local crime rates. Velez et al. (2012) examined nearly 30 years of home mortgage lending,
crime, and demographic data for neighborhoods in the city of Seattle. They found a negative
correlation between mortgage investments (i.e., loans per housing unit and total dollars invested)
and violent crime in the subsequent two years (and no relationship between violent crime rates
and later mortgage investments), net of other neighborhood factors. Focusing on public
investments, Shrider and Ramey (2018) used 10 years of data, also from Seattle, on the
Neighborhood Matching Fund program, which supports community-building or physical
improvement efforts by local organizations. They found that such investments have a direct
effect on reducing violent crime in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and indirectly reduce crime by
increasing private mortgage investments.
Civic engagement is another important predictor of neighborhood crime. Sharkey et al.
(2017) used changes in the presence of nonprofits across cities and over time to estimate the
impact of the establishment of nonprofits on crime. Using 20 years of data in 264 U.S. cities,
they found that “10 additional organizations focusing on crime and community life in a city with
100,000 residents leads to a 9-percent reduction in the murder rate, a 6-percent reduction in the
violent crime rate, and a 4-percent reduction in the property crime rate” (p. 1215).
Crime Prevention Strategies
Police officers reduce crime, and especially homicide and other violent crime, although
the estimated effects vary considerably across settings (Chalfin & McCrary, 2017).4 Estimating a
causal impact of police on crime is complicated by the fact that areas with more crime often
expand their police force in response. The strongest evidence of causal impacts of police on
crime can be derived from sudden increases in funding made possible by the federal allocation of
grants to local precincts to hire more police officers (e.g., Evans & Owens, 2007). The effects of
an expanded police force vary across racial groups, with disproportionate gains and costs for the
Black population (Chalfin et al., 2022). While 10 additional police officers result in one fewer
homicide overall, the estimated per capita reduction is twice as large for Black victims as for
White victims.
At the same time, the costs of additional police are also disproportionately borne by the
Black population, who are more likely to be arrested for “quality of life” infractions such as
4
The estimated elasticities range from -0.1 to -2, meaning a 10% increase in police personnel reduces
crime by 1% to 20%, depending on the study.

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liquor-law violation and drug possession when the police force increases in size. Policing tactics,
not just police manpower, are important in reducing violent crime. More focused interventions
such as hot-spot policing, problem-oriented policing, and proactive and disorder policing all
generate greater reductions in crime than less discriminate strategies (Chalfin & McCrary, 2017;
MacDonald et al., 2016; NASEM, 2018).
As to community policing, recent reviews of the evidence by the Center on Evidence-
Based Crime Policy and, especially, a review of experimental studies by Gill et al. (2014), find
small negative effects of community policing on violent crime and larger positive effects on
citizen satisfaction, perceived disorder, and police legitimacy.
Gun safety regulations can also reduce homicides and firearm-related injuries. Studies
evaluating this relationship typically rely upon changes in laws across states and over time to
estimate causal effects. Specifically, by examining changes in violence before and after a change
in gun safety law within a state and comparing those changes with trends in otherwise similar
states that did not change the law, researchers limit the effect of secular trends in violence or
differences across states in estimated effects. A review by Cook and Donohue (2017) of gun
safety regulation and its impact on violent crime, and more focused work by Donohue et al.
(2022) on “right to carry” laws, both found a causal link between an increase in homicides and
an expansion of local right-to-carry laws, and also that limiting domestic abusers’ access to guns
and imposing sentencing add-ons for violence involving guns appear to be effective in reducing
gun violence. Child-access prevention laws can reduce non-fatal gun injuries, and the effects are
larger when the law covers older children (DeSimone et al., 2013).
CONCLUSION 9-1: Crime victimization and exposure have negative

consequences for children’s development and long-term economic outcomes.
Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among American children.
Low-income, Black, and Native American youth are more likely to have these
exposures. Rigorous research shows that neighborhood violent crime can be
reduced through community investments and engagement, certain kinds of
policing, and gun safety regulations.
YOUTH OFFENDING AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AS DRIVERS OF

The incarcerated population is overwhelmingly poor and less educated, so it is not

surprising that childhood poverty is a strong predictor of future incarceration (Looney & Turner,
2018). There are also significant racial and ethnic disparities: Even conditional on income or
education, Black men are twice as likely as White men to have been incarcerated by age 30
(National Research Council et al., 2014). This affects children in two ways: indirectly through
adult involvement (including caregiver involvement) in the criminal justice system, and directly
through juvenile involvement in the system.
Recent estimates suggest that one child in five has a biological parent or caregiver who
has been convicted of a felony, and one in ten has a parent or caregiver who has served time in
prison (Finlay et al., 2021). Parent and caregiver interaction with the criminal justice system can
affect children in multiple ways, for example by placing additional strain and stress on the

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household, increasing financial insecurity, and resulting in the removal of an adult (or even a
child through foster care) from the household.
Youth involvement in the criminal justice system also varies considerably by income and
race; poor children and Black and Native American children are much more likely to be arrested
and detained (Figure 9-2 shows racial differences in arrest rates for all crimes and violent crimes
only). Evidence reviewed below supports a causal link between family income and juvenile
involvement in the criminal justice system. In the case of links between criminal justice
involvement and children’s economic outcomes in adulthood, the research reviewed below has
shown that juvenile detention and incarceration are associated with worse educational outcomes
and increased involvement with the criminal justice system in adulthood, with negative
implications for earnings later in life (Aizer & Doyle, 2015; Baron et al., 2023).
There are many reasons why poor youth are more likely to be involved in the criminal
justice system. Some relate to criminal justice policy and practices that target low-income
communities and populations, but others relate to differences in youth behavior. Regarding the
latter, research has found that schooling and educational attainment, exposure to the
environmental toxin lead, household income, and the development of socioemotional skills all
play important roles in youth offending. Each of these factors is described briefly below. We
follow this with a discussion of the effects of the criminal justice system on low-income youth,
and especially youth of color, and how the system itself perpetuates intergenerational poverty.
We focus on three aspects of the criminal justice system. These include high-frequency police
encounters and excessive use of force, juvenile detention and incarceration, and adult interaction
(including caregiver interaction) with the criminal justice system.

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FIGURE 9-2: Juvenile overall and violent crime arrest rates (per 1,000) in 2018, by
race/ethnicity.
NOTE: Figures are arrest rates per 1,000 10-17-year-olds in the resident population. Violent
crime includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated
assault.
SOURCE: Data from OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book. Online. Available:
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/special_topics/qa11501.asp?qaDate=2018
BOX 9-1
Useful Definitions
Confinement: Detention or incarceration in secure facilities.

Detention: The temporary holding of individuals accused of crime awaiting an adjudication
hearing, disposition, or commitment placement.
Disposition: A sentence or punishment.
Incarceration: The long-term confinement of convicted and sentenced offenders.
Juvenile delinquency: The violation of a law of the United States committed by a person prior
to his eighteenth birthday which would have been a crime if committed by an adult.
Status offenses: Noncriminal offenses only applicable to children, such as being truant,
running away from home, possessing alcohol or cigarettes.
Technical violation: No crime or arrest, but failure to follow the rules and conditions of
probation.
Violent crime: Crimes of violence include rape, robbery, assault, and murder.
Causes of Youth Offending
Evidence suggests a causal connection between higher quantity and quality of schooling
and the committing of fewer crimes. Studies taking advantage of the fact that states have raised
their school-leaving age (the age at which a student can legally stop attending high school) at
different times have found that children who are legally required to remain in school longer are
less likely to commit crimes and/or to be subsequently incarcerated than children who do not
face legal constraints (Lochner & Moretti, 2004, for the U.S.; Machin et al., 2011, for the United
Kingdom).
School financing reforms that have increased school spending overall and
disproportionately among low-income school districts have also been shown to reduce future
offending: A 10% increase in school funding is associated with a 15% reduction in the
probability of children in that school district being arrested by age 30 (Baron et al., 2022b). A
recent study of North Carolina’s Smart Start early childhood grants also found links to reductions
in later youth crime but, as pointed out in Chapter 4, these findings might not generalize (Anders
et al., 2023).
Reductions in childhood exposure to lead and lead poisoning have also played an
important role in the declines in youth crime since the mid-1990s. Children are especially

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vulnerable to lead exposure because they absorb more lead than adults, and the neurological
effects of exposure (including cognitive declines and aggressive behavior) are more
consequential in developing brains. The removal of lead from gasoline and paint in the United
States in the 1970s and 1980s eliminated two major sources of lead from the environment, and a
decline in the incidence of childhood lead poisoning soon followed. Recent work has taken
advantage of the timing of these regulations, combined with spatial variation in exposure to lead,
to estimate a causal impact of lead on crime. One research strategy focuses on proximity to
roads: Children who lived closer to roads before lead was removed from gasoline had higher
blood lead levels (BLLs) than those who lived farther away, but as lead was eliminated, these
differences declined significantly. These differential declines in child BLLs were then found to
be linked with declines in school suspensions, juvenile detention, and adult incarceration (Aizer
& Currie, 2019; Grönqvist et al., 2020). Once children are exposed to lead, evidence suggests,
providing additional services to those children with elevated levels can be effective in improving
outcomes, including reducing arrest rates (Billings & Schnepel, 2018).
Interventions can be effective in changing young people’s decision-making skills and
self-control, which in turn can affect their criminal behavior. Using cognitive behavioral
therapeutic (CBT) techniques, researchers conducted a random-assignment evaluation of an
intervention designed to encourage youth to consider alternative responses to a provocation.
They found that the intervention, called Becoming a Man (BAM), reduced arrests overall by
35% and arrests for violent crimes by 50%, and it increased high school graduation rates by 19%
(Heller et al., 2017).
Finally, family income in adolescence has been shown to have a direct causal impact on
criminal activity in some settings. As reviewed in Chapter 6, some families took advantage of the
openings of casinos on Native American reservations, which resulted in regular government
transfers of casino profits to eligible Tribal members, whether or not they were employed in the
casinos. This immediately increased family income for the children residing in Native American
families, but not other children. Researchers documented that a $4,000 increase in casino-based
transfers reduced criminal offending at age 16 by 22% (Akee et al., 2010).
A second income-based study took advantage of the fact that the federal Supplemental
Security Income (SSI) program, which provides cash transfers to low-income children with a
disability, introduced a new policy requiring children born after a certain date to be recertified at
their 18th birthday. This resulted in a large number of children losing this benefit at age 18.
Researchers found individuals who lost their SSI benefits were much more likely to be arrested
for property crime, but not violent crime, than those who were born before the cut-off date and
did not lose their benefits (Deshpande & Mueller-Smith, 2022).
Random-assignment evaluations have also shown that summer employment programs for
youth reduce arrests, although they do not improve educational or employment outcomes. The
differences in arrests largely disappear after four years (Davis & Heller, 2020).
High-Frequency Police Encounters and Excessive Use of Force
As noted above, policing can reduce violent crime, but aggressive policing that results in
high-frequency interactions with community members (i.e., stop-and-frisk) has been shown to

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harm child development.5 Legewie and Fagan (2019) studied the impact of a New York Police
Department strategy of saturating high-crime areas with additional police officers instructed to
engage in aggressive, order-maintenance policing. Exploiting the quasi-random timing of the
roll-out of the strategy across precincts, the authors document that test scores for Black male
youth fell after the strategy was rolled out in their neighborhood, consistent with the finding that
greater exposure to aggressive policing hurts school performance. They found no corresponding
effect for Black girls or Latino students.
A complementary working paper by Bacher-Hicks and de la Campa (2020) examines the
impact of stop-and-frisk policing tactics in New York City. The authors took advantage of the
quasi-random assignment or transfer of commanding officers across precincts. They found that
the departure of a commanding officer who is more likely to employ stop-and-frisk tactics from a
precinct causes a decrease in stop-and-frisk and an increase in educational attainment (high
school and college completion) among the young people who were most likely to have been
exposed to stop-and-frisk policies under the old regime.
Aggressive policing can also have a negative indirect effect on children and youth who
may not be targets themselves, but are nonetheless exposed to such tactics. Ang (2021) examined
the impact of 627 officer-involved killings on the educational attainment and psychological well-
being of 700,000 students in Los Angeles. Ang found that in the days following an officer-
involved killing, absenteeism increases and student average GPA falls as much as 0.08 standard
deviations in the following semester. In the long run, students exposed to an officer-involved
killing in the 9th grade are 3.5% less likely to graduate from high school and 2.5% less likely to
enroll in college.
Youth Confinement
Juvenile crime and confinement have fallen by two-thirds over the past 30 years, and the
most dramatic declines have occurred for White, Black, Latino, and Native American youth (see
Appendix C: Chapter 9). Despite these declines, youth are still incarcerated in the United States
at rates far higher than in all other developed democratic countries and many developing
countries (Nowak, 2019). The dramatic decline in youth confinement appears to be driven by the
declines in crime, and not by changes in the probability of confinement conditional on a juvenile
court case, a probability that has held steady at 29% since 2005 (Annie E. Casey Foundation,
2021). Moreover, while among all young people involvement in the criminal justice system has
declined, Black, Latino, and Native American youth are still significantly more likely than their
White counterparts to be arrested, referred to court, and placed in out-of-home facilities after
adjudication (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2022).
Most confined youth have not been convicted of a violent crime. Figure 9-3 shows that
there were roughly 48,000 young people confined to a facility in 2019, including 16,858 youth in
detention centers awaiting trial or sentencing; that is, without a conviction. Of those in detention
(data not shown), roughly 4,000 had been charged with status offenses – which are behaviors
that are not law violations for adults – or technical violations, and more than 6,000 had been
charged with nonviolent offenses (property, drug, public order violations) (Sawyer, 2019).
5
In New York City alone, stop-and-frisk (also known as Terry stops) increased from 100,000 stops per year in
2002 to nearly 700,000 by 2011, after which it was outlawed (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2016/05/16/stop-
frisk-ineffective/).

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Combining youth in detention centers and in long-term secure facilities, Figure 9-4 shows that
over half had been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses, a pattern that is even more
pronounced in residential treatment centers and group homes (Sawyer, 2019).
FIGURE 9-3: Number of confined youth by type of facility in 2019.

SOURCE: Adapted from the Prison Policy Initiative’s “Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie
2019” (Sawyer, 2019). https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2019.html.
Detaining or incarcerating juveniles for even short periods results in significant human
capital costs for them. Research relying on variations in the sentencing propensities (strictness)
of different judges, coupled with the random assignment of youth defendants to judges, shows
that youth accused of either nonviolent or violent offenses are significantly more likely to
graduate from high school and less likely to be arrested or incarcerated as an adult if they are not
detained (Aizer & Doyle, 2015; Baron et al., 2023).6
6
Aizer and Doyle (2015) study this in the context of detention of any kind in Illinois; and Baron et al. (2023) study
it in the context of pretrial detention in Michigan. Effects are similar across the two studies; however, the results from
Baron et al. (2023) are precise for violent offenders as well as nonviolent offenders, while the estimated results from
Aizer and Doyle are precise only for nonviolent offenders. The estimated magnitudes are similar for both violent and
nonviolent offenders.

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FIGURE 9-4: Number of youth in long-term secure facilities/detention in 2019 by offense

category.
SOURCE: Adapted from the Prison Policy Initiative’s “Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie
2019” (Sawyer, 2019). https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2019.html.
Juvenile incarceration has also been found to harm mental and physical health (Barnert et
al., 2016; see Development Services, Inc., 2017, for a review), both of which are strong
predictors of adult economic outcomes and future well-being more generally (see Chapter 5 for
more detail). One might argue that although detention appears to increase recidivism among
those detained, it might reduce juvenile offending through a deterrence effect, justifying a role
for juvenile detention in reducing crime and victimization. Among adults, the evidence for the
deterrent effect of incarceration is weak (Chalfin & McCrary, 2017). In the case of young people,
a large body of research has examined differences in reoffending among those who face different
sanctions, based on adult court transfer laws, and has found modest differences (Redding, 2010).
Lee and McCrary (2017) studied offending around the time of an individual’s 18th birthday,
when sanctions increase immediately, and found a very small reduction.
In addition, fines and fees levied against juveniles may have negative long-term
consequences. All 50 states allow juvenile courts to require restitution, although the types of
fines and fees may vary, including fees for supervision, evaluation, testing, detention, and court
costs (Smith et al., 2022). Descriptive studies show that fines and fees place a significant
financial burden on youth and families, especially low-income and Black, Latino, and Native
American families, who have disproportionate contact with the criminal justice system
(Feierman et al., 2016; Paik & Packard, 2019; Policy Advocacy Clinic, 2017). Piquero and
Jennings (2017) found that owing fines, fees, and restitution, as well as the total amounts owed,

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is correlated with an increase in the likelihood of recidivism among juveniles during the two-year
period following adjudication. Further research is needed to determine whether this reduces
intergenerational mobility.
Finally, realigning costs and incentives for incarcerating juveniles more generally
so that the localities responsible for sentencing decisions bear the costs of incarceration
would lead to greater accountability and, evidence suggests, lower costs and no increase
in crime (Ouss, 2020).
Parent and Caregiver Interaction with The Criminal Justice System:

Incarceration, Fines, and Fees
Parent and caregiver incarceration as well as their court fines and fees reduce household
resources available for investment in children. In addition to lowering children's future earnings
(Looney and Turner, 2018; Mueller-Smith, 2015), caregiver incarceration is an adverse
childhood experience (ACE) that is associated with increased stress and worse socioeconomic
outcomes (Metzler et al., 2017).
Through fines and fees, interaction with the court system increases household debt. The
share of prisoners with court fines and sanctions increased from 25% in 1991 to 66% in 2006. As
of 2006, the most recent year for which a comprehensive figure is available, an estimated 10
million people had debts of more than $50 billion as a result of their involvement in the criminal
justice system; that figure is likely to be higher today (Harris et al., 2010; Harris et al., 2022).7
Fines and fees create a special burden for poor defendants who have difficulty complying with
financial sanctions to avoid further penalties (Friedman & Pattillo, 2019). Recent evidence from
a randomized control trial in misdemeanor court in Oklahoma County showed that court fines
and fees led to warrants for nonpayment, debts in collection, and state garnishment of tax refunds
(Pager et al., 2022).
Research has not yet established whether fines and fees affect the intergenerational
mobility of poor children, nor is the evidence regarding the impact of parental incarceration on
child outcomes entirely consistent (see Appendix C: Chapter 9). However, it is known that both
disproportionately affect the poor and further reduce household resources available for
investment in children.
CONCLUSION 9-2: While reductions in crime and victimization clearly

benefit children, some efforts to reduce crime also have the potential to harm
them. Aggressive policing has been linked to worse educational outcomes for
youth, especially Black and Latino youth. Juvenile detention lowers the rate
of high school completion and increases the likelihood of incarceration in
adulthood. Declines in juvenile offending, stemming in part from increased
investment in children’s education and health, have lowered juvenile
detention rates, although significant disparities by race and income remain.
Finally, the rise in adult incarceration has increased the number of poor
7
Many legal infractions are punished through the imposition of fines. Courts can require defendants to pay fees
for services and for their court-appointed lawyer (43 states), and they can charge room and board for time in prison
(41 states). Failure to pay can result in imprisonment. Since 2008, every state has increased its reliance on fees and
fines to raise revenue (see Hayes & Barnhorst, 2020, for an overview and citations).

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children with parents/caregivers under supervision, reducing household

earnings and increasing household debt. As a result, fewer resources are
available to invest in children.
INTERVENTIONS INVOLVING NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME AND CRIMINAL

JUSTICE
The committee identified a number of evidence-based interventions that address violence

and victimization as well as the ways in which the criminal justice system affects youth
outcomes and, ultimately, intergenerational mobility. As in other chapters, the committee
highlights policies and programs for which direct evidence has established connections with
correlates of intergenerational poverty in adulthood—earnings, educational attainment, and
incarceration. As discussed in Chapter 1, we characterize the evidence on some of these
programs or policies as “strong” and denote them with an “*.” This indicates that the program or
policy’s impact on intergenerational poverty is supported by random-assignment evaluation
evidence that has been replicated across several sites or by compelling quasi-experimental
evidence based on national or multistate data or a scaled-up program.
Policies and programs linked to child and adolescent mortality are also included here
(and in Chapter 5, which focuses on health outcomes). Appendix C: Chapter 9 provides details
on the interventions listed here. Interventions supported by indirect evidence; that is, those with
possible, but not proven, impacts on intergenerational poverty, are briefly listed here and detailed
in Appendix C: Chapter 9.
Reducing Juvenile Confinement: Detention and Incarceration

Given the strong evidence linking juvenile detention for even short periods of time to
lower high school graduation rates and increases in adult incarceration; the extremely high
annual costs of detention (between $85,000 and over $500,000, depending on the state); and the
effectiveness of alternatives to incarceration and detention, such as electronic monitoring,
community supports, and Intensive Supervision Probation, the committee’s consensus, consistent
with previous National Academies reports,8 was that:
• *Juvenile confinement be only used for youth who pose a serious and
immediate threat to public safety. Restoring funding for the OJJDP, which has
declined from $565 million in 2002 to $360 million in 2022, to its previous real
level ($932 million in current dollars) would provide resources to states and
localities to incentivize the use of non-secure settings for juveniles.
8
The 2013 NAS report, Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach, states: “To be clear, secure
institutional confinement sometimes has a place in juvenile justice policy, but it should be used only for youth who
pose a serious and immediate threat to public safety” (p. 123). A follow-up 2014 NAS report, Implementing Juvenile
Justice Reform: The Federal Role, established seven principles for the federal role in juvenile justice policy, one of
which was “Confinement Only When Necessary for Public Safety.”

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Providing incentives to state and local governments to reduce reliance on juvenile

detention will likely lead to disproportionate mobility benefits for Black and Native American
youth. It is important that any steps taken to reduce juvenile confinement be accompanied by
efforts to monitor their possible effects on neighborhood crime levels.
Reducing Offending via Investments in Children

An alternative set of policies can lower the rate of juvenile detention indirectly by
reducing future offending. These involve investments in children’s human capital. Policies that
have been shown to affect future offending include reducing exposure to lead, which is known to
impair cognitive functioning and increase aggression, thereby improving educational outcomes,
and influencing behavior through mentorship and other therapeutic interventions. Interventions
to reduce lead are discussed in the health chapter; possible ways to boost educational attainment
are discussed in the education chapter.
In addition, the committee identified a promising therapeutic intervention that has been
experimentally evaluated in one site and shown in several evaluations to significantly reduce
arrests, especially for violent crime, and increase high school graduation rates. Details about our
calculations are provided in Appendix C.
• Scale up the Becoming a Man (BAM) program to serve more of the at-risk
population. Providing a curriculum based on cognitive behavioral therapeutic
approaches, the BAM program is estimated to cost $1,850 per participant per
year. The committee considered funding BAM so that it can serve more of the
population of at-risk adolescent boys, which is estimated to range between
300,000 and 500,000 annually. Serving 10% of the at-risk population (40,000)
would cost a total of $720 million.
Reducing Victimization and Crime

Given the links between community-level physical disorder and crime, it is encouraging
several approaches appear to be successful in reducing disorder and crime. With details in
Appendix C: Chapter 9, the committee considered scaling-up two of them.
• *Scale up successful programs that remediate vacant lots and abandoned

homes. A reasonable approach would be to appropriate $10 million per year over
10 years for a competitive grants process targeted at the 50 cities or jurisdictions
with the highest rates of violent crime.
• *Improve and increase federal grants to community-based organizations.

Maintaining funding for nonprofit organizations at American Rescue Plan
(ARPA) levels would support such community organizations.
Although policing has been shown to lower crime, especially homicides, and can be an
effective means of reducing premature death and victimization, for any efforts to increase or
enhance policing to reduce crime it is important to consider the potential for negative impacts of

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aggressive policing and frequent stops and searches of low-income and particularly minority
youth. This leads us to suggest:
• *Expanding funding for policing in high-crime neighborhoods and use of

effective strategies like community policing. This increased funding could be
allocated toward: (a) putting more police on the streets in high-crime cities and
neighborhoods; (b) providing technical assistance for local police to implement
cost-effective “proactive” policing tactics that target areas of high violence, while
also strengthening the practice of community policing and reducing/eliminating
illegal or excessive force; and (c) funding cost-effective efforts to reduce youth
violence by building stronger communities and training local residents to de-
escalate violent situations.
Reducing Gun-Related Fatalities Among Children and Youth

Fatalities related to firearms are now the leading cause of death among children in the
United States. The premature death of poor children is a measure of extreme immobility. To
reduce such fatalities, along with exposure to crime and violence, the committee explored a
menu of proven interventions:
• *Reduce access to guns in ways that pass constitutional review; promote child access
prevention laws, restrictions on right-to-carry laws, limit access of domestic abusers,
and sentencing add-ons for violence involving firearms.
As detailed in Appendix C: Chapter 9, a number of additional interventions may be

promising avenues for increasing intergenerational mobility by reducing crime and the footprint
of the criminal justice system, but still lack strong evidence of their effectiveness.
Ways of reducing the negative impact of caregiver involvement in the criminal justice
system:
• Courts could consider the best interest of the child in pre-trial detention and
sentencing decisions.
• Courts could consider financial obligations to children in setting court fees and
fines.
Promising programs to support at-risk youth:

• The Choose to Change program targets at risk youth and provides at-risk youth
with community-based therapy and individualized support.
• Mentoring programs can reduce delinquent behavior and juvenile justice system
involvement among youth.
• Restorative justice programs focus on the rehabilitation of offenders through
reconciliation with victims and the community at large.
• Eliminating fines and fees for juveniles can reduce financial burdens.
• The mental health and gun safety interventions in Chapter 5 have the potential to
reduce school shootings.

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10
Child Maltreatment
Children who experience maltreatment and become involved with the child welfare
system are at elevated risk for intergenerational poverty. This chapter provides a demographic
overview of maltreatment and child welfare involvement and reviews the correlational evidence
linking childhood maltreatment and child welfare involvement to adult poverty-related
outcomes. It then reviews what is known about the factors that place children at risk of
maltreatment and involvement with the child welfare system. Finally, it evaluates the evidence
on effective policies and programs to reduce child maltreatment and child welfare system
involvement and on their potential for reducing intergenerational poverty.
WHICH CHILDREN ARE INVOLVED WITH THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM?
Involvement with the child welfare system is surprisingly common in the United States.
In 2020, the most recent year for which federal data are available (Administration for Children
and Families, 2022a), approximately 7.2 million children were reported to child protective
services (CPS), and of these about 3.1 million children were investigated or assessed by CPS.
These children received foster care services in only about 3% (113,000) of these cases. In
thinking about the causes of maltreatment and possible approaches to address it, it is important to
bear in mind that most (more than three-quarters) of these investigated cases involved neglect,
while the remaining quarter involved some form of alleged abuse—physical, sexual, or
psychological.
Expressing the scope of child maltreatment in another way, each year the child welfare
system substantiates maltreatment for just under one percent of U.S. children ages 0–17. As
shown in Figure 10-1, this overall maltreatment rate has changed relatively little since 2008. But
the figure also shows very different rates across racial and ethnic groups, with the highest rates
among Black and Native American children and the lowest rates among Asian children.
Subgroup rates have changed only in the case of Native American children and, in their cases
rates have risen in the last 10 years and now exceed rates for Black children.

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FIGURE 10-1: Rates of substantiated maltreatment of children ages 0–17 by selected

characteristics, 2008–2020.
NOTE: Children are ages 0–17. The data in this table show rates of maltreatment based on
investigations and assessments by child protective services that found the child to be a victim of
one or more types of maltreatment. The decrease in the rate of victims in 2020 is due in part to
the decrease in the number of screened-in referrals during the March through June period.
Additional technical notes are available in the annual reports titled Child Maltreatment. These
reports are available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/data-research/child-maltreatment.
SOURCE: Data from Administration for Children and Families, National Child Abuse and
Neglect Data System, as reported in Childstats.gov.
These kinds of single-year estimates understate the childhood-wide risk of maltreatment.

Wildeman et al. (2014) use data from 2011 and estimate that 12.5% of U.S. children will be
involved with a confirmed case of maltreatment by 18 years of age. These rates are considerably
higher for Black (20.9%), Native American (14.5%)1, and Latino children (13.0%) than for
White (10.7%) or Asian/Pacific Islander (3.8%) children. The risk for childhood maltreatment is
highest in the first few years of life.2
Disparities by race and ethnicity are strongly correlated with subgroup differences in
exposure to poverty and hardship (Eckenrode et al., 2014; Kim & Drake, 2018; Pelton, 2015;
Putnam-Hornstein et al., 2021; Thomas & Waldfogel, 2022). Empirical evidence suggests that
1
The childhood-wide risk estimates for Native American children are based on relatively small sample sizes,
which may account for their different relative ranking in the single-year and childhood-wide estimates.
2
Higher still are the estimates of the childhood-wide chance (37.4% overall) of any involvement with the
welfare system, which can include cases reported to CPS but not substantiated by an investigation (Kim et al.,
2017b). Racial differences in estimates of lifetime involvement are also substantial. For example, half (53%) of
Black children have at least some involvement, whether substantiated or not, with the child welfare system during
their childhoods. At 32%, the rate of involvement is also elevated for Latino children. Rates for White (28%), Native
American (23%) and Asian/Pacific Islander (10%) children are smaller.

175

persistent racial and ethnic bias among actors within the child welfare system may expose Black,
Native American, and Latino children to a greater risk of child welfare involvement (Dettlaff et
al., 2011; Font et al., 2012).
Most children who are involved with the child welfare system disproportionately grow up
in low-income families and are at elevated risk of poverty and other adverse outcomes in
adulthood (Bunting et al., 2018; Currie & Widom, 2010; Mersky & Topitzes, 2010). Hence, they
are a group at high risk of intergenerational poverty.
CHILD MALTREATMENT AND CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM INVOLVEMENT AS

DRIVERS OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
Adult Correlates of Childhood Maltreatment
A large literature provides descriptive evidence that children who are maltreated (abused,
neglected, or in other ways brought to the attention of the child welfare system) fare worse than
their non-maltreated or non-child welfare-involved peers. Studies attempt to address selection by
controlling for observable characteristics, which leaves open the possibility that outcome
differences are partly or entirely caused by unobserved characteristics (Child Welfare
Information Gateway, 2019).
In general, these descriptive studies consistently find that childhood abuse or neglect is
predictive of poorer adult outcomes (see Appendix C: Chapter 10 for a more complete review).
For example, Bunting et al. (2018) concluded that maltreatment in childhood is related to adverse
economic outcomes, such as economic inactivity and income reductions, beyond the contribution
of correlated poverty-related risk factors such as maternal education and welfare receipt during
childhood. Examining intergenerational income mobility and child maltreatment, Bullinger et al.
(2022) found that children residing in counties with lower child maltreatment report rates had a
higher chance of intergenerational income mobility than those in counties with higher
maltreatment rates. Zielinski (2009) found that adults who had experienced maltreatment as
children had lower incomes, elevated utilization of Medicaid, and higher rates of unemployment
than those without childhood maltreatment experiences. Notably, adults who had histories of
multiple types of maltreatment were three times as likely as those who had not experienced
maltreatment to live in poverty.
Consequences of Involvement with Child Protective Services

Only a few studies have used more rigorous methods to compare maltreated children with
other children who are most similar to them. For example, Currie and Tekin (2012), using
propensity score matching and twin comparisons, found that children who self-reported having
been abused or neglected were much more likely to be involved in crime as adults than their non-
abused or neglected counterparts. Currie and Widom (2010) used a case-control design and
found that children who were substantiated by CPS to have been abused or neglected had lower
levels of education, employment, earnings, and assets as adults. Although the methods used in
these two studies are stronger than those used in purely correlational studies, at best their results
should be considered suggestive of possible causal impacts. Moreover, neither of these studies

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(particularly Currie & Widom) was able to separate effects of maltreatment from effects of CPS
involvement. For the same reasons that it is challenging to separate maltreatment effects from
CPS involvement, it is also difficult to separate the effects of different degrees of CPS
involvement. For example, estimating the effect of referral to CPS separate from the impact of
substantiation of an allegation is complicated by the fact that substantiation likely involves more
severe maltreatment. One exception to this is the decision to remove children from the home, for
which there is causal evidence which we summarize below.
Out-of-Home Care (Foster Care)
Among children with a substantiated case of maltreatment, roughly three percent receive
foster care services involving relatives (kinship care), unrelated foster parents, or congregate
care. Although they make up only a small share of those who experience maltreatment or child
welfare involvement, foster care children are a very important group, as their families tend to be
the most disadvantaged and the children themselves tend to face numerous challenges in
adulthood.3
There is a large descriptive literature on children who are removed from their homes and
placed into some form of out-of-home care. In general, children placed in congregate care fare
worse than those placed with families through foster care (Lee et al., 2011). However, as with
research on the more general child welfare population, the challenge in this research is to
estimate the causal effects of out-of-home placement as distinct from the effects of factors that
precipitated the placement. For that reason, a review of descriptive studies is provided in
Appendix C: Chapter 10.
The strongest studies of the causal impacts of foster-care placements have used variation
in the propensity of CPS investigators to remove children from their parental homes to identify
the causal effect of out-of-home placement on later outcomes. In these studies, case assignment
to investigators is generally based on their availability rather than characteristics of the case, so
variation in investigators’ propensities for out-of-home placements can be leveraged to identify
causal impacts of the placements themselves. At the same time, it is important to note that these
studies provide evidence about the effect placement has on a child who is at the margin between
being removed and not being removed, but they are not informative as to the effect of placement
on children whose circumstances at home are so severe that they would prompt placement
regardless of the individual investigator or judge.
Taken together, these studies yield a mixed picture on whether out-of-home placements
lead to better or worse child outcomes. Doyle (2007, 2008), who originated this method, find
detrimental impacts. Specifically, using data from Illinois he found that removal from home
between ages 5 and 13 leads to increased delinquency and arrests and reduced labor force
participation.
Other studies have found beneficial impacts. Bald et al. (2022) use the investigator
method with administrative data from Rhode Island to study outcomes for children who were
investigated by CPS before the age of 6. They find that removal leads to significantly higher test
scores (an average gain of 1.4 standard deviations in math and reading) and significantly reduced
grade repetition (an average reduction of 42.6 percentage points) for girls, with no significant
3
Another important, and very disadvantaged, group is youth who are involved with both the child welfare and
juvenile justice systems, who may be placed out of home by both systems (Herz et al., 2012; Hirsch et al., 2018).

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effects for boys.4 The same authors also examine outcomes for children removed at age 6 or later
and, in contrast with their results for children removed at younger ages, find no significant
effects for girls or boys, with some nonsignificant negative results on educational outcomes for
boys.
Baron and Gross (2022) use the investigator method with administrative data from
Michigan to study the effect removal has on involvement in crime. They found that foster care
placement reduced adult arrests, convictions, and incarceration. Gross and Baron (2022), in a
similar study, find that foster care placement led to improved safety and educational outcomes.
Impact studies based on investigator case assignment draw data from only three states
and from different time periods, which is an important limitation if the effects of removal vary
by state and time. For example, the likelihood that a child will be removed in a given state and
period may vary considerably by factors such as whether there has been a recent high-profile
child welfare case (e.g., a death), whether the state is under court mandate(s) or supervision, and
the capacity, service availability, and quality of preventive and child welfare system services
available, potentially including the size and composition of out-of-home placement slots.
More generally, it is probably overly simplistic to estimate a single effect of removal,
since the effects on well-being likely vary by the types and quality of services provided, severity
of maltreatment experienced, and length, stability, and type of out-of-home placement, as well as
child and provider characteristics. Unfortunately, these issues have not been subject to rigorous
examination. In addition, it is possible that the impact of out-of-home placement may differ by
race and ethnicity if, for example, thresholds for removal (chronicity and/or severity of exposure
to maltreatment), services received, types or quality of placements, or the “match” with
placement settings and contexts (e.g., neighborhoods, schools) differ by race and ethnicity.
Nevertheless, the empirical research to date has not established the extent to which the effects of
removal vary by race and ethnicity. Doyle (2007, 2008) provides separate estimates for Black
and Latino youth, but these constitute the bulk of his sample and thus, unsurprisingly, the
estimates are similar to those for the full sample.
CONCLUSION 10-1: Children who have been maltreated and (or) involved with
child welfare are at elevated risk of intergenerational poverty. However, high
quality research provides mixed evidence on the effects of foster care (occurring in
only 3% of all child welfare cases) on subsequent outcomes in adolescence and
adulthood and almost no evidence regarding the impact of child protective services
more generally.
Factors Leading to Child Welfare Involvement
While the literature on the intergenerational impacts of child maltreatment is

inconclusive, a parallel literature on the causes of child welfare involvement is more definitive
and points to a number of policy approaches that appear successful in reducing involvement. The
text portion of this chapter highlights four of the most promising policy-related approaches—
income support, Medicaid, nutrition programs, and some community-focused prevention
policies. Appendix C: Chapter 10 reviews the literature on four additional possible policy
4
A disadvantage of the investigator-based method is that it can lead to very large confidence intervals for its
estimates. This is case with the Bald et al.’s (2022) estimates of impacts on achievement and grade retention.

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approaches: minimum wages, cash welfare programs, home visitation programs, and early care
and education programs.
Parental income and employment

An extensive literature has documented that income and poverty are highly correlated
with child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement. Indeed, across advanced
industrialized countries, low income and poverty are the strongest and most consistent risk
factors for child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement, and these relationships are
particularly strong with respect to child neglect (Berger & Waldfogel, 2011). A growing body of
research, predominantly from the United States, suggests that relatively modest increases in
income, particularly among lower-income families, can lead to substantial reductions in child
welfare system involvement (Font & Maguire-Jack, 2020b).
Cancian and colleagues (2013) capitalize on a policy experiment in Wisconsin in 1997–
1998, which randomized families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
into two groups, one of which received greater child support benefits and one of which received
less. The differences in child support received between the two groups were modest, ranging
between $101 and $180 per year. Despite this modest difference in income, the study found that
families with more child support income were about 10%, or 2 percentage points, less likely to
have a substantiated report of child maltreatment over the course of two years. A potential
problem with an income-based interpretation of these results is that child support receipt may
signal differential willingness or ability of fathers to be involved with their children. A review of
the impacts of another major welfare program–Aid to Families with Dependent Children–is
provided in Appendix C: Chapter 10.
Other research has capitalized on natural experiments in which policy benefits differ over
time and place, providing exogenous sources of variation in families’ income. Berger and
colleagues (2017) draw on state-level differences in the generosity of Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC) benefits and find that $1,000 in additional income was associated with an 8 to 10 percent
(0.58 to 0.70 percentage point) lower rate of child welfare contact and a 3 to 4 percent (1.0 to 1.2
percentage point) lower rate of parental behaviors proxying child neglect.
Klevens and colleagues (2017) use state-level variation in EITC payments between 1995
and 2013 to examine impacts on rates of hospital admissions for pediatric abusive head trauma.
They find that states with a refundable EITC had 3.1 fewer hospital admissions for pediatric
abusive head trauma per 100,000 children than states without a refundable EITC, but they found
no difference in such hospital admissions between states with only a nonrefundable EITC and
states without an EITC. Kovski and colleagues (2022b) find that $1,000 in additional income
available to families from EITC and Child Tax Credit (CTC) benefits led to a 5 percent lower
state-level rate of child maltreatment investigations in the short term.
Research on the effects of economic support policies (and income) on child maltreatment
has not explicitly examined heterogeneity by race and ethnicity. However, given that populations
of color, and Black and Native American populations in particular, are disproportionately likely
both to be low-income/poor and child welfare system-involved, economic support policies have
the potential to disproportionately benefit these groups and, thereby, to reduce racial and ethnic
disparities in child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement. Pac and colleagues
(2023), using estimates of the causal effect of income on child maltreatment, estimate that
reducing child poverty by 40% to 46% by applying the policy proposals provided in NASEM

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(2019a) would result in 11% to 20% fewer child maltreatment investigations. Because these
policies have greater poverty-reducing impacts on Black and Latino children, Pac and
colleagues’ estimates suggest that the effects on children’s involvement in the child welfare
system would be two to three times larger among Black and Latino children than White children
(Native American children were not separately analyzed).
Medicaid
Whether expanded access to health care through public programs for low-income
families is likely to increase, decrease, or have no effect on reported child maltreatment or child
welfare system involvement is theoretically ambiguous. Because health care providers are
required to report cases of possible child maltreatment, greater family interactions with them
may result in increased reports to CPS.
At the same time, greater access to health care for children and (potentially) parents may
result in decreased child maltreatment and/or CPS involvement for several reasons. First, such
access may reduce parental stress about their own or their children’s health care needs and the
cost thereof, including by reducing out-of-pocked medical expenditures and medical debt.
Second, to the extent that parents access treatment for their own health and mental health needs,
they may be better equipped to provide safe and consistent care for their children. Third, to the
extent that children’s health and mental health needs are treated (early), they may be easier to
parent and thereby be less likely to experience maltreatment. Fourth, health care providers may
serve as a referral source to other programs spanning parenting behaviors, child development,
and food and nutrition, which may help reduce a family’s likelihood of maltreatment or child
welfare system contact. As a result, access to low-cost or free health care may help families meet
their children’s health and mental health needs and, potentially, developmental and material
needs as well, which may result in better care for children and a decreased probability of being
reported for child abuse or neglect.
Three methodologically strong studies have taken advantage of geographic variation in
the Medicaid expansions enabled under the Affordable Care Act. In a county-level analysis of
California, Pac (2019) finds that expanded access to Medicaid was associated with an 11 percent
reduction in physical abuse investigations but no differences in overall investigations or
investigations for other types of maltreatment. Brown et al. (2019) use data from 2010–2016 on
the state-by-state expansions of the Affordable Care Act and find an 11 percent decrease in
neglect investigations in Medicaid-expansion states relative to non-expansion states in the post-
expansion period, but no effect on abuse investigations. Finally, McGinty and colleagues (2022)
find that state Medicaid expansions were associated with reductions in neglect investigations of
13 percent for 0–5-year-olds, 15 percent for 6–12-year-olds, and 16 percent for 13–17-year-olds,
although they find no effects for physical abuse. Together, these studies suggest a potential
causal relationship between Medicaid access and reductions in child welfare investigations, for
neglect, but not necessarily abuse.
Food and nutrition programs

The committee identified three rigorous studies examining the impact of food and
nutrition programs on child maltreatment. Two focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance

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Program (SNAP); the third considers both SNAP and the Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Johnson-Motoyama and colleagues (2022) use
variation in the number of state SNAP income generosity policies in effect (broad-based
community eligibility, excluding child support received from income calculation, providing
transitional SNAP benefits for families leaving cash welfare, simplified reporting of changes in
household circumstances) to examine the effects of SNAP policy generosity and caseload size
(participation) on child maltreatment rates across states and over the 2004–2016 time period.
Results indicate that the effect on maltreatment of each additional income generosity policy and
of a 5 percent increase in SNAP caseload size are similar in magnitude, with each resulting in an
8 to 9 percent reduction in child maltreatment investigations, 9 to 10 percent reduction in
substantiation cases of maltreatment, and 9 to 15 percent reduction in foster care placements.
Bullinger et al. (2021) leverage within-monthly group variation by Census block in
proximity to a SNAP-authorized retailer to estimate monthly within-Census block group changes
in child maltreatment rates in Connecticut between 2011–15. They find that, in large rural
locales, each additional SNAP-authorized retailer in a Census block group is associated with a 4
percent decrease in maltreatment reports and an 11 percent decrease in maltreatment
substantiations.
In their investigation of the effects of both SNAP and WIC participation on child
maltreatment, Lee and Mackey-Bilaver (2007) compare siblings using individual-level
administrative data on Medicaid-enrolled children in Illinois. They find that participation in
SNAP only, WIC only, and both programs is associated with reductions in substantiated child
maltreatment of 7 percent, 11 percent, and 9 percent, respectively.
Community-focused prevention programs

Several large-scale community-focused interventions have been launched in recent
decades aimed at improving parenting and family functioning and reducing child maltreatment.
Such programs typically include both universal (community-level) and targeted components,
such that particularly at-risk families have opportunities to engage in more intensive services
than their less at-risk counterparts. That is, they tend to offer a continuum of interventions
intended to address the needs of particular subgroups of families through direct service provision
and/or by assisting families to access existing programs and services (Berger & Font, 2015).
Such programs are difficult to evaluate rigorously, and the evidence on their efficacy is quite
limited. Moreover, they tend to be difficult to implement and sustain, as well as relatively
expensive.
A notable exception, however, is Triple P (Positive Parenting Program), which has been
implemented in a growing number of communities and has been subject to the most rigorous
evaluation of such programs to date. A summary of impact evaluations is available from the
California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare.5 An example is Prinz et al. (2009),
an evaluation of Triple P in 18 counties that were randomly assigned to either Triple P
implementation or services as usual. The evaluation found that, 2 years after implementation,
Triple P counties experienced substantial reductions in substantiated child maltreatment, out-of-
home placements, and hospital and emergency room admissions for child maltreatment-related
reasons. In a more recent quasi-experimental study, Schilling et al. (2020) compare county-level
5
For more information see https://www.cebc4cw.org/

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child welfare and hospital discharge data in North Carolina for 34 counties that implemented
Triple P and 66 counties that did not, for the period 2008–2015. Results indicate that
implementation was associated with a 4 percent reduction in county-level child welfare
investigations and a 7 percent decrease in foster care placements. The study found no effects on
hospital admissions for child maltreatment-related reasons.
CONCLUSION 10-2: Causal evidence on factors leading to maltreatment

and child welfare involvement is limited, although most evidence points to
household economic hardship as elevating the risk of child welfare
involvement and to income support and income-support policies reducing
risk for child welfare involvement. Evidence on the likely favorable impacts
of Medicaid and food and nutrition program eligibility is also relatively
strong.
INTERVENTIONS REDUCING CHILD MALTREATMENT
Evidence on prevention policies and programs offers some promising avenues for
reducing the number of child maltreatment cases reported to or substantiated by child welfare
services. On the other hand, the literature on the longer-run causal impacts of the various
elements of the child welfare system on poverty in adulthood is not strong enough to identify the
changes to the system that would reduce intergenerational poverty. This leads us to consider the
following promising prevention approaches as indirect approaches to reducing intergenerational
poverty:
• The most consistent evidence of causal effects on reduced child maltreatment is for
direct income transfers to low-income families.
• Consistent evidence of reductions in child maltreatment is also found in strong studies
of the impacts of the recent Medicaid expansions occasioned by the Affordable Care
Act.
• Expansions of eligibility and benefit levels in food and nutrition programs such as
SNAP and WIC have also been linked with reductions in child maltreatment.
• Some community-level interventions such as the Positive Parenting Program (Triple
P) appear to be promising approaches for reducing child maltreatment.

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11
Research and Data Needs for Understanding and Ameliorating
Based on its review of the literature, the committee outlined the scope of
intergenerational poverty in the United States. It found that many children growing up in low-
income households experience some degree of upward mobility. At least two-thirds are not
living in low-income households in adulthood and some enjoyed standards of living well above
any definition of poverty. But one in three children are still low-income when they become
adults, and the chance of having low income in adulthood is much higher for a child raised in a
low-income than more affluent household.
Regardless of the data source or the definition of poverty, the committee found that racial
and ethnic disparities are an enduring feature of the intergenerational trajectories of children,
with Black and Native American children experiencing much less upward mobility than White
children growing up in the same economic circumstances. The size and consistency of these gaps
underscore the importance of understanding the causes of racial and ethnic disparities (Chapter
3), as well as developing and implementing large-scale, effective programs and policies to
ameliorate intergenerational poverty.
The committee reviewed research on potentially important drivers of intergenerational
poverty in the following domains: children’s education and the educational system; child health
and the health care system; family income and wealth and parental earnings and employment;
family structure; housing, residential mobility, and neighborhood conditions; neighborhood
safety and the criminal justice system; and child maltreatment and the child welfare system (see
Chapters 4–10 for the committee’s assessment of the evidence and Appendix C: Chapter11 for
the conclusions regarding these drivers). It found that abundant correlational evidence
established the potential importance of each of these domains for perpetuating or alleviating
intergenerational poverty persistence. But definitive causal evidence quantifying the relative
importance of each of these domains was often lacking, which pointed to a number of steps that
could strengthen the evidence base.
The committee’s primary assignment was to identify evidence-based policies and
programs directed at children living in poverty today that would reduce those children’s chances
of being poor when they become adults. In operationalizing the definition of “evidence-based,”
the committee decided to highlight incremental policy and program ideas whose effectiveness is
supported by direct intergenerational evidence—studies that offered rigorous long-run causal
evidence (see Table 11-1 for the committee’s list of policy and program ideas that met this
standard of evidence).
The committee found a lack of high-quality evidence on the intergenerational impacts of
many other promising programs. It emphasizes that this should not be taken to mean that most of

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those other programs are ineffective—only that their intergenerational impacts have not been
assessed. This fact is sobering but not surprising, given the expense and difficulty of scaling up
promising interventions identified in controlled experiments, the length of time required to see
the effects of interventions on intergenerational poverty, the difficulties of assembling data for
historical, retrospective analysis, and the costs of obtaining an adequate sample size for
populations most at risk of intergenerational poverty, especially Native Americans.
Another noteworthy consequence of the committee’s high standard of evidence is that
because studies that met it focused on individual policies, the committee was unable to identify
evidence-based combinations of federal policy investments that could reduce intergenerational
poverty persistence. The report notes a number of instances where combining programs might
generate more benefits than the individual programs taken by themselves, but here too the
evidence does not support confident conclusions.
In this chapter, the committee offers general principles to guide private and public
funding organizations in supporting needed research on intergenerational poverty. It then
addresses the need for a federal infrastructure of census, survey, and administrative records data
that can be linked, going forward and backward in time, and accessed for research and policy
analysis purposes. These purposes would include analyzing trends in intergenerational poverty,
overall and for population subgroups, and estimating the likely effects of policies and programs
intended to foster intergenerational mobility for all children. As with all research data, it is vital
to ensure that administrative and survey data be made available to the research and policy
evaluation community in ways that respect respondents and protect the confidentiality of their
data. At present, substantial barriers impede access to federal data for evidence building use. The
chapter ends with the committee’s conclusions and recommendations to meet research and data
needs.
TABLE 11-1
Program and Policy Ideas Linked by Direct Evidence to Reductions in Intergenerational Poverty
Driver Program or policy idea

(* indicates that the supporting evidence was particularly strong)
Education
• Early childhood None identified in recent research
• K–12 education Increase K-12 school spending in the poorest districts*

Increase teacher workforce diversity*
Reduce exclusionary school discipline*
Increase access to Ethnic Studies courses
• Post-secondary Expand effective financial aid programs for low-income students*

education Increase campus supports (such as tutoring and case management)*
• Career training Expand high-quality career and technical education programs in high
school*
Expand sectoral training programs for adults and youth*

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• Family planning Increase funding for Title X family planning programs*
Ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries have access to family planning
services*
• Health insurance Expand access to Medicaid with continuous 12-month eligibility and
12-month post-partum coverage*
Expand access to Indian Health Services for all eligible mothers and
children
• Pollution reduction Support the EPA to work with local partners to adopt and expand
efficient methods of monitoring outdoor and—especially in
schools—indoor air quality
• Nutrition Remove the five-year waiting period of SNAP eligibility for legal
permanent-resident parents*
Eliminate the proration of SNAP benefits for citizen children with
undocumented parents.

• Work-based income Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit by increasing payments along
support some or all portions of the schedule and possibly by providing a
credit to families with no earnings*
Family Structure
• Residential mobility Expand coverage of the Housing Choice Voucher program and
couple it with customized counseling and case management
services to facilitate moves to low-poverty neighborhoods

• Juvenile incarceration Juvenile confinement should only be used for youth who pose a
serious and immediate threat to public safety*
• Child investment Improve school quality and reduce lead exposure in ways identified in
strategies the education and health categories*
Scale-up evidence-based therapeutic interventions such as the
Becoming a Man program
• Strengthen Scale up programs that abate vacant lots and abandoned homes*
communities to reduce Increase grants to community-based organizations*
violent crime and
victimization

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• Policing strategies Expand funding for policing in high-crime neighborhoods*

Expand use of effective strategies like community policing*
• Gun safety Improve gun safety in ways that pass constitutional review*
Promote child access prevention laws and restrictions on right-to-
carry laws, limit access to guns by domestic abusers*
Promote sentencing add-ons for violence involving firearms*
Child Maltreatment
Racial Disparities
A number of the programs and policies listed above have been shown
to be effective for Black children and families (See Table C-3-1)*
Notes: “*” indicates that the program or policy’s impact on intergenerational poverty is
scaled-up program. Table entries without an “*” represent programs or policies for which the
evidence has not been replicated or the policy has not been scaled up.
PRIORITIES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
This report has prioritized drawing lessons from strong causal research on drivers of
intergenerational poverty and on policies and programs that might reduce it. The most obvious
examples of strong causal research designs are studies modeled after clinical trials, which either
randomly assign children or families to a policy or program or take advantage of some kind of
lottery process that randomly offers opportunities to participate in the program or policy. The
Head Start Impact Study is an example of explicit random assignment (Puma et al., 2012).
However, most clinical trial-type studies are almost never conducted or followed-up at the scale
needed to establish that an intervention will be effective in a variety of settings and for all
population groups.
Most of the available causal research on intergenerational poverty is “quasi-
experimental,” examining in retrospect the consequences for children of naturally occurring
policy changes that were rolled out over time and across well-defined geographic areas. When
matched to long-run administrative or survey data, these quasi-experimental data enable
researchers to compare the longer-run outcomes of children to identify those who benefited from
the program. A prominent example is Hoynes et al. (2016), which took advantage of the slow
county-by-county rollout of the Food Stamp Program in the 1960s and 1970s. Using longitudinal
survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the researchers found that the adult
cardiovascular health of children born in counties already offering the Food Stamp Program was
much better relative to children who were born at the same time but grew up in counties that did
not offer food stamps until they had entered school.

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Bailey et al. (2020) also analyzed the county-level roll-out of a program, in their case the
Head Start Program, comparing long-run outcomes for children residing in Head Start counties
and those in other counties using census and Social Security data. Aizer and Doyle (2015) took
advantage of the fact that court cases are randomly assigned to judges who differ in their
tendency to detain or incarcerate youth defendants. They matched defendants to administrative
data on their adult labor-market and criminal behavior to study the impacts of juvenile detention
and incarceration on adult crime and labor market success.
These examples illustrate the importance of facilitating several kinds of research by
providing the necessary data—intergenerational follow-ups of random-assignment studies, as
well as longitudinal data from both surveys and administrative sources that can be used to
analyze the “natural experiments” created as policies and programs are implemented. Supporting
more of these kinds of exemplary studies and expanding their capacity to inform policy,
however, poses a variety of challenges for researchers and their funders:
• The costs and difficulties of scaling up promising interventions identified in controlled
experiments;
• The length of time required to see the effects of interventions on future intergenerational
poverty, which means that researchers could have to wait 20 or more years for results;
• The difficulty of anticipating what policies and interventions will be of interest decades
in the future;
• The costs of adequate sample size for population groups of interest (e.g., most surveys
and evaluation studies are not able to support reliable analyses for Native Americans);
and
• The difficulties of and barriers to accessing and linking the most useful data, which often
come from federal, state, and local administrative records, for evaluating the impacts of
past program and policy changes.
A central goal for research policy should be to reduce barriers to developing better
evidence about drivers and policies impacting intergenerational poverty. This chapter discusses
several ways to do this. To help target resources for research that could lead to effective policies,
we list in Box 11-1 important research priorities for each of the domains we cover.
BOX 11-1
Research Priorities to Ameliorate Intergenerational Poverty and Facilitate Socioeconomic
Mobility, by Domain
Racial Disparities
• Conduct research to quantify structural racism in such domains as neighborhood,
workplace, health care, and others, using standardized measures.
• Conduct quasi-experimental policy and intervention studies that prioritize data and research
designs that provide separate impact estimates by race and ethnicity.
• Develop and expand interventions and evaluations aimed at decreasing intergenerational
poverty among Black and Native American people, while prioritizing community control and
input.
Education

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• Carry out longer-run follow-ups of promising interventions, such as the highest-quality state
pre-K programs and high-quality tutoring programs.
• Examine home-visiting programs to determine which ones best promote short- and longer-
term developmental outcomes for different groups children.
• Expand the definition of “high quality” early care and education to include teaching practices
recommended by expert researchers and teachers, such as limiting whole group instruction
and promoting multi-turn teacher-child conversations.
• Assess whether early childhood education programs with the recommended practices
described above generate positive medium and longer-term impacts.
• Evaluate, at scale, promising scholarship and support programs that seek to improve low-
income students’ access to higher education and to increase their success after enrollment.
• Evaluate sector-based training programs at scale, especially at community colleges.
• Design and evaluate the long-term impacts of interventions to reduce harsh school discipline
and racial disparities in harsh school discipline.

• Conduct rigorous evaluations of the longer-run impacts of programs based in schools,
clinics, community care settings, and primary care providers addressing children and youth’s
mental health needs.
• Conduct rigorous research around the most effective gun safety measures to reduce youth
firearm-related injury and death, the leading cause of death among U.S. children.
• Conduct rigorous research on the prevalence and effects of air pollution—indoors and
communitywide—on child health and wellbeing.
• Conduct long-term evaluations of nutritional and other child health interventions.
Family Income, Wealth, and Parental Employment

• Evaluate the long-run effects of federal assistance programs (e.g., SNAP, NSLP, LIHEAP,
SSI), including strategies to reduce administrative burden to increase take-up.
• Evaluate promising programs at scale that attempt to promote high-wage jobs and ensure
that poor people have access to them (e.g., Good Jobs Challenge, Good Jobs Initiative).
• Evaluate the medium- and long-term effects of regular unconditional payments for children
(e.g., the expanded refundable Child Tax Credit that was in effect in 2021).
Family Structure
• Evaluate potentially promising strategies for promoting two-parent family structures.

• Conduct long-term follow-ups (15–20 years) of broad-based housing vouchers and the Low
Income Housing Tax Credit.
• Include small grants for remediation of toxic environments in programs to improve housing
quality and monitor long-term child outcomes of remediation.
Neighborhood Safety and the Criminal Justice System

• Evaluate promising crime-prevention programs at scale, such as Becoming a Man,
community policing, and others.
• Evaluate long-term impacts of supportive alternatives to juvenile arrest and detention.

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• Conduct rigorous evaluations of policies and programs to reduce stigma and administrative
burden and provide integrated services to families and children in the system to identify the
most promising policies and practices for subsequent scaling up and long-term assessment.
NOTE: LIHEAP = Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; NSLP = National School
Lunch Program; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; SSI = Supplemental
Security Income.
RESEARCH FUNDING PRINCIPLES AND GUIDANCE
Principles
In an effort to identify proven programs for boosting every child’s chance to succeed, the
committee proposes three broad principles for research funding. These principles apply both to
evaluations of the effectiveness of past policy and program changes and to prospective
research—that is, research where previous experimentation has not been done or has failed to
identify promising programs and where retrospective research is impossible.
The committee also hopes that funding organizations, public and private, will support the
construction and use of linked administrative and survey data that could support more extensive
retrospective and prospective research (see next section). Moreover, the committee hopes that
funding organizations will work together to provide the level of support that is necessary for
effective research and policy assessment aimed at reducing intergenerational poverty,
particularly among high-risk population groups.
The committee’s research funding principles apply to evaluations of the effectiveness of
past policy and program changes (Principle 1); prospective research (Principle 2); and focusing
on populations in need (Principle 3).
• Principle 1: Prioritize strong research designs that provide causal estimates of
program impacts. This report has prioritized drawing lessons from strong causal
research on drivers of intergenerational poverty and on policies and programs that might
reduce it. This is because methodological research has repeatedly shown that
correlational techniques such as propensity score matching can often (but not always)
provide badly biased estimates of program impacts (Cook et al., 2008; LaLonde, 1986).1
• Principle 2: For prospective research, set aside funding for rigorous, small-scale
experiments, but also for replications, scaled-up evaluations, and long-term follow-
ups of promising programs. Research portfolios on ameliorating intergenerational
poverty in one or more domains should, as a matter of course, contain three broad
funding components. The first would fund careful, smaller-scale, and shorter-term
experimental evaluations of potentially promising program models. The second
component would provide funding to replicate those programs that show promise in the
experimental phase across diverse populations and at scale. The third component would
1
Heckman et al. (1999) established some conditions under which nonexperimental evaluations of job training
programs can come close to generating similar results to experimental evaluations. However, in many other kinds of
evaluations, no such conditions have been established.

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fund the investigation of longer-run impacts of as many programs as possible that have
shown promise in the experimental and replication arms of the research, using a
combination of administrative data and surveys for follow-up purposes. So that outcomes
can subsequently be tracked using administrative and survey data, researchers conducting
shorter-term evaluations should secure and maintain the necessary permissions enabling
them to track participants using administrative or survey data later on. In all these steps,
protecting the identity of research subjects is of the utmost importance.
• Principle 3: Fund research arms for specific communities. Research portfolios should
focus on population groups and communities at highest risk of intergenerational poverty,
not only to target scarce research dollars as effectively as possible, but also to help people
most in need. Evidence presented in chapters 2 and 3 shows that intergenerational
poverty is much more prevalent in some communities and population groups than others,
in particular among Black and Native American children and youth. But high-risk
subgroups can also be found among Asian, Latino, and White communities, as well as in
other groups. Community-based strategies for developing tailored interventions are
important (see below), but so are replication studies of programs that have proved
successful in the context of other communities. Funding for these priorities should be
responsive to Executive Order 13985 (January 20, 2021) on “Advancing Racial Equity
and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”2
Other Guidance
Experiments and quasi-experiments have the potential to deliver convincing estimates of

policy and program impacts for the populations studied, in the context in which the interventions
and their sequelae unfold. As valuable as this is, there are a number of ways to enhance these
designs:
• Supplement the “black box” information emerging from experimental studies with
information about the active ingredients driving the effects. Information on drivers can
come from observational studies of program features and implementation quality, and
from mixed-method designs involving open-ended interviews with participating families
describing how they experienced the policies and programs (Weisner, 2005).
• Enrich evaluation studies with multidisciplinary and diverse research and
implementation teams. Economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, and
subject matter expertise in the particular domain (e.g., education, health care) and
program evaluation all have something to contribute, especially since the causes and
effects of intergenerational poverty span so many domains. If the research and
implementation team lack diversity in their perspectives and backgrounds,
miscommunication with the communities being studied and failure to take account of
important control variables can undermine the validity of experiments and long-term
follow-up studies. See Box 11-2 for how the Moving to Opportunity experiment
benefited from a mixed-method, multidisciplinary approach.
2
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-
equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/

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• Involve the communities under study and seek their input even before the research gets
under way. Since people whose families have been poor for generations are vulnerable
and perhaps also suspicious of researchers, it is imperative, in ethical and practical terms,
for research on intergenerational poverty to work with the communities involved. The
committee’s listening sessions with Native American families, poor families, and others
underscored this point. Communication needs to be a two-way street—ideally, it will
result in the informed participation of community members and also help the research
team identify changes that will make the research design most effective in the given
setting. Communication also needs to continue throughout the study—whether during
initial experiments or during longer-term follow-ups.
BOX 11-2
Mixed Methods and Interdisciplinary Teams in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO)
Residential Mobility Experiment
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
launched MTO to test whether families living in public housing projects in high-poverty
neighborhoods of five large inner cities could improve their lives and the lives of their children by
offering them housing vouchers that enabled them to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods.
The original conception was that the program would improve the long-term housing,
employment, and educational achievements of the families participating in the program.
Shortly after the program began, HUD invited proposals for researchers to conduct
intensive studies at each of the five sites to learn more about the early operation of the program.
Qualitative work in the Boston site found that the most salient issues motivating interest in the
program were not related to employment or children’s education. Instead, concerns over
neighborhood safety and the perceived effects of neighborhood crime on mental health
dominated many of these conversations (Kling et al., 2001). This led the larger evaluation team
to gather a great deal of information regarding the mental and physical health of participants
and their families and to bring a preeminent mental health researcher onto the project
leadership team. Subsequent evaluations found important impacts on mental and physical
health and very few impacts on employment and educational outcomes (Ludwig et al., 2011).
CREATING A FEDERAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE FOR RESEARCH USE
Through censuses, ongoing surveys, and forms used in program administration (e.g.,
income tax forms), the federal government regularly collects data on a broad set of social and
economic characteristics that can support research and policy analysis relevant to
intergenerational poverty and economic mobility (see Chapter 2 for examples of relevant
research). State governments, too, keep useful program administrative records. The data are
controlled by different agencies, however. For this and other reasons, the data are often difficult
to link or to use for evidence building, whether performed in universities, private research
organizations, governmental agencies that are not the data custodians, or cross-organization
research teams.

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Removing the barriers to data linking and putting research and policy evaluation uses on
the same footing as custodial agency uses of linkable datasets would allow researchers to
monitor longer-run outcomes of promising interventions and initiatives from controlled
experiments and replication research. Researchers could also analyze natural experiments,
monitor trends, and assess the effects of changes in government programs, such as the expanded
Child Tax Credit that was provided to families in 2021 and then allowed to expire. Such research
could be conducted retrospectively (as in Hoynes et al., 2016) or prospectively. Moreover, in the
case of prospective research, the use of linked datasets would be much more cost-effective than
original data collection.
The recently proposed student loan debt forgiveness plan provides another example of
how data linkages across agencies could facilitate analysis of the impacts of policies on
economic well-being, both now and in the future. Currently, there is no direct way to estimate
the incidence of student loan forgiveness by students’ own income, family income, or other
demographic characteristics like race, nor whether and how student debt impacts
intergenerational mobility out of poverty. If data from the Department of Education’s National
Student Loan Data System3 could be linked to IRS income data and Census Bureau demographic
data, it would be a straightforward matter to determine who in the population would benefit from
student loan forgiveness. While all the individual datasets currently exist, they exist in isolation,
they are not easily linked, and their use is restricted to a narrowly defined set of purposes.
In this section we discuss available data, including federal censuses and surveys and tax
and other administrative records, and the opportunities and challenges for linkages, using as our
prime example the domain of economic resources (income, assets, debts, employment). There
are important data sources and linkage possibilities for other domains as well, including health,
education, and criminal justice, which we summarize in Box 11-3. We also list potential
enhancements to existing panel surveys for intergenerational poverty analysis in Box 11-4.
BOX 11-3
Data on Health, Education, and Criminal Justice
Health Data
Birth and death records going back to 1938 contain relevant information, such as
birthweight and cause of death, for analyzing the effects of health on economic well-being.
These records are owned by vital registration areas (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, New
York City, and the territories), and each area determines who can use them, for what purposes,
and at what cost. They are available going back to 1968 for linkage projects at the National
Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) but only after a lag, at a cost, and within the NCHS secure
data center.a
Medicare and Medicaid claims records, available to the Census Bureau and researchers
(in the case of Medicaid with significant lags), are another potentially useful source of
information on health conditions and treatments among poor populations. The Health and
Retirement Study (HRS) regularly links Medicare and Medicaid claims records and Social
Security and Veterans Administration records with responses from survey participants who have
consented to the linkage.b While the HRS is not designed for analysis of intergenerational
3
National Student Loan Data System - Catalog. https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/national-student-loan-data-
system

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poverty, as it follows only about 20,000 couples and people living alone aged 50 and older, the
HRS illustrates what can be done with linkages to medical claims and beneficiary records
accessed in a secure online environment (see also Box 11-4).c
Local data on children’s health can contribute to experiments and projects that scale up
promising interventions at specific sites. Public health databases may include information on
child blood levels, and hospital inpatient and emergency department records may provide useful
data. Because children are relatively healthy (as compared with older adults, for example),
access to administrative records is vital for meaningful analyses of the determinants and
consequences of child health.
Education data
Many states have built detailed Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) that follow
school children at least through high school and in some instances through college and into the
labor market.d These data could be invaluable for intergenerational poverty research. However,
each state has its own arrangements for use, and interpretations of the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) at present make it difficult for researchers to link the SLDS to
other data except for state-commissioned projects.e
Criminal Justice Data

The involvement, through incarceration or parole, of people in poverty with the criminal
justice system severely constrains their families’ current and future economic well-being. The
Bureau of Justice Statistics, beginning in 2008, developed a system to collect records from all
state and federal criminal justice agencies to track recidivism, which linked with other data could
potentially provide useful information for intergenerational poverty research.f The Criminal
Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS), begun in 2016, is another potentially useful
data system for such research. At the University of Michigan, CJARS collects longitudinal
electronic records from criminal justice agencies and harmonizes these records to track a
criminal episode across all stages of the system. At the U.S. Census Bureau, harmonized
criminal justice records can be linked anonymously at the person-level with extensive social,
demographic, and economic information from national survey and administrative records. At
present, CJARS has records from 35 states, with longitudinal records covering 68 percent of
U.S. population.g
NOTES: (a) See National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) - Health, United States
(https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/sources-definitions/nvss.htm) and RDC - Research Data Center
Homepage (https://www.cdc.gov/rdc/). (b) Available Restricted Data Products | Health and Retirement
Study (umich.edu). It also has links for some respondents to 1940 census data—see Box 11.4.
https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/data-products/restricted-data/available-products. (c ) See, e.g., Davis et al.
(2022), Time to Dementia Diagnosis by Race: A Retrospective Cohort Study. | Health and Retirement
Study (umich.edu), which identifies lags in diagnosis for Black Americans.
https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/publications/biblio/12751 (d) Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant
Program – “About the SLDS Grant Program” (ed.gov) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/about_SLDS.asp
(e ) Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
(https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html); see also National Research Council (2009)
(https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12514/protecting-student-records-and-facilitating-education-
research-a-workshop-summary) (f) National Recidivism and Reentry Data Program | Bureau of Justice
Statistics (ojp.gov). https://bjs.ojp.gov/recidivism-program (g) Criminal Justice Administrative Records
System (cjars.org)

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BOX 11-4
Enhancing Panel Surveys for Intergenerational Poverty Research
Several long-running panel surveys have contributed to understanding long-term

poverty, including the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the National Longitudinal
Surveys of Youth, and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. For cost
and feasibility reasons, panel surveys generally have relatively small overall sample sizes. Yet
there are opportunities, outlined below, to enhance their ability to identify areas for targeted
research and follow-up of policy and program interventions that could ameliorate
Increasing Samples for High-Risk Groups

To respond to the Equitable Data Working Group’s report, issued in April 2022, which
calls (p. 6) for more “disaggregated statistical estimates . . . for understanding potential
disparities in life experiences and outcomes across demographic groups,” panel surveys would
need to find cost-effective ways to increase sample size for groups most at risk of
intergenerational poverty. Panel surveys could gather some of their information from
administrative data records or possibly cut back on sample subgroups at the higher end of the
income and wealth continuum. Funders could also support small additional samples of high-risk
groups in several surveys, with results pooled for greater statistical reliability.
Adding Questions on Respondents’ Place of Birth and Childhood

Adding questions to panel surveys (and repeated cross-section surveys named in the
text) on where the respondent was born and grew up would increase their value for
intergenerational poverty research. Indeed, the PSID and several other panel surveys, including
the Health and Retirement Survey, not only have survey information about respondents’
childhoods, but also undertook a project to link public 1940 census records to respondents who
were alive at the time. The 1940 census provides a wealth of detail for linked respondents’
families and neighborhoods.a
Obtaining Additional Detail on Race and Ethnicity

It would be useful for panel surveys to gather additional details regarding identity beyond
the standard race and ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino) categories—for example by asking about
membership in specific Asian groups or American Indian tribes or about White or Black origins.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget issued a Federal Register Notice on January 27,
2023, which proposes as the new federal standard a detailed combined question in which
Hispanic or Latino would be a race/ethnicity category and a new category would be added for
Middle Eastern and North African.b
NOTE: (a) Censuses are opened to the public 72 years after completion—the 1950 census forms were
released in 2022 and are now being digitized—and it will be valuable to be able to link future surveys
back to them. Surveys with adequate locating information can be linked to more recent censuses, not yet
public, inside secure Census Bureau computing facilities. (b) Federal Register: Initial Proposals For
Updating OMB's Race and Ethnicity Statistical Standards.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/27/2023-01635/initial-proposals-for-updating-ombs-
race-and-ethnicity-statistical-standards?et_rid=35386254&et_cid=4581739

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Data Sources and Linkage Possibilities for Economic Resources
Federal censuses and surveys

Since 1940, the U.S. Census Bureau has collected data on household and family income
and employment in censuses and surveys, including what is now known as the Current
Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), the American
Community Survey (ACS), and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).
Because they gather a wide range of contextual variables, including race/ethnicity, educational
attainment, and occupation, which allows for the examination of disparities among population
groups, these surveys facilitate the assessment of economic well-being both at a given point in
time and across time. However, on their own they do not provide an adequate platform for
analysis of intergenerational poverty or mobility. Income reporting in surveys has become
substantially less complete over the decades, and data on wealth are not sufficiently detailed.
Furthermore, while these surveys support repeated cross-sectional (time-series) analyses, they do
not provide linked longitudinal data on individuals and families, with the exception of short
periods in the CPS ASEC and SIPP.
Tax data
Painting an accurate picture of economic resources for U.S. households over time
requires IRS tax data, linked for families across years, as well as relevant survey and other
administrative data. IRS data are highly sensitive, and access to them, including for program
administration and other legal purposes, is tightly constrained by Title 26, Section 6103, of the
U.S. Code, Confidentiality and disclosure of [tax] returns and return information. Section
6103(a) states that, generally, “return information shall be confidential.” Nowhere is there a
provision for research or policy analysis uses of tax data, except for specific purposes by specific
agencies.
Several departments and agencies have limited access to IRS data for statistical purposes
under Section 6103(j), including the Department of Commerce, for which the rule reads as
follows:
(j) Statistical use

(1) Department of Commerce
Upon request in writing by the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary [of
Treasury] shall furnish—
(A) such returns, or return information reflected thereon, to officers and
employees of the Bureau of the Census, and
(B) such return information reflected on returns of corporations to officers and
employees of the Bureau of Economic Analysis [BEA], as the Secretary may
prescribe by regulation for the purpose of, but only to the extent necessary in,
the structuring of censuses and national economic accounts and conducting
related statistical activities authorized by law.4
4
26 U.S. Code § 6103 - Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information | U.S. Code | US Law |
LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6103

195

Research and policy analysis access to the IRS information available to the Census
Bureau (comprising many but far from all items, as spelled out in regulation 6103(j)(1)-1)5 is
provided through the network of Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (FSRDCs) that the
Census Bureau operates for the federal statistical system. Research proposals must undergo a
lengthy review process by both the Census Bureau and the IRS and be justified in terms of utility
to both agencies, and outputs must clear high hurdles for confidentiality protection. In addition,
many of the institutions that house research data centers charge researchers for a “seat.”6 The
Statistics of Income program of the IRS has its own small program of research access to tax data
(which must be carried out at IRS facilities when individual records are analyzed), and approved
research must serve the purposes of tax administration.7
Administrative data on other sources of economic support

Gaining a comprehensive picture of available economic resources requires access to
administrative records from programs that provide non-taxable benefits to families. These
include such income support programs as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), housing subsidies, the Low Income Home
Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, and
others. Many of these records are held by the states, only some of which provide access to the
Census Bureau or other agencies for statistical purposes (see Appendix C: Chapter 11, Table 11-
2).
A complete picture also requires records on major assets and debts, such as financial
assets (savings, checking, securities), home equity, retirement equity, education tax-deferred
accounts, and health insurance coverage on the asset side, along with debts for mortgages, credit
cards, student loans, and medical care on the debit side. Tax returns provide or can be used to
infer some of these items, and surveys ask about some of them, but additional sources are needed
to obtain a complete picture—for example, records from the National Student Loan Data
System.8
Promising Developments
Data linkage projects

Several statistical agencies are engaged in linkage efforts to help understand economic
mobility and child outcomes that can foster mobility. For example, the National Center for
Health Statistics has linked 20 years of data (1999–2018) from the National Health Interview
Survey and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey with HUD records on major
5
Appendix C: Chapter 11, Table 11-1 documents types of IRS data available and not available to the Census
Bureau under regulation 6103(j)(1)-1.
6
Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (census.gov). https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/fsrdc.html
7
SOI Tax Stats - Joint Statistical Research Program | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov).
https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-joint-statistical-research-program
8
The Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances provides comprehensive estimates of income and
wealth but is small in sample size, is conducted only every 3 years, and cannot be linked with other data sets because
it includes a sample of high-income households from tax returns, which cannot be used for any other purpose.

196

housing assistance programs.9 Over a dozen research reports have already benefited from the
linked data10—see, for example, Fenelon et al. (2018), who found that children living in public
housing have better mental health outcomes than a control group (no effect appears for children
whose families use housing vouchers).11 Three linkage projects at the Census Bureau are
particularly promising for retrospective and prospective research on intergenerational poverty
owing to their content and time span: the American Opportunity Study (AOS), which is
supported by the Decennial Census Digitization and Linkage (DCDL) project; the
Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID); and the Opportunity Atlas (see Box 11-5). There are also
important efforts that take advantage of data that the states maintain that are not available at the
federal level—for example, the Texas Education Research Consortium has linked K–12 and
higher education records to children’s later labor market outcomes, and the California Policy Lab
has linked a range of state-level data covering education, safety net participation, and criminal
justice involvement.
BOX 11-5
Data Linkage Projects at the U.S. Census Bureau
The American Opportunity Study (AOS) is an ongoing effort at the Census Bureau in
collaboration with researchers at Opportunity Insights, the University of Michigan, and Stanford
University to link the 1960–2020 censuses and the American Community Survey (ACS), thereby
transforming cross-sectional data into longitudinal data representing the full U.S. population
over the last 70 years. This panel can be continuously refreshed as additional census and ACS
data become available and serve as a spine on which to append tax records, earnings reports,
and program records. The Census Bureau, the National Academies, Opportunity Insights, and
several foundations funded the infrastructure for the AOS. The Decennial Census Digitization
and Linkage (DCDL) project is linking the 1960–1990 censuses, which is the last component to
be completed for the AOS (see https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/dcdl.html).
The Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID) is a foundation-funded project of Bruce Meyer and
colleagues at the University of Chicago working with the Census Bureau to combine surveys,
tax records, and federal and state benefit program records. The goal is to overcome
inaccuracies in basic understanding of economic well-being. To date, the CID project has linked
tax records and 12 sources of federal and state administrative program data with the Current
Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), the ACS, and the
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), and has produced new research on
extreme poverty and homelessness. The intention is to extend the dataset back in time for two
decades and to update it continuously going forward (Corinth & Meyer, 2021; see also the CID
website at https://cid.harris.uchicago.edu).
The Opportunity Atlas is a collaborative, foundation-funded effort by Opportunity Insights in

cooperation with the Census Bureau to construct a small-area (census tract level) linked dataset
for analyzing the economic mobility of children born between 1978 and 1983. The atlas, which is
9
NCHS Data Linkage - HUD Administrative Data (cdc.gov); see also NCHS Linked Data Table (cdc.gov).
10
Linked NCHS-HUD Citations List (cdc.gov).

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built from the 2000 and 2010 decennial censuses linked to tax returns and the 2005–2015 ACS,
contains estimates of children’s outcomes in adulthood, including earnings and incarceration
(see The Opportunity Atlas website at https://www.opportunityatlas.org/).
Legislation, regulations, and other support

There is growing recognition that research and policy analysis using linked survey and
administrative data is key to advancing knowledge in many areas, including intergenerational
mobility and poverty. New legislation—the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act
of 2018 (Foundations Act)—and reports of commissions that led to and were established by the
Foundations Act represent important steps forward (see Box 11-6). Reports of the National
Academies’ Committee on National Statistics (NASEM, 2017a, 2017c, 2022a) stress the need
for “blended data” to improve the timeliness, relevance, quality, and granularity of federal
statistics and data for evidence-building. The value of research access to confidential datasets
through the FSRDC network was shown in a recent study that took advantage of the natural
experiment afforded by the rollout of FSRDC sites throughout the country (Nagaraj &
Tranchero, 2023).
BOX 11-6
Relevant Legislation and Statements of Support for Linked Data for Evidence
The U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, chartered in March 2016 by

the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act (P.L. 114-140), in its final report envisioned
"a future in which rigorous evidence is created efficiently, as a routine part of government
operations, and used to construct effective public policy" (Commission on Evidence-Based
Policymaking, 2017, p. 1). The report’s 22 recommendations address four areas: modifying
federal laws to facilitate data use; establishing a National Secure Data Service (NSDS, which
would not store data, but instead link and return privacy-protected data to the requesting users);
instituting processes to improve data access and transparency; and designating leadership
positions to support evidence generation and use in government.
The Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Foundations Act)
enacted almost half of the commission’s recommendations. Title III contains important
provisions for linking data to analyze economic mobility over time: It incorporated the
Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA), originally enacted in
2002 (CIPSEA enables researchers to become sworn agents of a statistical agency to gain
access to confidential data in an FSRDC); codified Statistical Policy Directive No. 1 on the
responsibilities of statistical agencies to produce relevant, objective data; added the
presumption that statistical agencies may, on request, obtain federal data for evidence-building;
expanded secure access to CIPSEA data assets; required a standard data application process
for researchers to use confidential data; and charged the U.S. Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) to coordinate statistical agencies’ confidentiality and disclosure policies. The
chief statistician’s office in OMB is to issue regulations for these provisions, which will be key for
researcher access to linked data.
The Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building (ACDEB), chartered by Title
I of the Foundations Act, in its interim report (ACDEB, 2021) supported the concept of a

198

National Secure Data Service (NSDS) and urged OMB to produce guidance and regulations on
the presumption of accessibility for statistical agencies, expansion of access to CIPSEA
datasets, the responsibilities for statistical agencies, how agencies should implement “open data
by default,” and interagency and intergovernmental data-sharing responsibilities. ACDEB’s final
report (2022) focused on establishing the NSDS. It recommended that funding in the CHIPS Act
of 2022 (Section 10375) for the National Science Foundation to pilot the NSDS be assigned to
NSF’s America’s DataHub Consortium (ADC); that the NSDS be a legally recognized entity
owned by the federal government and operated by a contractor; that the NSDS facilitate
analysis by researchers of data assets hosted by affiliated organizations, including federal,
state, territorial, local, and tribal governments, nonprofits, and other organizations; that NSDS
core functions be funded by Congress; and that it develop a mixed funding model to include
federal, state, private-sector, and user support.
NOTES: The full text of the Foundations Act is at PUBL435.PS (congress.gov); Implementing the
Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services |
ASPE (hhs.gov) is a good summary. The ACDEB interim and final reports and other information are
available at Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building | U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
(BEA). See also America's DataHub Consortium: seeing — and understanding — the entire elephant |
NSF - National Science Foundation
Remaining Challenges for Economic Opportunity Research
Significant technical, privacy, feasibility, and legal challenges must be overcome to

achieve the vision outlined above. These are outlined next.
Technical challenges
The Census Bureau has developed robust linking software, which performs very well for
people with Social Security Numbers or Taxpayer Identification Numbers and reasonably well
using date of birth and name as the linking variables. It misses some people, however,
particularly immigrants and low-income individuals. Moreover, linking errors have not been well
studied. Other technical issues include the handling of data gaps and inconsistencies.
Privacy protection
Threats to privacy and the unauthorized disclosure of information collected under a
pledge of confidentiality (e.g., tax and census data) have increased over the decades. New
methods are under development to reinforce protection against disclosure, including algorithms
that satisfy differential concepts of privacy and facilitate multiparty computing. These methods
are in their infancy, however, in terms of feasibility and their ability to preserve accuracy. In fact,
there is evidence that the Census Bureau’s implementation of differentially private algorithms
and deletion of previously available data in the 2020 census products has adversely affected data
users out of proportion to the gains in privacy protection.12 In contrast, the Year 2 Advisory
Committee on Data for Evidence Building (2022) report concludes that:
12
See letter from Steering Committee, Federal-State Cooperative for Population Estimates, and signatories (2022,
August 1) to Census Bureau director Robert Santos; available: FSCPE-SC-LetterToDirectorSantos-8-22-22.pdf
(cornell.edu).

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(1) disclosure risk is on a continuum and is not binary, (2) not all data are equally
sensitive, (3) there is shared responsibility between the statistical agency and users for
protecting and not disclosing or re-identifying data, and (4) there is a need to protect
good faith actors (i.e., data providers and users who take all precautions appropriate
for known risks) (2022, p. 34).
The report also explicitly recommends (p. 28) a risk-utility framework for balancing data utility
with disclosure risks in determining appropriate levels of privacy protection for federal data
assets (see also Hotz et al., 2022).
Feasibility
The Census Bureau is currently the locus for relevant linkage projects, such as the
DCDL. However, it has no specific appropriations for such work and thus requires significant
funding from foundations and other sources. The Foundations Act and the ACDEB reports
clearly envision the NSDS as the future locus of linkage work. However, the NSDS is just
getting under way through America’s DataHub Consortium at NSF, and it has no guarantee of a
sustained funding stream nor that the Census Bureau or the IRS will make their confidential data
available to it.
Whichever agency handles linking, access to linked data for research and policy analysis
would presumably continue in the FSRDC network. The current processes for securing approval
and operating the centers leave much to be desired; they are neither timely nor efficient, and they
require resources if researchers are to get started, let alone complete their analyses.13 It is hard to
imagine the centers, as currently operated and resourced, scaling up to handle much additional
load, particularly given the need for enhanced privacy protection, which requires significant
agency staff time.
Legal challenges
Despite undoubted advances in normalizing the use of linked datasets for research and
evidence building, significant legal gaps remain. Titles 13 and 26 still restrict the use of census
and IRS data to projects that will benefit the Census Bureau and tax administration, respectively.
Moreover, IRS regulation 6103(j)(1)-1 omits important tax return data from the list of items
available to the Census Bureau. Similarly, laws governing other federal agencies, such as the
Social Security Administration, and state laws make it difficult to combine data from multiple
sources. No law includes an affirmative presumption of research access.
Another challenge is the absence of any legal provision, except for the authorizing
legislation for the Institute of Education Sciences, which houses NCES, that places the onus for
13
The single sign-on system for researcher access to confidential data, mandated in the Foundations Act, is
operational through the University of Michigan, but its functionality is limited to assisting researchers to locate data
files of interest. The proposal and approval process for gaining access to files for research has not yet been streamlined.
See Standard Application Process (SAP) to access federal confidential data -- NSF invites comments on process,
common form—EconSpark (https://www.aeaweb.org/forum/2997/standard-application-process-federal-confidential-
comments).

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privacy protection on data users (including researchers) as well as agency staff.14 Imposing
substantial penalties on users as well as agency staff for disclosing confidential information, as
the Year 2 ACDEB report endorses (see above), should help statistical agencies strike a
reasonable balance between disclosure protection and data usability.
The chief statistician’s office in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the
relevant locus for facilitating the drafting of legislation, regulations, and guidance that would
make it easier to link federal and state census, survey, and administrative program records. Such
linkage capabilities would allow for monitoring and valuable research on long-term economic
mobility in the United States and in certain population groups and geographic areas.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON RESEARCH AND DATA NEEDS
Experiments and Long-Term Follow-Ups
CONCLUSION 11-1: In many domains, such as education, there is a lack of strong

causal evidence about the effects of policies and programs on intergenerational
poverty at the needed scale. Sometimes this is because careful research has failed to
establish long-term effects. More often, the issue is a lack of data that would support
estimates of long-run program impacts.
CONCLUSION 11-2: For many reasons, it is difficult to conduct research on

intergenerational poverty and effective policies and programs to reduce it. Owing to
the scale of effort required, it is suggested that funding organizations (public and
private) consider joint grantmaking and the adoption of the following funding
principles and research best practices to maximize the likelihood of achieving valid
results:
Funding principles: (1) prioritize strong research designs that provide causal estimates
of program impacts, (2) set aside funding, not only for rigorous, small-scale experiments,
but also for replications and long-term follow-ups of promising programs and (3) fund
research arms for specific communities that are at highest risk of intergenerational
poverty (e.g., American Indians on tribal lands, rural Black people).
Evaluation research can often be enhanced by: (1) the use of mixed research methods
(qualitative, quantitative including rigorous controlled experiments) to ensure to the
extent possible that all relevant attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes are addressed; (2)
multidisciplinary and diverse research and implementation teams to facilitate
communication with the communities being studied and ensure that experiments include
important control variables; and (3) the incorporation of community input through long-
term, two-way dialogue to gain informed participation of community members
14
The language is in the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, Section 183, parts c and d (see National
Center for Education Statistics (2019), Restricted-Use Data Procedures Manual, App. D).

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throughout the life of a study and to tailor the research design for maximum effectiveness
in the particular setting.
A Federal Data Infrastructure for Research Use
CONCLUSION 11-3: Existing census, survey, and administrative data linked for
families over time and across subject domains—income, wealth, demographics,
health, education, and others—can facilitate cost-effective research and evidence
building on intergenerational poverty and socioeconomic mobility, looking both
backward and forward in time. The research and policy analysis community needs
timely, cost-efficient access to linked datasets with appropriate confidentiality
protection.
CONCLUSION 11-4: At present, data for studying intergenerational poverty and

related topics are controlled by a variety of federal and state agencies and are
difficult to link or use for research or policy evaluation. Recent developments
designed to ameliorate this situation include: the Foundations for Evidence-based
Policymaking Act of 2018, which presumes access to federal data by statistical
agencies for evidence-building and calls for a streamlined process for researcher
access to such data; supportive reports of the Commission on Evidence-based
Policymaking and other organizations; and innovative projects at the Census
Bureau and other agencies aimed at building linked datasets.
CONCLUSION 11-5: Significant challenges remain for access to linked datasets for
analysis of intergenerational poverty and related topics. They include technical
issues related to constructing and evaluating linked datasets; technical and policy
issues regarding new methods of privacy protection and their effects on data
accuracy; making access feasible in terms of cost, timeliness, and adequate budgets
for the agencies linking the data; and legal barriers (e.g., research and evaluation
must be justified in terms of agency benefits).
RECOMMENDATION 11-1—To facilitate research and evidence building on

economic opportunity, intergenerational poverty, and related topics, the Chief
Statistician at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should:
amend the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act to:
o include a presumption of secure access to confidential data for research
and policy evaluation, explicitly superseding provisions in U.S.C. Titles
26 and 13, which require research to benefit the IRS and the Census
Bureau, respectively;
o provide secure access for statistical use, research, and policy evaluation to
records of state benefit programs that receive federal funds (e.g., SNAP);

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o require federal agencies with custody of confidential datasets to use a risk-

utility framework for determining appropriate privacy protection methods
for their data; and
o impose penalties on researchers and other data users for willful, harmful
disclosure of confidential data, similar to the penalties imposed on
statistical agency staff;
• Work with the IRS Statistics of Income Division and the Census Bureau to expand
the tax items available to the Census Bureau under regulation 6103(j)(1)-1 for
research use;
secure sustained funding for data linkage projects, Federal Statistical Research
Data Centers, and technical capacity in the states to share records to support cost-
effective research and policy analysis on intergenerational poverty, economic
opportunity, and related topics; and
• Work with relevant agencies to establish guidelines for consent and data storage
that will facilitate the re-use of survey and intervention data, linked to subsequent
administrative records, for long-term follow-up and for studies not yet anticipated
at the time of the original study.

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Appendix A
Biosketches of Committee Members
GREG J. DUNCAN (Chair) holds the title of distinguished professor in the School of
Education at the University of California, Irvine. Duncan’s recent work has focused on
estimating the role of school-entry skills and behaviors on later school achievement and
attainment and the effects of increasing income inequality on schools and children’s life chances.
He is part of a team conducting a random-assignment trial assessing impacts of income
supplements on the cognitive development of infants born to poor mothers in four diverse U.S.
communities. Duncan was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and chaired the
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus committee “Building an
Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years.” He received his
Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
FENABA R. ADDO is an associate professor of public policy at the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she is also an affiliate of the Carolina Population Center. She is also
a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty, Samuel Dubois Cook Center for Social
Equity, and is a research fellow with the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve
Bank of St. Louis. Addo is an applied social scientist whose work spans the fields of social
demography, economics, and policy analysis. Her research program examines the causes and
consequences of debt and racial wealth inequality with a focus on family and relationships and
higher education. Addo is the co-author of A Dream Defaulted: The Student Debt Crisis Among
Black Borrowers with Jason Houle. She holds a B.S. in economics from Duke University and a
Ph.D. in policy analysis and management from Cornell University.
ANNA AIZER is the Maurice R. Greenberg professor of economics at Brown University, co-
director of the National Bureau of Economic Research Program on Children, and editor of The
Journal of Human Resources. The focus of her work is the intergenerational transmission of
economic status. Aizer previously served on the National Academies Committee on the
Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and its Applications.
She received her M.S. in public health from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in economics
from the University of California, Los Angeles.
MARGARET R. BURCHINAL is a research professor in the School of Education and Human
Development at the University of Virginia. Her research examines the role early childhood
education plays in children’s learning and development. Burchinal served as the lead statistician
for landmark early education studies, including the Abecedarian Project, the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development Study (NICHD) of Early Child and Youth Development,
and the Family Life Project and evaluations of major early childhood policy initiatives. She has
authored or co-authored over 150 peer-reviewed articles, served on review panels for the

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Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Institute of Education Sciences, and NICHD, as an associate
editor for Child Development and Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and is a board member
for the William T. Grant Foundation and the American Educational Research Association’s
Research Board. Previously Burchinal served on the National Research Council Committee on
Developmental Outcomes and Assessment for Young Children, Early Care and Education
Workshop, and Leading Educational Indicators Workshop. She holds a Ph.D. in quantitative
psychology from the University of North Carolina.
RAJ CHETTY is the William A. Ackman professor of economics at Harvard University. He is
also the director of Opportunity Insights (formerly the Equality of Opportunity Project), which
uses “big data” to understand how to give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better
chances of succeeding. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to
help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and
unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia,
media outlets, and Congressional testimony. Chetty has received numerous awards for his
research, including a MacArthur "Genius" fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal. Before
joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor at University of California-Berkeley and
Stanford University. Chetty received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
STEPHANIE A. FRYBERG is the university diversity and social transformation professor of
psychology and founding director of the Research for Indigenous Social Action and Equity
Center at the University of Michigan. Her research expertise focuses on how social
representations of race, culture, and social class influence the development of self, psychological
well-being, and educational attainment as well as focuses on how to design interventions that
reconfigure spaces to improve outcomes for racial minority and low-income students. Fryberg
testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs regarding the impact of racist
stereotypes on Indigenous people, served as lead psychologist on an Amicus Brief for Harjo v.
Pro-Football, served as an expert witness in the Keepseagle v. U.S. Department of Agriculture
class action lawsuit, and provided testimony to the Spotted Bear and Soboleff Congressional
Committee on Native Children. Fryberg has received many awards for her work, including the
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues’ Louise Kidder Early Career Award and
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Service Award, among others. She is past
president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Division 9 of the American
Psychological Association). Her research has been funded by National Science Foundation,
Mellon Foundation, Gates Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Yidan Foundation, Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation, and New Venture Fund. Fryberg received her B.A. from Kenyon College
and both her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.
HARRY J. HOLZER is the John LaFarge Jr. S.J. professor of public policy at Georgetown
University, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an institute fellow at the
American Institutes for Research. He is a former chief economist for the U.S. Department of
Labor and a former professor of economics at Michigan State University. Holzer was a founding
faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. He is also an affiliate of the
Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and of the Stanford
Institute on Poverty and Inequality. Holzer has authored or edited several books and journal
articles, mostly on disadvantaged American workers and their employers, as well as on education

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and workforce issues and labor market policy. He received his B.A. from Harvard University and
his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
VONNIE C. MCLOYD is the Ewart A. C. Thomas Collegiate professor of psychology at the

University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. As a developmental psychologist, she studies the role of
maternal psychological distress, parenting behavior, and family relations as mediators of the
links between economic stress and socioemotional development during childhood and
adolescence, and factors that moderate these links. McLoyd also examines the extent to which
family processes and sociocultural factors (e.g., racial-ethnic identity, racial socialization) protect
youth’s socioemotional adjustment from adversities such as neighborhood violence, peer
victimization, and perceived racial discrimination. Her scholarly work has been recognized by
many awards from the Society for Research in Child Development, the American Psychological
Association, and the MacArthur Foundation, among others. Previously, McLoyd was the
associate editor of Child Development and American Psychologist, past president of the Society
for Research on Adolescence, and president-elect of the Society for Research in Child
Development. She was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine’s consensus committee on “Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in
Poverty by Half in 10 Years.” McLoyd received a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the
University of Michigan and post-doctoral training at Stanford University.
KIMBERLY MONTEZ is associate professor of pediatrics, associate program director of the
Pediatric Resident Program, vice chair for Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion in Pediatrics, and
an associate director of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity at the Wake Forest
University School of Medicine. She is a health services researcher with a focus on the social
drivers of health, health equity promotion among under-resourced populations, and diversity and
inclusion in pediatrics. Montez serves in leadership positions for the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP), is lead author on multiple AAP policy statements and technical reports,
including Poverty and Child Health, and has received the AAP Health Equity Award. Her
advocacy work has been featured in news outlets, radio shows, and podcasts, including for the
National Public Radio show and NBC Nightly News. Montez is also an associate editor for the
journal Pediatrics. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University, her medical
degree from the Stanford School of Medicine, and her master’s degree from the Harvard School
of Public Health.
AISHA NYANDORO is the founding chief executive officer of Springboard to Opportunities, a

Jackson, Mississippi nonprofit that uses a “radically resident-driven” approach to end
generational poverty. She created the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which is now the country’s
longest-running guaranteed income program, and the only one in the world to focus on Black
women. In addition to leading Springboard’s community work and growing the Magnolia
Mother’s Trust, Nyandoro is focused on shifting gendered and racialized narratives around
poverty and deservedness, while also working to show how the success of the Trust can be
scaled nationally through policies like the expanded Child Tax Credit and a federal guaranteed
income. Her expertise on economic, racial, and gender justice issues is regularly featured in
outlets including The Washington Post, Amanpour & Company, Essence Magazine, NBC
Nightly News and CNN. Nyandoro is a TEDx speaker and a fellow of the W.K. Kellogg

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Foundation Community Leadership Network and ascend at the Aspen Institute. She holds a B.A.
from Tennessee State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
MARY PATTILLO is the Harold Washington professor of sociology and Black studies, and
chair of the Black Studies Department, at Northwestern University. Her areas of research include
race and inequality, housing, urban politics, poverty, education, criminal legal studies, and Black
communities. Pattillo is the author of two award-winning books – Black Picket Fences: Privilege
and Peril among the Black Middle Class and Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class
in the City; she also is co-editor of Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass
Incarceration, and co-editor of a two-issue volume on monetary sanctions in the criminal legal
system. Pattillo has won grants and fellowships from the Ford, Fulbright, Spencer, and
MacArthur Foundations, among others. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and the American Academy of Political & Social Science. She is a trustee of the
William T. Grant Foundation and Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and was a founding
board member of Urban Prep Charter Academies in Chicago. Pattillo holds a B.A. in urban
studies from Columbia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of
Chicago. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
JESSE ROTHSTEIN is Chancellor's professor of public policy and economics at the University
of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), with appointments in the Department of Economics and
the Goldman School of Public Policy. He is also the co-founder and co-director of the California
Policy Lab, and is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a
fellow of the National Education Policy Center, the CESifo Research Network, the Institute for
the Study of Labor, and the Learning Policy Institute. He previously served as chief economist at
the U.S. Department of Labor, senior economist with the Council of Economic Advisers,
Executive Office of the President, and director of the Institute for Research on Labor and
Employment at UC Berkeley. Rothstein is a labor economist, with research interests in education
policy, tax and transfer policy, and the labor market. His recent work includes studies of teacher
quality, school finance, intergenerational economic mobility, take-up of safety net benefits, and
the labor market during the Great Recession. He has been named the John T. Dunlop
Outstanding Scholar by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Rothstein holds an
M.P.P. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.
MICHAEL R. STRAIN is director of Economic Policy Studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in
Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. Much of his recent research has studied
the employment effects of public policies, including the minimum wage, the Earned Income Tax
Credit, the Paycheck Protection Program, and Unemployment Insurance. He is the author of The
American Dream Is Not Dead, which analyzes longer-term economic outcomes for typical
workers and households, and he is the editor or coeditor of four volumes on economic and public
policy issues. Strain also writes frequently for popular audiences, and his essays and op-eds have
been published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post,
among others. He has testified before Congress and speaks often to a variety of audiences. He is
Professor of Practice at Georgetown University, a research fellow with the Institute for the Study
of Labor in Bonn, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University
of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. He is an elected
member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Previously, he worked at the U.S. Census

207

Bureau and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was appointed to the National
Academies committee on measuring alternative work arrangements and is currently serving on
the National Academies committee on artificial intelligence and the U.S. workforce. He holds a
Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.
STEPHEN J. TREJO is a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin. His
research focuses on public policy issues involving labor markets, including overtime pay
regulation, the experiences of immigrants, and obstacles to the economic progress of minority
groups. Much of Trejo’s recent work analyzes patterns of socioeconomic mobility among the
U.S.-born descendants of contemporary immigrant groups, and one strand of this work explores
how selective intermarriage and ethnic identification bias assessments of intergenerational
progress for Hispanics and Asians. He has served as a co-editor for the Journal of Human
Resources, an associate editor for the Journal of Human Capital, and a deputy editor for
Demography. In addition, he was appointed to National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine panels that studied immigrant integration, U.S. Hispanics, and health insurance.
Trejo holds a B.A. degree in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and
both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Chicago.
STAFF AND CONSULTANTS
NATACHA BLAIN serves as the senior board director of the Board on Children, Youth and
Families and the Committee on Law and Justice at the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine. She has served as a supreme court fellow, chief counsel to senator
Dick Durbin on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as lead strategic advisor for the
Children’s Defense Fund’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline Campaign. Prior to joining the National
Academies, Blain served as associate director/acting executive director of Grantmakers for
Children, Youth and Families. There she played a critical role in helping convene and engage
diverse constituencies, fostering leadership, collaboration and innovation-sharing through a
network of funders committed to the enduring well-being of children, youth and families. Blain
earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Allegheny University of Health Sciences
and MCP-Hahnemann University (now Drexel University) respectively, and her J.D. from
Villanova School of Law.
EMILY BACKES is deputy board director for the Committee on Law and Justice and Board on
Children, Youth, and Families in the Division of Behavioral, Social Sciences, and Education at
the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She also serves as director of
the Societal Experts Action Network, a network of leading individuals and institutions in social
sciences fields that provides actionable responses to urgent policy questions related to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In her time at the Academies, Backes has served as study director for the
reports: Decarcerating Correctional Facilities during COVID-19: Advancing Health, Equity, and
Safety; The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth; Birth Settings in
America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice; and Transforming the Financing of Early Care
and Education. Backes has also provided analytical and editorial assistance to National
Academies projects on juvenile justice reform, policing, forensic science, illicit markets, science
literacy, science communication, and science and human rights. She received an M.A. and B.A.

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in history from the University of Missouri, specializing in U.S. human rights policy and
international law, and a J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia, where she
represented clients as a student attorney with the Low-income Taxpayer Clinic and the Juvenile
and Special Education Law Clinic.
JENNIFER APPLETON GOOTMAN is a senior program officer with the Board on Children,
Youth, and Families in the Division of Behavioral, Social Sciences, and Education. She most
recently served as the executive director of the DC Soccer Club, a non-profit youth sports
organization serving thousands of children and youth from across Washington, DC. Previously,
Gootman was the project director of the Birth Control Initiative for The National Campaign to
Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy (rebranded as Power to Decide), a series of activities
designed to rebuild support for and understanding of the important positive role that birth control
in the lives of women and men. Gootman has worked as a senior program officer for both Board
on Children, Youth, and Families and the Food and Nutrition Board, directing several studies on
topics including adolescent risk behavior, adolescent health, teen driving, food marketing to
children and youth, youth development programs, and the impact of work on children and youth
in low-income families. Her work has focused on child and family policy for low-income
families, including welfare reform, childcare, child health, youth development, teen pregnancy
prevention, and youth sports. Gootman received a B.A. in education and fine arts from the
University of Southern California and a M.A. in Urban Public Policy from The New School
University.
RITA HAMAD (Consultant) is a social epidemiologist in the Department of Social and

Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As the director of the
Social Policies for Health Equity Research (SPHERE) Program, she leads a research team
investigating the pathways linking poverty and education with health disparities across the life
course. In particular, Hamad studies the health effects of social and economic policies using
interdisciplinary quasi-experimental methods. Current studies address the health effects of the
earned income tax credit, school segregation, paid leave, and social policies during the COVID-
19 pandemic. Hamad has previously provided consultation to federal and state legislators
developing poverty alleviation policies to reduce health inequities. She serves as the Co-Chair of
the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science Communications Committee,
working to the increase the visibility and impact of population health research. She is also the
2020-2022 James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine / National Academy of
Medicine Fellow. Hamad holds an M.D. from the University of California San Francisco and
Ph.D. in epidemiology from Stanford University.
PRIYANKA NALAMADA is a program officer at the National Academies of Sciences,

Engineering, and Medicine. She primarily supports the work of the Board on Children, Youth,
and Families within the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Her work
involves providing critical project management support to National Academies’ activities,
including consensus studies and convenings focused on the health and wellbeing of children and
families. In addition to supporting the Committee on Policies and Programs to Reduce
Intergenerational Poverty, Nalamada currently supports the cross-divisional Standing Committee
on Reproductive Health, Equity, and Society; and directs the consesus study on Promoting

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Learning and Development In K-12 Out Of School Time Settings For Low Income and
Marginalized Children and Youth. Most recently Nalamada served as Acting Director for the
Forum for Children’s Well-Being. She previously worked for a number of years within the
National Academies’ Health and Medicine Division and the Policy and Global Affairs Division,
developing and supporting activities within the Board on Global Health and the Board on Higher
Education and Workforce including the Committee on Defense Research at Historically Black
Colleges and Universities and Other Minority Institutions; Minority Serving Institutions
America's Underutilized Resource for Strengthening the STEM Workforce; and Forum on
Public-Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety. Nalamada holds a bachelor’s degree in
political science from Bryn Mawr College.
BRIANA SMITH is a senior program assistant with the Board on Children, Youth, and Families
in the Division of Behavioral, Social Sciences, and Education. She has a background working
with families of diverse backgrounds with differing socio-economic status while with the Fairfax
County Department of Neighborhood and Community Services as well as the U.S. military
families with Childcare Aware of America. Previously working with the Transportation Research
Board as a Senior Program Assistant with NCHRP and BTSCRP projects. Currently, she is
enrolled at Simmons University in the Library and Information Science Master of Science
program with the hopes of becoming a public librarian. Smith earned a B.A. in English at James
Madison University and a M.F.A. in writing popular fiction at Seton Hill University.

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Appendix B
Perspectives on Intergenerational Poverty
Early in its deliberations, the study committee expressed a desire to build a full picture of
not only the populations that are at greatest risk of intergenerational poverty but of the policies
and programs that are working to reduce intergenerational poverty. In response the committee
held several information gathering activities to hear from community members, organizational
leaders, policy experts, and scholars.
The committee held two public information gathering sessions to increase its
understanding of intergenerational poverty within Native American communities1 and children
and families involved with the child welfare and justice systems. 2 The committee also
commissioned Ascend at the Aspen Institute to organize a series of listening sessions that were
closed to the public to ensure candid discussions. This included two listening sessions with
parents and caregivers3 contending with poverty to hear directly from them about their
experiences with programs and systems designed to support their family’s financial well-being
and improve their children’s future; three listening sessions with representatives of community-
or state-level organizations serving Latino families, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian families,
and families living in rural communities; and one listening session with public policy experts to
gain a better understanding of federal policy levers to promote potential interventions across
policy areas delivered at the federal, state, and local levels.
While these sessions were not designed to be representative and do not reflect the full
range of perspectives or experiences of those affected by intergenerational poverty, they
provided important context for understanding the lived experience of intergenerational poverty.
During these sessions, parents, practitioners, and policy makers discussed their personal
and professional experience with policies, programs, research, and data collection that addresses
various dimensions of intergenerational poverty in different communities. These conversations
served as a backdrop for the committee’s review and assessment of the available empirical
literature, as well as a reminder of the real-life stories and experiences behind the data.
1
A proceedings and proceedings in brief of this session are available here:
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26909/intergenerational-poverty-and-mobility-among-native-americans-
in-the-united-states (ADD full proceedings link here when available)
2
For more information on this session including an agenda and recording:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/04-14-2022/public-information-gathering-session-policies-and-programs-
to-reduce-intergenerational-poverty
3
The participants in the listening session with parents and caregivers were primarily Black individuals from

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Public Information Gathering Sessions
Perspectives on Native American communities

This session included three panels to engage with community leaders, researchers, and
practitioners on issues surrounding intergenerational poverty and mobility among Native
American families in the United States. Representatives from the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the
American Indian College Fund, the Native Organizers Alliance, and the American Indian OIC
discussed poverty and mobility in their communities and described key barriers and obstacles
reducing the chances that Native American children grow up to be happy, healthy and
prosperous adults. They shared Native-led efforts to support upward economic mobility and shed
light on the strengths of Native American communities to address intergenerational poverty.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University discussed important
historical and structural factors that have shaped economic opportunity and mobility for Native
Americans, as well as the current data and research on mobility, gaps in the data, and the
challenges in conducting research on this population. Researchers from the Federal Reserve
Bank of Minneapolis, Northwestern University, and the University of Washington discussed
drivers of intergenerational poverty among Native Americans and interventions that could
improve their economic mobility within the domains of health, education, and the labor market.
Perspectives on children involved with the child welfare and justice systems
The committee held this session to (1) better understand structural determinants,
especially poverty-related structural determinants, that contribute to involvement with the child
welfare and justice systems, (2) identify evidence-based service interventions that reduce the
chances that children in these systems are poor as adults, and (3) better understand these systems
from a racial/ethnic disparities lens.
Researchers and practitioners with expertise in the child welfare and criminal justice
systems—from the University of Maryland, the Juvenile Law Center, the University of
California at Berkeley, Arizona State University, Columbia University, University of Notre
Dame, and the University of Chicago—discussed how involvement with the justice system and
child welfare system affects children’s and adolescents’ chances of upward mobility in
adulthood, how racial disparities and structural factors in the justice system and child welfare
system contribute to the causes of intergenerational poverty, and evidence-based programs and
policies that target children and their parents and caregivers that are most likely to reduce
chances that low-income children will be poor in adulthood. The committee considered these
discussions and the research presented in its development of the report, specifically for Chapters
9 and 10.
Closed Listening Sessions
These sessions were held with subsets of committee members, and were organized as
small group discussions with organizational leaders supporting communities that the committee
had identified as not being well represented in its public sessions and in the evidence base. As
addressed previously, they do not reflect the full range of perspectives or experiences, but they

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provided additional valuable context for understanding the lived experience of intergenerational
poverty for some.
Parent and caregiver perspectives

A group of low-income parents and caregivers shared their stories with vulnerability and
candor on their day-to-day struggles to realize their hopes for their children. Many of them
worked in low-wage jobs and received public benefits of some sort, yet these sources of income
and support were inadequate for making ends meet, unstable and irregular, and they created a set
of bureaucratic challenges and roadblocks that made it difficult to get ahead. These parents’
stress levels were palpable and were reflected in poor mental and physical health. Some parents
talked about furthering their own educations or making sacrifices to enroll their children in better
schools, but the daily financial grind made planning for or investing in children’s futures all but
impossible. Key themes from these discussions are noted here:
Stability, consistency and safety are central to parent goals for their children and family:
• My dream is one neighborhood, one home, one place.
• You would be there for your life and your tax dollars go to work for you.
• [We need] safe spaces for children to help them grow.
Other goals that parents mentioned centered around being an agent of change both for their
family and their community:
• I want to try to make a difference.
• I want to be a voice to be a change for struggling parents.
• Make a difference for the future.
• Help other Latinas to get treatment we deserve.
• My goal is to provide my daughter with the education she deserves.
Parents value education and building social skills—both for themselves and their children—as
key to achieving those goals. They also believe they have a role in providing that and want
parenting skills to help build such skills.
• Social behavior that is acceptable and social skills that will help them in the real world.
• [We need] good learning environments.
• Need to have more parent education.
• Children need to know laws and rules.
• [I am] thankful for programs that help me be in a better position but also want programs
that help me be a better parent so that I can raise my child.
Parents mentioned the stress of the uncertainty of not knowing how you will provide for your
family.
• When I had the extra stimulus, it was this little pink pig of hope. I didn’t stress out. Now I
am stressed and not sure where I’m going—like my hope is gone.
• A lot of stressful nights, after you pay rent, you still have expenses for your child’s school
and other things. How can you provide for your child and still have a normal life for
yourself?

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Parents identified barriers that they and their children face in achieving their goals.
• Parents need to be aware of benefits so that they can provide for their children.
• Parents need to be better educated.
• Biggest barrier is mental health; need assistance in finding help to get better. Currently,
Medicaid just throws drugs at you.
• My Dad was troubled, so I was troubled too.
• We have to work longer so that means we aren’t spending time with our kids.
• I stress that my kids won’t have enough food. Do we skip a bill or eat?
• To qualify for benefits you have to fit in a box. I don’t fit in a box because I am a
grandmother and not a traditional caregiver and so don’t qualify.
Several parents highlighted the phasing out of benefits – the cliff effect – as a key barrier:
• When you are about to get ahead, they cut you off.
• TANF and Section 8 have so many hoops you have to jump through that it is not worth it.
• Change income limits so that we don’t have a benefits cliff.
• When you are trying to help people, help them gradually walk themselves off the program
but don’t drastically cut them off. Living on these programs wasn’t intended to be a way
of life but a help to be where you need to be in life.
Among the responses when asked which government programs helped them personally:
• Subsidized housing (although a help and hindrance, because they are a help when you
don’t have a job but a hindrance if you have a job and have earnings and triggers a
bureaucratic nightmare as well as new, higher rent.)
• SNAP, important but not enough; disconnect between what a family actually needs and
what the government thinks a family needs; doesn’t take into account non-traditional
parents.
• Our children deserve the stars and the moon but we can’t give it to them.
• Child Tax Credit and the Stimulus checks were helpful as it made it able for me to save as
well as meet our needs. Now that it’s gone, I had to use all my savings.
Public policy perspectives

Public policy experts shared their perspectives on how federal policy can be used to
encourage and support the most effective programs at the federal, state, and local levels. They
discussed what the committee needs to know about current mechanisms and processes for
designing policy and delivering these potential interventions at the federal, state, and local level,
as well as policy areas that the committee should be considering. They suggested that those
living in poverty should be involved in the conversation, that important policy should not be
narrow or restrained, and that states and localities offer important contributions to this
conversation.
• We must talk to people who live in intergenerational poverty and see what they want.
Start with people and offer dignity back to them.

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• Siloes at the federal level are harmful.

• We need good practices that aren’t regionally bound.
• Bring states to the table—that is where federal levers can come in and make states act
another way.
Rural community perspectives

Representatives from community and state level organizations serving rural communities
spoke to the committee about the unique challenges of rural poverty and the kinds of programs
that are needed to serve these families.
• In communities impacted by substance abuse disorder, we struggle with how to protect

privacy but help humans whose lives are rugged and ragged. There is no anonymity in
rural areas. How do we be transparent but still acknowledge families who have these
“marks” about them? How do we give families with substance abuse problems stigma-
free assistance?
• Rural folks are isolated. People believe that poverty is because something is wrong with
you. But it is important for folks to understand, No it’s the system.
• We can’t count on anybody to come save us. What we have to do to is to save
ourselves. The light bulb comes on when you are exposed to new ideas on how to make
stuff happen.
• Programs should be designed by families; there is a lot of talent among the families we
serve, and we should tap into that.
• They should be creating programs that promote social capital.
• Best programs are in response to and together with people whose lives show up as not
doing well. Mindset shift needs to happen. Programs push us to do better but wish they
would also ask us to report on the dreams and aspirations rural families have. We only
get info on what’s wrong with the family.
• Be intentional about families. Identify their aspirations and then help families achieve
those aspirations.
Alaskan Native and Pacific Islander community perspectives
Representatives from organizations serving Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native

communities noted the need to support social connectedness and a sense of well-being among
community (cultural/spiritual wellness), as a key factor in uplifting families out of poverty.
Participants also highlighted the positive role of community organizations and called for more
“trust-based” philanthropy, which would give these organizations the flexibility to meet the
needs of families. They noted they often feel “their hands are tied” with government funding,
and they don’t have the ability to make real time decisions to help families. They also expressed
the need to create/develop programming with the community. Participants highlighted
administrative burden to accessing social safety net programs as a key barrier and suggested
more “cross-enrollment” opportunities are needed.
• Our families often share that our current systems here (education, housing, health) focus
on preserving wealth for the already wealthy, even at the expense of others. This

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reinforces injustices perpetuated against Native Hawaiians, disconnects us from our

culture, and limits opportunities for families to thrive.
• The most inspiring folks are people in hard situations. They have the best energy as they
are most motivated for change but don’t know how to make that change. Keeps you
inspired.
• Our families seek fiscal stability, education, healthy relationships, healthy families and
cultural/spiritual wellness.
• Common themes that I find among our families: Limited choices for our families,
disempowerment, exploitation, and unaccountability of those in power. All as a result of
ongoing trauma. In response to those barriers, our people dig into cultural identity,
communities and connecting to the collective.
Latino community perspectives

Representatives from organizations serving Latino communities shared their thoughts on
the challenges these communities face and what they need most to improve their children’s
chances for upward mobility.
• The biggest issue for us is immigration. We have families with mixed status so being able
to access various resources may be challenging.
• Winter and seasonal work especially for immigrant families is a barrier. Their hours of
work go down and with the increase in the cost of living it is harder for families to have a
sense of economic stability.
• Our families talk all the time about not having access to opportunities, about being
turned away, about being fearful of talking to anyone because they don’t know if they will
speak their language.
• Just because resources are available in our community, doesn’t mean they are
accessible. If there is a child care center even in your neighborhood, if they are not
operating from 6 am to 7 pm and they don’t have teachers who speak your language, as
much as you want access to that child care, it is not going to work for your family.

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Appendix C
APPENDIX C: CHAPTER 2
A DEMOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
This appendix details the methods used to construct Chapter 2’s portrait of
intergenerational mobility. It first describes the population-level data used to measure mobility
for recent generations by subgroup and geographic area and then describes the historical data
used to measure trends in economic mobility over time. Finally, it presents distributional data on
economic status as measured by Adjusted Gross Income and the income concept used in the
Supplemental Poverty Measure.
Contemporary Measures of Mobility by Subgroup and Area Based on Tax Data
Data
Our featured estimates of economic mobility by race, gender, and geography are obtained
directly from the Opportunity Atlas data constructed by Chetty et al. (2018, 2020). Here, we
briefly summarize their methods as they pertain to the results we summarize in the main text; see
Chetty et al. (2018, 2020) for further details.
To measure present-day intergenerational mobility in the United States, Chetty et al.
combine three sources of data: (1) the Census 2000 and 2010 short forms; (2) federal income tax
returns from 1989, 1994, 1995, and 1998-2015; and (3) the Census 2000 long form and the 2005-
2015 American Community Surveys (ACS). The target population comprises all children in the
1978–83 birth cohorts (1) who were born in the United States or are authorized immigrants who
came to the United States in childhood and (2) whose parents were also U.S. citizens or
authorized immigrants.1 After excluding children who cannot be linked to parents or have no
address information during childhood, the primary analysis sample comprises 20.5 million
children, which covers 96% of the target population. When reporting race-specific estimates, an
additional 5 percent of children for whom race data is missing are excluded.
Parental income is defined as the mean of parents’ household income over five years:
1994, 1995, and 1998–2000. Parents’ household income is measured as adjusted gross income
(AGI) in years in which a parent files a tax return and is defined as zero otherwise. Children’s
annual income is defined similarly, except that data from W-2 forms (which are available in
1
We construct this sample by identifying all children born between 1978 and 1983 who were claimed as a
dependent child on a 1040 tax form at some point between 1994 and 2015 by an adult who appears in the 2016
Numident file and was between the ages of 15 and 50 at the time of the child’s birth. We define a child’s parent as
the person who first claims the child as a dependent (between 1994 and 2015).

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more recent years) are used to impute income for non-filers. Children’s income is measured as
the mean of children’s annual incomes in 2014 and 2015 (when they are between 31 and 37
years old).
Methods
We use children’s and parents’ income ranks to measure intergenerational mobility. A
child’s income rank is measured as his or her percentile in the national distribution of incomes
(measured between ages 31 and 37) relative to all others in his birth cohort who are included in
our primary analysis sample. Similarly, we measure parents’ income rank as their percentile in
the national distribution of parental income for their child’s birth cohort. For any given parental
income percentile, we can then directly calculate the mean income percentile of their children, as
shown in Figures 2-1 through 2-5.2 These relationships provide measures of relative mobility,
addressing the question “What are the outcomes of children from low-income families relative to
those of children from high-income families?”
For the geographic analyses in Figures 2-8 and 2-9, children are assigned to locations
based on the location of their parents (when the child was first claimed as a dependent),
irrespective of where they live as adults.
Comparisons With Studies Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Two studies based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) provide
comparative information on intergenerational poverty persistence and intergenerational income
mobility from low economic status in childhood—Parolin et al. (2022) and Fisher and Johnson
(2023).
Parolin et al. (2022) estimate intergenerational poverty persistence using data gathered in
the 1968-2019 waves of the PSID. Since their income measure includes both cash and two in-
kind sources (SNAP and refundable tax credits), it is closer to an SPM-based than an OPM-based
measure of total household income. A family is defined as poor if this income measure falls
below the Official Poverty Measure threshold for a family of that size. The Parolin et al. sample
consists of PSID participants observed in the data for at least six years between birth and age 10
and for at least one year between ages 25 and 30. Childhood poverty is defined as living in a
household with income below the poverty threshold for 50% or more of the years between birth
and age 10. Adult poverty is defined using the same income measure, but only in a single year—
age 30. The small number of individuals who did not identify as "White" or "Black" are excluded
from the calculations, so the "All" columns of Appendix Tables C.2.2 are based only on Black
and White PSID families.
Fisher and Johnson (2023) study PSID individuals observed between ages 14 and 18 in
childhood and ages 31 and 35 in adulthood. Their birth cohorts span the period from 1954 to
1982, and PSID data are drawn from the 1968 through 2017 waves. Total household income
equals the sum of taxable income, cash transfer income, and social security income for the head,
spouse/partner, and other family units in the household. Total consumption values are imputed
2
From children’s and parent’s income ranks, we can also create a summary statistic measure of intergenerational
mobility: the correlation between children’s and parents’ income ranks (rank-rank slope). Chetty et al. (2014a) show
that rank-rank slopes provide a more robust measure of relative mobility than another commonly used measure, the
elasticity of children’s income with respect to parental income.

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for every PSID household and wave based on reported food expenditures and, beginning in 1999,
responses to a more comprehensive set of consumption questions, as well as to the Consumer
Expenditure Survey (Fisher and Johnson 2021). Wealth data are available in the PSID for 1984,
1989, 1994, and the period from 1999 through 2017. Wealth is imputed in other waves using
information on home value and on interest and dividend income.
We sought PSID counterpart estimates for Figure 2-6, which shows the average adult
income ranks for children with household AGI income at the 10th and 50th percentiles of
childhood income distribution. Special tabulations by Fisher and Johnson using data from their
article provided average economic rank in adulthood for children in the 8th to 12th and 48th to
52nd percentiles of the PSID-based distributions of income, consumption, and wealth.
Poverty transitions
Table C-2-1 shows intergenerational data on low-income rates and transitions in IRS data
using the bottom decile or quintile of the child or adult distributions to define low-income
thresholds. Overall rates of low-income status for the bottom decile and quintile are, by
definition, 10% and 20%, respectively. In both cases, rates are three times as high for Black as
for White individuals.
Counterpart numbers for the PSID are shown in the first three columns of Table C-2-2.
The Parolin et al. (2022) annual measure of poverty—cash plus tax credits and SNAP benefits
relative to the official poverty line—yields an average annual poverty rate of 12.3%. In their
main analyses, Parolin et al. (2022) consider children to be poor if their household income fell
below the poverty threshold in more than half of their birth-to-age-10 years. Despite this unusual
definition, their estimate of childhood poverty—11.3%—is very similar to the average of the
annual rates, and it is much higher for Black (38.2%) than White (5.4%) children. Their estimate
of poverty in adulthood (10.3%) is also similar, although the racial gap for this adult poverty
measure is smaller than for its childhood counterpart.
Given the committee’s focus on reducing intergenerational poverty, the most relevant
estimates from these two data sources are of the fraction of children living in poor or low-income
families who are also observed to be poor or low-income in adulthood. These are shown in the
“Conditional Poverty Persistence” columns of the two tables. Rates are similar for the 20th
percentile threshold in tax data (33.7%; also shown in Figures 2-1 and 2-2) and in the PSID data
(28.6%; also shown in Figure 2-1). Lowering the threshold to the 10th percentile produces a
considerably lower (19.6%) estimate of conditional mobility out of poverty/low-income status.
In both data sets, substantially fewer Black than White children escape poverty/low-income
status.
Also of interest is the general prevalence of intergenerational poverty—the fraction of all
children who live in low-income families in both childhood and adulthood. This is simply the
product of childhood poverty rates and intergenerational persistence. So if, for example, 12% of
children grow up in poor families and one-third of poor children are also poor in adulthood, then
the fraction of all children poor in both generations is one-third of 12%—or 4% in all. Estimates
of intergenerational poverty/low-income prevalence are highest (6.7%) for the IRS-based 20th-
percentile cutoff for low-income status, lowest (2.0%) for the IRS-based 10th-percentile
threshold, and in between (3.2%) for the PSID-based poverty measure. In both cases where race-
specific estimates are available, the prevalence of persistent poverty/low-income status is higher
for Black than for White children.

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TABLE C-2-1: Intergenerational poverty statistics based on AGI data in tax records
Poverty defined by 10th percentile (bottom decile) Poverty defined by 20th percentile (bottom quintile)
Average Average Conditional Intergenerational Average child Adult poverty Conditional Intergenerational
annual child annual adult poverty poverty poverty rate rate (% of poverty poverty
poverty rate poverty rate persistence prevalence (% of (% of children children with persistence prevalence (% of
(% of children (% of children (Among children with AGI with average average AGI (Among children children with AGI
with average with average children in in bottom decile in AGI in bottom in bottom in bottom in bottom quintile
AGI in AGI in bottom decile, both childhood quintile in quintile in quintile, % in in both childhood
bottom decile bottom decile % in bottom and adulthood) childhood) adulthood) bottom quintile in and adulthood)
in childhood) in adulthood) decile in adulthood)
adulthood) (Figure 2-1)
All 0.100 0.100 0.196 0.020 0.200 0.200 0.337 0.067
White 0.055 0.117 0.151 0.291 0.034
Black 0.192 0.377 0.303 0.373 0.141
Black- 0.137 0.260 0.152 0.082 0.107
White
White 0.117 0.166 0.313 0.037

men
Black 0.373 0.394 0.485 0.181
men
White 0.117 0.136 0.267 0.031
women
Black 0.380 0.217 0.268 0.102
women
Source: Chetty et al., 2020; see text for more information. No publicly-available data are available for the blank cells in the 10th
percentile columns.

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TABLE C-2-2: Intergenerational poverty statistics based on data from the PSID
Average yearly Average yearly Child poverty Adult poverty Conditional Intergenerational
child poverty adult poverty (poor more than (% poor at age poverty persistence poverty prevalence
rate (Fraction of rate 50% of years 30) (Among poor (% of population
years poor (Fraction of years between birth and children, % poor at poor in both
between ages 0 & poor between age 10) age 30) childhood and at age
10, 1970-2003) ages 25 & 30, 30
1995-2019)
All 0.123 0.102 0.113 0.101 0.286 0.032
White 0.074 0.075 0.054 0.072 0.198 0.011
Black 0.371 0.231 0.382 0.231 0.344 0.130
Black-White 0.297 0.156 0.328 0.159 0.146 0.119
White men 0.072 0.067 0.054 0.068 0.172 0.009

Black men 0.341 0.206 0.359 0.220 0.346 0.122
White women 0.076 0.084 0.054 0.077 0.225 0.012
Black women 0.401 0.254 0.408 0.243 0.346 0.140
Source: Parolin et al., (2022); see text for more information.

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Income mobility
Text Figure 2.6 shows adult outcomes for children with household incomes that placed
them on the 10th or 50th rung of the childhood economic ladder based on data from tax records.
Table C-2-3 and Figure C-2-1 provide data on income, consumption and wealth from the PSID
as described above and in Fisher and Johnson (2023). The two data sources and various measures
of economic well-being tell a broadly similar story about intergenerational economic mobility:
• Children starting out on the 10th rung of the economic ladder, on average, climb
to considerably higher rungs in adulthood. This is especially true for White
children, for whom rungs average between the 36th and 45th, depending on the
measure.
• The average adult destinations for Black children are between 11 and 18 rungs
lower than for White children.

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TABLE C-2-3: Intergenerational income mobility statistics based on data from the IRS and PSID
Conditional mobility from 10th percentile (Fig. 2-6) Conditional mobility from 50th percentile (Fig.2-6)
Chetty et al., (2020) based on data from the IRS
Average percentile Average percentile
rank, based on AGI rank, based on AGI
(Fig. 2-6) (Fig. 2-6)
All 37.6 50.6
White 40.7 52.6
Black 29.3 38.8
Black-White -11.4 -13.8
White men 39.7 51.5
Black men 27.0 36.5
White women 41.7 53.7
Black women 31.5 41.0
Fisher & Johnson (2023), based on PSID
Average Average percentile Average Average Average percentile Average
percentile rank, rank, based on percentile percentile rank, based on percentile
based on full consumption rank, based on rank, based on consumption rank, based
income wealth full income on wealth
All 0.301 0.334 0.331 0.583 0.500 0.581

White 0.364 0.389 0.449 0.610 0.528 0.553
Black 0.234 0.267 0.269 0.298 0.373 0.501
Black-White -0.130 -0.122 -0.180 -0.312 -0.155 -0.052
Source: Data from Chetty et al., (2020) for IRS data; Fisher and Johnson (2023) for PSID data. See text for more information.

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FIGURE C-2-1 Intergenerational mobility based on several measures of economic status, by

race/ethnicity.
NOTE: This figure shows the mean percentile of economic status in adulthood for children with
parents at the 10th income percentile of that same measure of economic status. Child “IRS”
economic status is measured by mean Adjusted Gross Income in 1994-2000 for childhood and
2014-2015 for adulthood in IRS tax records. Children were born between 1978 and 1983. All
PSID measures are based on individuals observed between 14 and 18 in childhood and 31-35 in
adulthood. Children were born between 1954 and 1982. “Income” is pre-tax cash income of
household; “consumption” is based on reported and imputed expenditures; and “wealth” is based
on reported and imputed wealth. PSID data are based on individuals in the 8th to 12th percentiles
of the childhood measure of economic status.
SOURCE: Data from Chetty et al. (2020), based on data from the Internal Revenue Service and
Fisher and Johnson (2023), based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
Translating Percentiles of the Adjusted Gross Income Distribution to Incomes Relative to

the Poverty Line
To support the report’s data efforts, commissioned consultants were asked to match the
adjusted gross incomes (AGI) of children (based on their families’ incomes) to a measure of their
families’ incomes relative to the poverty line (measured under the Supplemental Poverty
Measure, SPM). The consultants produced estimates of this correspondence by determining
children’s position in the AGI percentile distribution and then calculating the average income-to-

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needs of children within each percentile, with income-to-needs ratios assessed using the
SPM.225hey first describe the steps they took to match the percentiles of the AGI distribution to
income-to-needs ratios in greater detail and the challenges encountered in this process . They use
the Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022) and the Annual
and Social Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, retrieved from IPUMS3-CPS
(Flood et al., 2022) to produce these results.
Matching children’s placement in the AGI distribution to income-to-needs ratios

The AGI distribution underlying results presented in Chapter 2 is tabulated at the tax unit
level, where children under age 18 are typically dependents within tax units and their parents or
guardians are the primary tax filers (see the following section for a discussion of the exceptions
to this arrangement). The first step in matching children’s placement in the AGI distribution to a
measure of their income-to-needs was to determine the total AGI of the tax units in which
children were claimed as dependents.
To do so, we first needed to construct tax units in the data from the Supplement to the
Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) that included primary tax filers and their dependents
under age 18 or 24 (the latter in the case of those in school). Note that our objective was to link
child dependents to those who claim them as dependents, so we do not discuss linking older
dependents to the filers who may have claimed them. The CPS-ASEC microdata made available
by IPUMS-CPS includes a variable from the Census Tax Model that identifies individuals as
joint filers, heads of household, single filers, or non-filers (see O’Hara, 2004) for a discussion of
the Census Bureau’s Tax Model). Note that we exclude children under 18 who are identified by
the Census Tax Model as primary tax filers from our primary analysis; see the following section
for a more detailed discussion of this decision and the sensitivity of our results to it.
We begin by using the tax-filing type variable to identify the universe of individuals who
may have filed, and the subset who may have claimed dependents, the latter being heads of
household or joint filers. The next step is to identify which of the non-filers are dependents of the
tax filers who may have claimed dependents, which we accomplish by taking the following
steps:
1. Identify children who could possibly be claimed as dependent; this includes those
who were not tax filers and were under age 18 at the time of the March CPS-
ASEC survey administration or those under age 24 who were in school at the time
the survey was administered.
2. Link those children to the filers in their household unit using the following rules:
a. If they live with either the mother, father, or both, and their parents were
tax filers, they are placed in their parents’ tax units.
b. If their parent(s) are not filers or they do not live with their parents but
they live with a relative who is a filer that claims dependents (according to
the Census tax Model), they are placed in the unit of that filer.
c. If their parents are non-filers and the children do not live with any
relatives who are filers, a non-filing tax unit is created that links the
children to their parents.
3
“IPUMS” stands for Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.

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d. If they do not live with their parents, and none of their relatives files taxes,
a non-filing tax unit is created that links the children to their eldest
relative.
Once we identified these tax units, we calculated the total AGI across all members of the
tax unit using the CPS-ASEC AGI variable. The AGI variable was constructed by the Census
Tax Model and is described in the IPUMS-CPS codebook as including “an individual's total
gross (pre-tax) income from taxable sources minus certain items, such as individual retirement
plan contributions (payments to a Keogh plan or a deductible Individual Retirement Account),
alimony paid, medical savings accounts, and non-reimbursed employee business expenses.”4 In
the case of joint-filers, we also ensured that income sources were not double-counted when
totaling AGI across tax unit members. The total AGI of the tax unit represented the AGI of each
child’s family and is the primary variable used in the subsequent analyses described below. We
produced these estimates for data representative of 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000.
Determining children’s income-to-needs ratios

Next, we determine the income-to-needs ratio of all children in the data using variables
available in the Historical SPM Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022). As described by Fox et al.
(2015) and Wimer et al. (2016), the Historical SPM Data Series includes the necessary inputs for
measuring poverty under the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 1967 to 2009 (before
the data were available in the CPS-ASEC). We define children’s income-to-needs ratio as the
total resources for the SPM poverty unit divided by the poverty threshold for their unit, all
measured using the SPM and available in the Historical SPM Data Series. See Fox et al. (2015)
for a more extensive discussion of the construction of the SPM resources variables, and Nolan,
Waldfogel, and Wimer (2017) for a discussion of the SPM poverty thresholds construction.
Again, we produced these results for data representative of 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000.
Matching percentiles of the AGI distribution to income-to-needs ratios

Our final step was to determine the percentiles of the AGI distribution in the data when
limiting to children under age 18, and then to find the average income-to-needs of children
within these percentiles. We weighted these averages using the person-lev2 weights available in
the CPS-ASEC microdata files. Again, we produced these results for data representative of 1994,
1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Figure C-2-2 depicts the 5-year averages of these results, while
Table C-2-1 presents the results by year.
4
Additional information on this variable available at https://cps.ipums.org/cps-
action/variables/ADJGINC#description_section.

226

5
Average Income to Needs
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 0 5 0 5 80 85 90 95 100
Percentile of the Ad usted Gross Income istribution
FIGURE C-2-2 Average income-to-needs of children by percentile of the AGI distribution for
children under age 18.
NOTE: Figure C-2-2 shows the average income-to-needs of children by their position in the AGI
distribution. AGIs are determined based on the total AGI of the tax unit claiming each child in
the CPS-ASEC data retrieved from IPUMS-CPS (2022) and matched to income-to-needs ratios
based on data from the Historical SPM Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022). Results are produced
with data representative of 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Children identified as independent
tax filers (i.e., non-dependents) based on the Census Tax Model are not included in these results
(see Figure C-2-4 and Table C-2-2 for results inclusive of this population).
SOURCE: Data from the Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure Data Series (Wimer et al.,
2022) and the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS-
ASEC) data from IPUMS-CPS (2022).
TABLE C-2-1 Average income-to-needs by percentile of the AGI Distribution, children under
age 18
Avg. Income-to-Needs Avg. Income-to-Needs
Percentile Percentile
5-year 5-year
AGI 1994 1995 1998 1999 2000 AGI 1994 1995 1998 1999 2000
average average
1 0.77 0.87 0.79 0.76 0.76 0.79 51 1.96 2.04 2.25 2.18 2.27 2.14
2 0.77 0.87 0.79 0.76 0.76 0.79 52 1.97 2.01 2.24 2.20 2.35 2.15
3 0.77 0.87 0.79 0.76 0.76 0.79 53 1.94 2.13 2.31 2.27 2.29 2.19
4 0.77 0.87 0.79 0.76 0.76 0.79 54 2.08 1.99 2.23 2.37 2.38 2.21

227

5 0.77 0.87 0.79 0.76 0.76 0.79 55 2.24 2.06 2.27 2.33 2.49 2.28
6 0.77 0.87 0.79 0.76 0.91 0.82 56 2.28 2.21 2.16 2.45 2.53 2.33
7 0.77 0.87 0.79 1.02 0.75 0.84 57 2.09 2.22 2.32 2.30 2.44 2.27
8 0.77 0.87 0.86 0.72 0.94 0.83 58 2.11 2.30 2.40 2.27 2.58 2.33
9 0.77 0.85 0.96 0.87 0.90 0.87 59 2.26 2.26 2.43 2.35 2.54 2.37
10 0.71 0.69 1.13 0.98 1.08 0.92 60 2.22 2.41 2.51 2.61 2.58 2.47
11 0.81 0.95 1.00 1.13 1.21 1.02 61 2.29 2.33 2.56 2.50 2.65 2.47
12 0.95 0.89 0.96 1.08 1.08 0.99 62 2.33 2.35 2.54 2.45 2.79 2.49
13 0.89 1.10 1.10 1.26 1.30 1.13 63 2.46 2.53 2.65 2.67 2.78 2.62
14 0.85 1.06 1.11 1.10 1.36 1.10 64 2.39 2.47 2.63 2.73 2.84 2.61
15 1.07 1.31 1.10 1.25 1.25 1.20 65 2.34 2.56 2.73 2.71 2.75 2.62
16 0.99 1.16 1.30 1.17 1.32 1.19 66 2.58 2.56 2.84 2.70 2.81 2.70
17 1.19 1.15 1.14 1.52 1.34 1.27 67 2.52 2.52 2.78 2.70 2.92 2.69
18 1.18 1.18 1.16 1.34 1.37 1.25 68 2.53 2.72 2.76 2.82 2.94 2.75
19 1.07 1.21 1.29 1.27 1.45 1.26 69 2.60 2.62 2.81 3.09 2.97 2.82
20 1.20 1.42 1.46 1.44 1.35 1.37 70 2.67 2.71 2.84 3.01 3.07 2.86
21 1.28 1.30 1.25 1.32 1.28 1.29 71 2.68 2.83 2.94 2.95 2.94 2.87
22 1.12 1.39 1.30 1.45 1.34 1.32 72 2.66 2.89 3.13 3.04 3.16 2.98
23 1.36 1.26 1.48 1.45 1.47 1.40 73 2.68 2.89 3.11 3.12 3.09 2.98
24 1.36 1.35 1.46 1.53 1.58 1.46 74 2.93 2.85 3.18 3.03 3.20 3.04
25 1.31 1.27 1.36 1.43 1.52 1.38 75 3.16 3.05 3.18 3.24 3.23 3.17
26 1.32 1.46 1.45 1.49 1.48 1.44 76 3.01 2.95 3.19 3.15 3.17 3.09
27 1.27 1.57 1.66 1.62 1.47 1.52 77 2.99 3.00 3.30 3.46 3.33 3.22
28 1.43 1.62 1.59 1.49 1.65 1.56 78 3.04 3.18 3.37 3.50 3.38 3.29
29 1.58 1.58 1.70 1.65 1.57 1.62 79 3.10 3.11 3.27 3.66 3.38 3.30
30 1.44 1.48 1.67 1.55 1.72 1.57 80 3.16 3.07 3.43 3.67 3.54 3.37
31 1.54 1.41 1.72 1.55 1.63 1.57 81 3.22 3.15 3.36 3.47 3.40 3.32
32 1.46 1.51 1.61 1.61 1.75 1.59 82 3.30 3.29 3.40 3.54 3.56 3.42
33 1.49 1.56 1.72 1.71 1.77 1.65 83 3.32 3.34 3.68 3.59 3.66 3.52
34 1.53 1.55 1.62 1.58 1.75 1.61 84 3.41 3.48 3.60 3.45 3.83 3.55
35 1.51 1.48 1.63 1.67 1.90 1.64 85 3.48 3.44 3.64 3.96 6.00 4.10
36 1.55 1.65 1.56 1.68 1.85 1.66 86 3.57 3.71 3.87 3.94 6.00 4.22
37 1.57 1.68 1.83 1.63 1.80 1.70 87 3.64 3.67 4.16 3.96 6.00 4.29
38 1.60 1.72 1.64 1.75 1.92 1.73 88 3.70 3.75 4.14 5.40 6.00 4.60
39 1.63 1.69 1.82 1.78 1.86 1.76 89 3.78 3.71 6.01 5.40 6.00 4.98
40 1.67 1.73 1.86 1.77 1.94 1.79 90 3.78 3.75 6.01 5.40 6.00 4.99
41 1.65 1.62 1.81 1.90 1.92 1.78 91 3.83 3.97 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.04
42 1.70 1.73 1.88 1.92 1.95 1.84 92 4.01 4.30 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.14
43 1.85 1.90 1.91 1.89 2.06 1.92 93 4.28 4.33 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.20
44 1.94 1.85 1.87 1.99 2.01 1.93 94 4.52 7.07 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.80
45 1.81 1.90 1.97 2.02 2.19 1.98 95 4.52 7.07 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.80
46 1.77 1.91 2.00 1.93 2.28 1.98 96 4.52 7.07 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.80
47 1.84 1.92 2.09 1.97 2.25 2.01 97 4.52 7.07 6.01 5.40 6.00 5.80
48 1.88 1.70 2.06 2.01 2.08 1.95 98 4.52 7.07 5.50 5.87 5.58 5.71
49 2.00 1.97 2.28 2.04 2.27 2.11 99 4.57 6.70 5.54 5.34 5.71 5.57
50 1.95 1.88 2.06 2.28 2.25 2.08 100 4.59 6.70 7.66 5.65 6.32 6.18
NOTE: Table C-2-1 shows the average income-to-needs of children by their position in the AGI
distribution. AGIs determined based on the total AGI of the tax unit claiming each child in the CPS-
ASEC data retrieved from IPUMS-CPS (2022) and matched to income-to-needs ratios based on data from
the Historical SPM Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022). Produced with data representative of 1994, 1995,
1998, 1999, and 2000. Children identified as independent tax filers (i.e., non-dependents) based on the
Census Tax Model are not included in these results (see Figure C-2-4 and Table C-2-2 for results
inclusive of this population).

228

SOURCE: Data from the Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022) and
the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) data from
IPUMS-CPS (2022).
Tax filers under age 18 and challenges that arose when producing these estimates
In producing these results, one issue that arose concerned the assignment of minors with
earnings to individual tax units based on the Census Bureaus’ tax model, a group we call “minor
filers.” They are teenagers with low levels of earnings (and thus low AGIs) who also live with
other family members. The minor filers are predominantly teenagers with very low incomes that
the Census Tax Model identifies as needing to file taxes (either on their own return or possibly as
dependent tax filers). In the years that we examine, there is no flag for “dependent tax filers,”
and the Census assigns many teenagers in this group to be single filers. In the weighted 2000
data, there are 28.4 million children ages 11 to 17, and 10.7% of them (or 3.1 million) are minor
filers.5 Unweighted, this translates to 27,255 children ages 11 to 17 and 3,235 minor filers. All
minor filers are between the ages of 15 and 17, and the majority (1.7 million weighted) are 17-
year-olds. The same pattern holds in earlier data years.
The distribution of tax unit AGI associated with these minor filers is also very different
from that of other children claimed as dependents (Figure C-2-3, left panel): their median AGI is
$2,850, versus $44,000 for children claimed as dependents.6 At the same time, the distribution of
the income-to-needs ratio is more similar between these groups (a bit higher for minor filers)
(Figure C-2-3, right panel). This is because the minor filers are often living with other family
members and are thus part of larger poverty units than their individual tax unit, and the other
members of these larger poverty units bring in additional resources. The average poverty rate of
minor filers is actually lower than that of children claimed as dependents (4.7% vs 14.2%). On
average, when compared with dependent children, the minor filers have lower levels of AGI in
their tax unit (because it is just them) but also lower poverty rates.
5
The number of teenagers flagged as filers by the Census tax model likely does not line up with the tax data, but
that is a limitation that we cannot avoid.
6
When combining minor filers and children claimed as dependents, the median AGI is $38,004.

229

FIGURE C-2-3 Adjusted gross income and income-to-needs distribution of children under 18
by tax-unit dependency status.
NOTE: Figure C-2-3 shows the AGI distribution and the distribution of income-to-needs ratios
among children under 18 in the 2001 CPS-ASEC (representative of 2000) who are identified by
the Census Tax Model as dependents versus those identified as independent tax filers. See
O’Hara (2004) for a discussion of the Census Bureau’s Tax Model.
ASEC) data from IPUMS-CPS (2022). Limited to data representative of the 2000 calendar year.
The minor filers are not evenly distributed across the AGI distribution. Instead, they are
concentrated at the bottom end of the distribution (because they have low AGIs) and they
introduce more data points in that tail. Thus, when we include them in the analysis, they end up
dominating these lower percentiles and they push many children claimed as dependents into
higher percentiles of the distribution. Because minor filers dominate these lower percentiles
when they are included and the distribution of their income-to-needs ratios is relatively higher
than for children claimed as dependents (Figure C-2-3, right panel), they make it appear as
though these bottom percentiles have higher income-to-needs ratios. This pattern is depicted in
Figure C-2-4, which plots the income-to-needs from our primary results (also presented in Figure
C-2-2), and when we include minor filers in the analysis. We do not include this group of
children in our primary estimates but provide supplemental results inclusive of them in Table C-
2-2.

230

Primary results (excluding minor filers) Results when minor filers are included
6
Average Income-to-Needs
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
Percentile of the Adjusted Gross Income Distribution
FIGURE C-2-4 Average income-to-needs of children by percentile of the AGI distribution,

including and excluding minor filers.
NOTE: Figure C-2-4 shows the average income-to-needs of children by their position in the AGI
distribution and presents results under two scenarios: when including and when excluding
children identified as independent tax filers (i.e., non-dependents) based on the Census Tax
Model in the dataset. See O’Hara (2004) for a discussion of the Census Bureau’s Tax Model.
AGIs are determined based on the total AGI of the tax unit claiming each child in the CPS-
ASEC data from IPUMS-CPS (2022) and matched to income-to-needs ratios based on data from
the Historical SPM Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022).
ASEC) data from IPUMS-CPS (2022).
TABLE C-2-2 Average income-to-needs by percentile of the AGI Distribution when minor
filers are included
Avg. income to needs Avg. income to needs

Percentile Percentile
5-year 5-year
AGI 1994 1995 1998 1999 2000 AGI 1994 1995 1998 1999 2000
average average
1 0.84 0.94 0.89 0.90 0.94 0.90 51 1.79 1.87 1.94 1.83 1.96 1.88
2 0.84 0.94 0.89 0.90 0.94 0.90 52 1.80 1.97 1.88 1.96 2.03 1.93
3 0.84 0.94 0.89 0.90 0.94 0.90 53 1.91 1.91 2.05 1.98 2.12 1.99
4 0.84 0.94 0.89 0.90 0.94 0.90 54 1.95 1.85 1.97 1.89 2.22 1.97
5 0.84 0.94 0.89 0.90 0.94 0.90 55 2.07 1.77 2.01 2.07 2.20 2.02
6 0.84 0.94 0.89 0.90 2.85 1.28 56 1.90 2.06 2.22 2.04 2.06 2.05
7 0.84 0.94 0.89 3.54 2.89 1.82 57 1.87 1.97 2.06 2.22 2.24 2.07
8 0.84 0.94 3.35 3.17 3.18 2.30 58 2.00 1.92 2.24 2.13 2.27 2.12
9 0.84 3.89 3.01 2.52 2.91 2.64 59 1.97 2.15 2.24 2.27 2.34 2.19
10 0.84 2.69 2.76 2.93 2.73 2.39 60 2.07 2.00 2.27 2.26 2.28 2.18
11 2.58 3.11 3.20 2.56 2.69 2.83 61 2.31 2.04 2.19 2.30 2.37 2.24
12 2.47 2.39 2.81 3.02 2.87 2.71 62 2.13 2.18 2.18 2.39 2.58 2.29
13 1.88 2.46 2.69 2.65 2.66 2.47 63 2.07 2.32 2.22 2.27 2.51 2.28
14 2.22 2.13 2.17 2.43 2.81 2.35 64 2.25 2.28 2.27 2.23 2.45 2.29

231

15 1.93 2.20 2.30 2.14 2.26 2.17 65 2.19 2.39 2.49 2.39 2.58 2.41
16 2.24 2.31 2.68 1.98 2.35 2.31 66 2.38 2.37 2.47 2.62 2.54 2.47
17 2.23 2.12 2.35 2.53 2.42 2.33 67 2.35 2.30 2.50 2.49 2.65 2.46
18 1.86 2.09 2.25 1.96 2.11 2.06 68 2.44 2.45 2.58 2.58 2.71 2.55
19 2.27 1.95 2.53 2.02 1.80 2.12 69 2.38 2.41 2.66 2.72 2.76 2.59
20 1.60 1.74 1.69 1.70 1.81 1.71 70 2.50 2.61 2.74 2.77 2.75 2.67
21 1.50 1.90 1.72 1.44 1.73 1.66 71 2.55 2.55 2.83 2.80 2.79 2.70
22 1.58 1.65 1.73 1.49 1.57 1.60 72 2.52 2.56 2.75 2.56 2.82 2.64
23 1.36 1.59 1.44 1.44 1.35 1.44 73 2.57 2.63 2.76 2.91 2.98 2.77
24 1.20 1.41 1.34 1.39 1.51 1.37 74 2.69 2.60 2.80 2.96 3.00 2.81
25 1.29 1.29 1.33 1.28 1.44 1.33 75 2.66 2.83 2.88 2.92 2.96 2.85
26 1.24 1.32 1.29 1.60 1.63 1.42 76 2.69 2.84 3.00 3.03 2.99 2.91
27 1.22 1.37 1.31 1.43 1.24 1.32 77 2.88 2.79 3.06 2.98 3.15 2.97
28 1.26 1.43 1.27 1.45 1.38 1.36 78 3.10 2.87 3.19 3.05 3.17 3.07
29 1.32 1.27 1.52 1.31 1.42 1.37 79 3.01 3.01 3.25 3.32 3.16 3.15
30 1.26 1.52 1.47 1.37 1.48 1.42 80 3.04 3.05 3.16 3.17 3.25 3.13
31 1.42 1.39 1.35 1.51 1.43 1.42 81 3.06 2.97 3.32 3.54 3.33 3.25
32 1.35 1.27 1.62 1.55 1.39 1.44 82 3.04 3.17 3.17 3.52 3.30 3.24
33 1.34 1.48 1.48 1.52 1.48 1.46 83 3.16 3.16 3.47 3.66 3.52 3.39
34 1.27 1.34 1.37 1.52 1.46 1.39 84 3.32 3.09 3.37 3.42 3.44 3.33
35 1.38 1.60 1.44 1.48 1.51 1.48 85 3.28 3.15 3.47 3.57 3.47 3.39
36 1.57 1.60 1.75 1.72 1.55 1.64 86 3.44 3.49 3.60 3.49 3.68 3.54
37 1.45 1.62 1.69 1.54 1.50 1.56 87 3.49 3.44 3.58 3.79 3.57 3.58
38 1.52 1.51 1.62 1.59 1.65 1.58 88 3.59 3.59 3.86 3.87 6.02 4.18
39 1.44 1.45 1.75 1.49 1.59 1.54 89 3.64 3.61 4.05 3.91 6.02 4.24
40 1.51 1.53 1.56 1.62 1.72 1.59 90 3.75 3.70 4.09 5.41 6.02 4.59
41 1.51 1.56 1.62 1.65 1.69 1.60 91 3.77 3.66 6.05 5.41 6.02 4.98
42 1.54 1.52 1.60 1.71 1.79 1.63 92 3.85 3.90 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.05
43 1.55 1.47 1.63 1.54 1.75 1.59 93 4.10 4.20 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.16
44 1.56 1.76 1.58 1.65 1.75 1.66 94 4.15 4.21 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.17
45 1.52 1.59 1.78 1.66 1.82 1.68 95 4.15 7.00 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.72
46 1.71 1.67 1.69 1.72 1.81 1.72 96 4.15 7.00 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.72
47 1.61 1.71 1.82 1.76 1.92 1.76 97 4.15 7.00 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.72
48 1.73 1.62 1.77 1.78 1.87 1.76 98 4.15 7.00 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.72
49 1.79 1.77 1.83 1.79 2.02 1.84 99 4.15 7.00 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.72
50 1.90 1.89 1.94 1.99 1.93 1.93 100 4.15 7.00 6.05 5.41 6.02 5.72
NOTE: Table C-2-2 shows the average income-to-needs of children by their position in the AGI
distribution and when including children identified as independent tax filers (i.e., non-dependents) based
on the Census Tax Model in the dataset. See O’Hara (2004) for a discussion of the Census Bureau’s Tax
Model. See Table C-2-1 for results excluding minor filers from this analysis. AGIs determined based on
the total AGI of the tax unit claiming each child in the CPS-ASEC data from IPUMS-CPS (2022) and
matched to income-to-needs ratios based on data from the Historical SPM Data Series (Wimer et al.,
2022).
SOURCE: Produced with data representative of 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000 from the Historical
Supplemental Poverty Measure Data Series (Wimer et al., 2022) and the Annual Social and Economic
Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) data from IPUMS-CPS (2022).

232

Historical Trends in Absolute Mobility
Data
A key challenge in measuring mobility historically is the lack of longitudinal (panel) data
that could allow researchers to link children to their parents and construct measures of mobility
analogous to those discussed above. Chapter 11, which covers research needs, discusses ongoing
efforts to remedy this problem by linking historical census data (the American Opportunity
Study). Lacking such data at the time, Chetty et al. (2017) develop a method of estimating
absolute mobility—the share of children who earn more than their parents—using currently
available cross-sectional historical data on income distributions. Note that their method cannot
be used to construct measures of relative mobility historically, nor can it be used to measure
mobility across subgroups or areas reliably. We therefore focus here on their analysis of national
trends in mobility.
To measure absolute mobility over time in the United States, Chetty et al. (2017) use data
from the decennial U.S. Census and CPS to estimate marginal income distributions for children
in the 1940 to 1984 birth cohorts and for their parents. Marginal income distributions at age 30
for these children are obtained from the CPS March 1970 to March 2014 samples. The sample of
children comprises United States-born members of the 1940 to 1984 birth cohorts who, at age
30, were present in the United States and not institutionalized. We compute household income as
the sum of spouses’ personal pretax income.
Parents’ income distributions for children in each of the 1940 to 1984 birth cohorts are
constructed by pooling data from census cross sections between 1940 and 2000, using the 1
percent IPUMS samples, and focusing on individuals who have children between the ages of 16
and 45. To cover all parents via decennial censuses, parents’ incomes are estimated when the
highest earner is between the ages of 25 and 35, a symmetric window around age 30. For
example, the income distribution of parents of children in the 1970 birth cohort is estimated as
follows. First, the authors use the 1970 census and select parents between the ages of 25 and 35
who have a child less than one year old in 1970. Next, they turn to the 1980 census and select
parents between the ages of 26 and 35 who have 10-year-old children (i.e., individuals who had a
child in 1970 when they were between the ages of 16 and 25). Third, to identify parents between
ages 35 and 45 who had children less than one year old in 1970, they turn to the 1960 census and
select all individuals aged 25 to 35. This last group receives a weight equal to the fraction of
individuals in the 1970 census between the ages of 35 and 45 who had a child less than 1 year
old in 1970.7 Income distributions for parents with children in other birth cohorts are estimated
analogously.
In their baseline series, which we show in Figure 2-10, Chetty et al. adjust for inflation
using the benchmark CPI-U-RS. Choices of the inflation index can affect measures of absolute
mobility significantly, as pointed out by Strain (2020) and by others; Chetty et al. demonstrate
that the qualitative conclusion of declining absolute mobility is robust to reasonable choices of
the inflation index, but the magnitudes of the decline remain debatable.
7
This approach assumes that the income distribution of those who have children after age 35 is representative of
the income distribution of the general population. Chetty et al. (2017) show that results are robust to restricting
attention to parents who have children between the ages of 25 and 35.

233

Methods
Chetty et al. (2017) focus on a measure of absolute mobility to address the question:
“What fraction of children born in a given year (e.g., 1940, 19 0) grow up to have a household
income that exceeds that of their parents?” To do so, they combine children’s and parent’s
marginal income distributions constructed as described above with a nonparametric rank-rank
copula that measures relative mobility. This copula is a 100 × 100 matrix, where each (i,j) cell in
the matrix indicates the probability that a child born to parents with income percentile i will grow
up to have income percentile j.
The copula is constructed using modern tax records based on near-population data in
Chetty et al. (2014a). The sample used to construct the copula comprises children in the 1980 to
1982 birth cohorts who are linked to parents by being claimed as dependents on federal income
tax forms. This comprises more than 10 million parent-child pairs. To construct the copula,
children’s and parent’s income are first measured using concepts similar to those described
above. For tax filers, income is defined as adjusted gross income plus the nontaxable portion of
Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Income. For non-filers, income is
the sum of W-2 wage earnings, Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability
Income, and unemployment insurance income. If individuals’ incomes are missing in these data,
they are assigned a value of zero. Children’s incomes are mean income in 2011 and 2012 (when
they are between the ages of 30 and 32) and parents’ incomes are mean taxable income between
1996 and 2000, the first 5 years for which population tax records are available.8
To produce their baseline series of absolute mobility—shown in Figure 2-10—Chetty et
al. apply the copula estimated for the 1980 to 1982 cohorts to all cohorts, effectively assuming
that relative mobility did not change across cohorts. Using children’s and parent’s marginal
income distributions, for each child’s income percentile rk and parent’s income percentile rp, they
calculate whether children at rk earn more than parents at rp. The copula provides the probability
that each children-parent rank pair (rk, rp) occurs. They then measure absolute mobility as the
fraction of cases where children at rk earn more than parents at rp, integrating over the copula.
The strong assumption of constant relative mobility over time is based on evidence from
Chetty et al. (2014b) that relative mobility has remained stable overall in recent cohorts.
Furthermore, Chetty et al. show that their estimates of absolute mobility are insensitive to
assumptions about the degree of relative mobility in early cohorts (in the 1940s and 1950s), since
virtually all children out-earned virtually all parents in those cohorts, implying that absolute
upward mobility rates were close to 100% during that time period irrespective of the degree of
relative mobility.9
8
Parents are between the ages of 30 and 60 when we measure their incomes. Since the distribution of income
ranks is fairly stable between the ages of 30 and 60 (Chetty et al., 2014a), this approach provides a reasonable
estimate of the copula that one would obtain using income ranks at age 30 for all parents.
9
Formally, they compute bounds on absolute mobility using linear programming methods to search over all
plausible copulas for the maximum and minimum levels of absolute mobility consistent with the marginal income
distribution, and show that these bounds are very tight in early cohorts.

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RACIAL DISPARITIES IN INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
This appendix provides a much broader literature review on several of the topics
discussed in Chapter 3 of the report. The titles of the sections below correspond to the section
titles in the Chapter 3 text; two additional sections discuss gender issues and Black immigrants.
Patterns of Intergenerational Mobility by Race and Gender
As shown in Figures 2-4 and 2-5 in Chapter 2, Black women who grew up in low-income
families attain rates of upward mobility that are equal to those of similar White women when
measured by individual earnings (roughly 39% for both groups), but they are less upwardly
mobile when measured by household income (26% versus 47%). Meanwhile, Black men have
lower rates of upward mobility than similar White men using both measures. (The difference in
individual earnings mobility rates relative to White people of the same gender is similar for
Native American men and women, whereas it is much larger for Black men than for Black
women. Also, individual and household income mobility favors Native American men over
Native American women).
Chetty et al. (2020) find that Black men are less likely to be working, have lower wage
rates, have lower educational attainment, and are more likely to be incarcerated than White men
from similar family backgrounds. In exploring the correlates of these gaps between Black and
White men, Chetty et al. rule out parental characteristics, family wealth, and ability differences
as explanations, and instead write: “We conclude that neighborhoods with low poverty rates,
high rates of father presence among blacks, and low levels of racial bias among Whites have
better outcomes for black boys and smaller racial gaps” (p. 718).
Chetty et al. (2020, p. 747) note two implications of these gender differences. They write:
It is important to note, however, that this finding does not imply that the
unconditional Black-White gap in women’s individual incomes will vanish with time.
This is because Black women continue to have substantially lower levels of household
income than White women, both because they are less likely to be married and because
Black men earn less than White men (Online Appendix Figure V). As a result, Black girls
grow up in lower-income households than White girls in each generation, leading to a
persistent racial disparity in individual income for women even in the absence of an
intergenerational gap in their individual incomes.
Nevertheless, the key to closing income disparities for both Black and White
women is to close intergenerational gaps in income between Black and White men….
The model predicts that in the absence of intergenerational gaps for women, the steady-
state gap for both women and men is proportional to the intergenerational gap in
individual incomes for men.
The second statement above suggests a tight focus on policies and programs specifically
for Black boys and men, even though the first statement identifies the cycle of intergenerational
poverty for females, with black girls each generation growing up in lower-income households

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than white girls in each generation. Ignoring investments in Black girls and women would
maintain this cycle. The committee also highlights the importance of a relational, historical,
intersectional, and (qualified) resilience approach to understanding these gendered patterns of
Black-White disparities.
First, as stated in Chapter 2, the fact that Black women exhibit similar individual mobility
but not household mobility as White women “is probably due to the fact that Black women are
more likely than White women to live in single-parent families, and thus also more likely to be
the main breadwinners in their families.” Since Black women are more likely to be heads of
households than White women, their average socioeconomic position will be more
disadvantaged than that of similar White women. Within coupled households (that are same-race
and opposite-gender), Black women’s earnings act as compensatory for the relatively low
earnings of Black men, whereas White men’s higher earnings compensate for the lower earnings
of White women. Too close of a focus on Black men’s outcomes ignores the need for policies
that support low-income Black girls and women in their need to generate even greater
socioeconomic resources.
Second, the gendered contours of racial discrimination and racism are historically
specific and change over time. Black women disproportionately experienced rape during slavery,
whereas Black men disproportionately experienced lynching after slavery. The 15th Amendment,
ratified in 1870, granted only Black men the right to vote, whereas Black (and White) women
were disfranchised until 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Black men and
women both experienced racism in the labor market in the early- to mid-20th Century, but Black
women were disproportionately confined to domestic labor whereas Black men were relegated to
unskilled blue-collar jobs (outside of agriculture). The historical violence, exclusion, and
exploitation explored in this chapter were experienced differently by Black men and women.
Similarly, the forms of discrimination and racism today are different and may yield different
disparities across race and gender. For example, while low-income Black boys have lower rates
of upward mobility than Black girls, Black men on average have substantially higher wealth
levels than Black women (Chang et al., 2021). While attention to Black men may be relevant to
the narrow question of intergenerational income mobility, such a focus reflects a presentist bias
regarding the changing nature of gendered racism, and does not allow for discussions of policies
and interventions that can support Black women’s mobility while also improving Black men’s
outcomes.
Third, the comparison by race within genders obscures the fact that both Black and White
women trail White men in achieving upward mobility. Roughly 39% of Black and White women
who grew up poor rise to the top three quintiles of the individual income distribution as adults,
compared with 54% of White men. Gender-based discrimination and what might be called
“structural sexism” (Homan, 2019) reduces the socioeconomic mobility and well-being of all
women (Ridgeway & Correll, 2004), just as structural racism negatively effects the outcomes of
all Black people, with Black men and women showing different outcomes relative to White
people in different domains (see, e.g., Kim, 2009; Paul et al., 2022). Only comparing Black
women to White women and Black men to White men controls away the workings of racialized
gender structures in education, health, housing, families, law, and the labor market. An
intersectional approach recognizes that Black women from low-income backgrounds still do not
enjoy the same opportunities for upward mobility as similar White men.

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Finally, the performance of Black women also reflects their effort and resilience, and
individual- and community-level protective factors. This success goes even further in some
domains. For example, at every parental income level, Black women have higher college
attendance rates than even White men (Chetty, 2020, 716). These outcomes are attained in spite
of racism and discrimination (and sexism), not because racism and discrimination do not exist.
Black girls are more likely than White girls to experience school discipline (Morris, 2016); less
likely to be seen by adults as needing nurturing, care, and support (Epstein et al., 2017); and less
likely to receive a substance abuse treatment referral in the juvenile justice system (Johnson et
al., 2022), to name just a few examples. Yet they show greater achievement in some areas.
Upward mobility is also not without its health costs. Research on “skin-deep resilience” has
found that the positive mindsets and behaviors of upwardly mobile low-income youth pay off in
educational attainment and other outcomes, but also take a toll on physiological health (Chen et.
al. 2020; Miller et al., 2015). This finding holds across race and gender, but studies have not
looked simultaneously at the effortful striving required for upward mobility and experiences of
racial (and gender) discrimination. The resilience shown by low-income Black girls who climb
the socioeconomic ladder must be qualified by these factors, and does not obviate a discussion of
the contexts of discrimination and structural racism within which Black girls and boys grow up.
While the situation for Black boys and men merits specific policy interventions where
appropriate, it is important that the success of some low-income Black girls and women not
exclude them from policy attention. Racial disparities are group-based average differences in
outcomes. However, because individual experience varies—often greatly—around the average,
group averages by themselves tell us little about the specific characteristics of individuals.
Instead, averages offer a way of describing the status of one group compared with another
(NASEM, 2022b).
Defining Disparity, Inequality, Discrimination, and Structural Racism
Racial disparities illustrate the differences in rates, trends, or probabilities between White
people and Black and Native American people in key life experiences that are relevant for
upward mobility. For example, Black babies born to women with a high school diploma or less
are 1.5 to 2 times as likely to have low birthweight as White children born to similar mothers
(Pollack et al., 2021). Low birthweight is negatively associated with adult educational and labor
market outcomes (Black et al., 2007; Conley & Bennett, 2000; Currie, 2009). The homes where
infants spend their time are also deeply unequal environments. For example, 5.8% of Native
American households lack complete plumbing, compared with only 0.3% of White households.
Water access, quality, affordability, and infrastructure are not issues only plaguing low-income
countries (Meehan et al., 2020), but instead disproportionately affect low-income Black and
Native Americans in the United States (Almond et al., 2018; Deitz & Meehan, 2019; McDonald
& Jones, 2017; Mueller & Gasteyer, 2021; Roller et al., 2019; Tanana et al., 2021), and
contaminated water increases the incidence of infant low birthweight (Currie et al., 2013).
Furthermore, racial disparities are evident in, for example, exposure to environmental
toxins (Taylor, 2014; Lane et al., 2022), proximity to pediatricians and primary care doctors
(Gaskin et al., 2012; Kruse et al., 2016), availability of full-service grocery stores and healthy
food (Pindus & Hafford, 2019; Walker et al., 2010), access to libraries and broadband internet
(Burke, 2007; Dolcini et al., 2021), residence in high poverty neighborhoods (Erickson et al.,

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2008; National Equity Atlas, 2019; Sampson et al., 2008), and attendance at schools with
college-preparatory curricula (Rose & Betts, 2004; U.S. Department of Education Office for
Civil Rights, 2016). It is the cumulative and intersecting nature of these disparate exposures over
the life course that partially explains higher rates of intergenerational poverty.
Racial inequality encompasses a broader range of processes than that identified solely
based on research on racial disparity. In the context of the criminal justice system, for example,
studying race within this larger framework on inequality has several advantages. According to
NASEM (2022b, p. 29:
First, the decomposition of racial disparities into differential offending and differential
treatment is placed in a larger social context in which the social structure outside the
criminal justice system may influence offending, differential treatment within the system,
and criminal justice policy design. Second, in the inequality framework, a reduction in
disparity at a particular point may not reduce racial inequality in the broader community.
Large racial inequalities in housing, jobs, and quality education can persist even if racial
disparities in criminal justice contact are reduced.
In other words, racial inequality is often used to refer to system-level racial gaps whereas
racial disparities are used to characterize differences in a single outcome or variable.
Studies of racial discrimination using statistical, audit, and experimental methods (Pager
& Shepherd, 2008), as well as several meta-analyses, find clear patterns of racial discrimination
against Black Americans in areas such as employment, housing, health and mental health care,
criminal prosecution, conviction, and sentencing, consumer markets, and in children’s placement
into gifted classes (Anwar et al., 2012; Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004; Besbris et al., 2015; Card
& Giuliano, 2016; Faber & Mercier, 2022; Gaddis, 2015; Ge et al., 2020; Kugelmass, 2016;
Mitchell, 2005b; Pager & Shepherd, 2008; Quillian et al., 2017; Quillian et al., 2020; Wu, 2016).
There is less research on racial discrimination against Native Americans, but audit, self-report,
and correlational studies show frequent experiences of discrimination across a range of settings
(Abramson et al,. 2015; Findling et al., 2019; Hurst, 1997; Puumala et al., 2016; Robert Wood
Johnson, 2018; Stepanikova & Oates, 2017; Turner and Ross, 2004; Wilmot & Delone, 2010;
Weber et al., 2018; however, see Button & Walker, 2020, which does not find employment
discrimination in a large audit study). Discrimination is relevant for intergenerational poverty
because it excludes Black people and Native Americans from access to and participation in
contexts that enhance opportunities or exposes them to practices that reduce opportunity.
The term “racism” is sometimes used to describe individual dispositions linked to beliefs
in racial stereotypes and negative sentiments against a racialized outgroup. Survey researchers
have designed scales to measure racism among individual respondents (National Research
Council, 2004), and psychologists have designed experiments to detect racial bias among
research subjects (see, for example, Eberhardt et al., 2004; Geller et al., 2021). This evidence
demonstrates the ways in which belief, sentiment, and cognition operate at the individual level to
drive decision making and other behavior in a direction that is harmful to racialized outgroups.
Beyond the level of the individual, social organizations and institutions (e.g., neighborhoods,
families, markets, health care systems) are often run or structured in a way that is harmful to
racialized outgroups, even in the absence of individual-level racism. Scholars have described this
configuration of social relations as “structural racism.”

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Some scholars emphasize the historical character of structural racism, in which

“whiteness, a privileged racial category justified by negative racist stereotypes, [is] passed down
from generation to generation, so as to become acceptable, normal, and part of the public
common sense” (Marable, 2001, p. 13; see also Rucker & Richeson, 2021). Whereas racial
inequality describes (perhaps enduring and multidimensional) group-based differences, structural
racism attributes such inequality to social organization and institutions. Against this background,
structural racism is defined as the operation of race as an organizing social force to enact, codify,
or enable the oppression of one or more groups. Once a society becomes racialized, invidious
racial distinctions affect “social relations and practices” at “all societal levels” (Bonilla-Silva,
1997). Structural racism is not defined by individual bigotry, prejudice, or discrimination but
rather is based on how social, economic, and political institutions of government and civil
society are organized by law, policy, practice, and norms. In this way, the argument that posits
structural racism as a force contends that inequalities by race occur specifically because of social
and institutional factors that perpetuate racial inequality.
Understanding the historical roots of structural racism is crucial to recognizing its effects
today and how it has evolved over time (Glenn, 2015; Harris, 1993). Structural racism is
reflected in the distribution of political power, economic wealth, material conditions, and equal
access to, or fair treatment by, social systems over time, from housing to health care to the
criminal justice system (Feagin & Elias, 2013). However, these impacts are neither linear nor
constant. Since laws change and social forces are dynamic, shifting with politics, demographics,
economics, and social movements, structural racism has evolved over time (see. e.g., Alexander,
2010).
A classic example of structural racism is the passage of voter disenfranchisement laws
after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Laws establishing poll taxes, literacy tests, and
grandfather clauses disproportionately excluded Black men from registering and casting a vote
(Baker, 2022; Manza & Uggen, 2006). They were written without any explicit reference to race
in order not to violate the Fifteenth Amendment, which disallowed racial discrimination in
voting. Yet their intentions to exclude Black voters were clear and these laws produced large
racial disparities in voter participation between White men and Black men, and often complete
Black disenfranchisement. These disparities were the evidence of legally sanctioned second-class
citizenship for Black Americans. The 24th Amendment to the Constitution eliminated poll taxes
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 added enforcement powers to combat the structural racism of
ostensibly race-neutral disenfranchisement laws. Yet law and practice are not equivalent and
later policies, such as partisan redistricting, felon disenfranchisement, and voter identification
restrictions have continued to disproportionately curtail the franchise for Black citizens. Thus,
structural racism encompasses both those neutral policies that are motivated by racist intent and
those that reinforce racial hierarchies resulting from past intentional racism, regardless of
motivation (Roithmayr, 2014).
Researchers have developed novel measures to study contemporary structural racism,
including one that combines indicators of political participation, employment and job status,
educational attainment, and judicial treatment (Lukachko et al., 2014). In this study, structural
racism is defined by state-level racial disparities across those four domains. Using this measure,
the researchers found that Black people living in states with high levels of structural racism were
more likely to experience myocardial infarction relative to their counterparts living in states with
low levels of structural racism (Lukachko et al., 2014). Another group of researchers developed a

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measure of state-level structural racism that combines indicators of residential segregation,

incarceration rates (though not adjusted for crime), educational attainment, economic indicators,
and employment status. This latter study found that higher levels of structural racism were
associated with a larger disparity between Black and White victims of fatal police shootings
(Mesic et al., 2018; NASEM, 2021).
A final illustration of structural racism is how ostensibly objective artificial intelligence
algorithms produce racially disparate outcomes (Benjamin, 2019; Noble, 2018). Obermeyer et al.
(2019) document how such algorithms in health care result in doctors providing fewer medical
interventions and less care for Black patients. Manifold structures in American society—e.g., the
tax code, criminal fines and fees, and the child welfare system (Brown, 2021; Jacobs, 2014; U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, 2017; Williams, 2022)—have built-in, unstated stereotypes, biases,
and rules that contribute to the ongoing impoverishment of Black and Native American people.
Contemporary scholars view racial inequality as at least partly structural, cumulatively
generated through the mutual and reciprocal interaction of institutions (Powell, 2008; Ray, 2019;
Sampson, 2012; Williams & Collins, 2001; Wilson, 1987). The mechanisms of structural racism
today can be (although they are not always) found in an array of public policies such as zoning
laws and in the pricing of goods and service, as well as in credit risk scoring to limit access to
loans or rental housing (using income, zip codes, and arrest records). Still, it is often the case that
contemporary forms of structural racism can be traced back to racially exclusive or racially
targeted policies and practices of earlier moments in history.
The National Academies noted in a 2017 report on racial health disparities (NASEM,
2017d, p. 104):
Though inequities may occur on the basis of socioeconomic status, gender and other
facts, we illustrate these points through the lens of racism, in part because disparities
based on race and ethnicity remain the most persistent and difficult to address. Racial
factors play an important role in structuring socioeconomic disparities; therefore,
addressing socioeconomic factors without addressing racism is unlikely to remedy these.
Historical Roots of Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Mobility
As noted in the main text, Native Americans and Black Americans stand out as groups
subjected to centuries of structural racism rooted in beliefs about White supremacy. The notion
of intergenerational poverty has a presentist bias, a narrow time band, and a limited definition of
well-being. In other words, we measure only economic status (wages, income, wealth), across at
most three generations, in the most recent time period for which we have the best economic data.
For example, research on multigenerational poverty finds that one in five Black families
experience poverty across three generations, compared with roughly one in one-hundred White
families (Winship et al., 2021; also see Collins & Wanamaker, 2022; Pfeffer & Killewald, 2018).
A much longer historical view, however, shows that African and Native American peoples were
not “poor” before European contact, but rather sustained themselves and often prospered for
millennia in complex societies with functioning governing and economic systems (Carlos et al.,
2022; Rodney, 2018).

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The plunge into poverty and its persistence across generations in what became the United
States is the result of successive waves of theft, destruction, and exploitation of people, land, and
property into the present. Among the most glaring forms of historical structural racism that set
Black and Native Americans on a course of socioeconomic disadvantage relative to other groups
are (1) forced migration and land theft, (2) chattel slavery, labor exploitation, and property theft,
(3) scientific racism, and (4) forced assimilation and legalized racial discrimination enforced by
racially oppressive institutions. These mechanisms are discussed in detail in the sections that
follow.
Forced migration and land theft

The core of European colonialism along the Atlantic coast, and later throughout what
would become the United States, was the removal of Native Americans in order to control the
land and its riches. Indian wars, removal, and dispossession were the foundations of early
policies of land acquisition as European colonizers and later settlers moved westward.
Indigenous tribes, whose presence on or possession of land and property lay in the path of White
expansion, were often defined as savages or bandits by nature and as criminals by law or custom.
Tactics for seizure of Native lands included “threatening genocide, offering bounties for Indian
scalps, and exacting massively disproportionate revenge for Indian atrocities” (Kiernan, 2007, p.
310).
Because of incomplete Native land-transfer records, it has proven challenging to fully
evaluate the claim that Native Americans lost their land largely through market mechanisms
rather than by force (Banner, 2005). However, critics of this contention point to rich
documentation of the converse, showing that “Indian nations were forcibly removed, subjected to
military containment, deceived by treaties, and defrauded of their landed birthright by
unscrupulous non-Indians” (Geisler, 2014, p. 58). Treaties were binding primarily on the Native
tribes only, and many were rescinded, unilaterally amended, or annulled without notifying
Native leaders. Geisler (2014) concluded that
though there were pragmatic moments in which Anglo-Americans found it in their

interest to pay Indians for land rather than mount armies against them, the longue duree is
a different story…Indians in America lost their land through coercion muted by market-
like negotiations on some occasions and coercion without pretense on others (pp. 58–59).
Box C-3-1 highlights the experience of the Sauk people.
BOX C-3-1
History of Land Dispossession and the Sauk Tribe
In the late 18th century, the Sauk, Fox, and Meskwaki people lived in what is now Illinois,
Wisconsin, and Iowa. They established migratory cycles of hunting and planting to take
advantage of the rich natural resources. According to Rigal (2009, p. 207-208):
During the summer, they lived in multi-family lodges, in large, relatively permanent summer
villages situated on river terraces or flood plains along the river. There they harvested corn,
squash, and other crops planted in the rich soil of bottomlands replenished by frequent floods.

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In those days, the Iowa River was lined with marshy sloughs that filled with water whenever
the river rose. As a result, the river valleys (unlike the open prairie) gave rise to an abundance
of trees and plant cover that could shelter and support large animal populations throughout
the year. Every fall, as cold weather approached, Poweshiek's and Wapashashiek's villages
broke up into smaller family units that dispersed to winter hunting camps, usually in sheltered
creek valleys. There they harvested muskrat, raccoon, otter, deer, and occasionally beaver. In
the early spring, these hunting groups reunited, first to make maple sugar in the stands of
maple trees that flourished throughout the watershed and then to reconstitute their summer
villages along the Iowa River, plant their crops, and begin the cycle anew. Similar seasonal
cycles had been followed by Native peoples in the western Great Lakes and Upper
Mississippi River Valley for at least two thousand years.
However, by the 1800s large numbers of White American settlers began to arrive. In the
spring of 1829, while the Sauk families were away from their summer villages in Saukenuk in
western Illinois, where the Rock and Mississippi rivers converge, White settlers moved in and
“enclosed nearly all the Sac Indians [sic] cornfields,” wrote a colonial officer at the time. He
continued: “The Indians on their arrival were surprised at this, as also the destruction
committed by the settlers, by tearing down many of their lodges” (quoted in Wallace, 1982,
270). Sauk leader Black Hawk wrote of the incident in his autobiography describing: “I
received information that three families of whites had arrived at our village, and destroyed
some of our lodges, and were making fences and dividing our cornfields for their own use… I
immediately started for Rock River, a distance of ten day’s travel, and on my arrival, found the
report to be true. I went to my lodge, and saw a family occupying it” (quoted in Pratt, 2001,
116).
This band of Sauk families left for the hunting season and returned to find that White settlers
had appropriated their land, fields, and homes. This process was repeated across the
territory. By 1832, Black Hawk and the Sauk people were defeated and displaced west of the
Mississippi River. Whereas they had once thrived on the richness of the land, “In less than a
decade, their ancient way of life was in ruinous decline. Hunger and want had become
common, as had drunkenness and debt” (Trask, 2007, 3).
Although the tribes were forcibly relocated to Kansas and Oklahoma, dozens of families
moved back to Iowa in the 1850s. Today, the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa
maintain a settlement of over 8,000 acres and have 1,450 enrolled tribal members
(https://www.meskwaki.org/history/). This story of dispossession, impoverishment, despair,
and resilience expands the chronology, scope, and relevant variables for a contemporary
discussion of intergenerational poverty. The economic productivity of Sauk cornfields and the
real property of their lodges were stolen through duplicitous “treaties” and White settler
occupation, all enforced by violence. Their poverty ensued, despite ongoing valiant efforts at
reconstituting their cultural and economic wealth.
The practice of impoverishing Native Americans continued through law and force. The
Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Indian Removal Act (1830), the Homestead Act (1862), and the
Dawes Act (or General Allotment Act, 1887), among many others, authorized through various
measures the occupation and expropriation of Native territories.

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The Homestead Acts were a series of laws passed between the mid-1800s and the 1930s
by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land, the most well-known (and
first) being the Homestead Act of 1862, which accelerated the settlement of western territory.
These acts played out on Native lands taken by conquest and coercive pacification, bringing few
monetary rewards to Native people (Geisler, 2014). By 1934, some 270 million acres in 160
tracts, nearly 10% of all the land in the United States, had been given away to more than 1.4
million claimants, virtually all of whom were White (approximately 3,500 Black people received
land), for a trivial filing fee (Merritt, 2016). Claimants took legal possession of the land after five
years, conditional on five years of continuous residence on the land, building a home, and
farming the land. As of 2000, an estimated 46 to 93 million people were descendants of families
who took up this “free land” (Shanks, 2005) and the wealth it has generated.
The General Allotment Act (or the Dawes Act) of 1887 aimed to allot federal lands to
individual Native American families for private ownership. Its execution, however, resulted in
the transfer of roughly 27 million acres of tribal land to non-Native owners (Royster, 1995), a
checkerboard ownership pattern frustrating tribal governance and development, and a
fractionated pattern of ownership between multiple heirs and the federal government. Comparing
a Minnesota reservation that was allotted to one that was not, Akee (2020) found that allotment
decreased Native American homeownership and displaced people into wage labor as opposed to
self-employed farming from 1900 to 1910. Leonard et al. (2020) found in a national study of
allotted lands that fractionation was associated with decreased per capita income among Native
Americans as recently as 2000. Frye and Parker (2021) show that tribal areas with constrained
sovereignty over their lands—one result of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934—have lower
per capita incomes. Contemporary forms of discrimination and dispossession are illustrated in
the withholding of loans to Native American (and Black) farmers and ranchers, resulting in
disproportionate foreclosure and property loss (Carpenter, 2012), and in the higher prices of
mortgage loans to Native American home buyers (Cattaneo & Feir, 2021).
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 created the U.S. reservation system, which
increased the government’s control of Native American people and natural resources and
expanded territories for White settlements. In the first of several appropriation acts, funds were
allocated to move Native people living in the West onto reservations. Most Native lands today
are trust lands, meaning the federal government holds the legal title to the land, and that Native
tribes or individual tribal members lack ownership and control over the land.
More recently, in the 1950s and 1960s, Congress passed 12 “termination” bills, which
ended federal responsibilities for tribes in several states and turned over governing power to the
states. By 1957, 2.5 million acres had been removed from federal trust protection (Phillip 1983,
p. 166). However, federal trust protection is itself no protection against dubious practices of
extraction (Fixico, 2011), as illustrated by a $3.4 billion settlement with the U.S. government in
Cobell v. Salazar (2009), which found that the Department of Interior and other agencies had
breached their trust obligations with hundreds of thousands of Native American plaintiffs in the
class. Overall, roughly 56 million acres are held in federal trust as Native reservations, a mere
fraction of the 1.9 billion acres that make up the contemporary United States, once occupied by
Native peoples.
In all, Native Americans experienced a 98.9% reduction in their access to land from the
period of European arrival to the present. The remaining lands are more susceptible to climate
risks and less abundant in mineral resources than the territory on which they historically resided

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(Farrell et al., 2021). These collective experiences of dispossession remain salient. Whitbeck and
colleagues (2004) report that roughly 42% of a sample of Native American respondents in the
U.S. Midwest and Canada think about this loss of land at least monthly, and greater proportions
think about the loss of language, spiritual ways, and culture.
Chattel slavery, labor exploitation, and property theft

The story for Black Americans begins not with land dispossession but with theft of labor
and personhood. The first enslaved Africans arrived to what would become the United States in
the early 1500s (Johnson, 1923; Guasco, 2014), prior to the 1619 English settlement at
Jamestown, Virginia. The Anglo-centered history records slavery as flourishing in the United
States for 244 years until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, though the timeline is likely
much longer given bondage on U.S. shores decades before 1619 and for two years after 1863.
Indentured servitude began in early colonial America in response to the need for labor.
Most indentured servants were poor Europeans—Irish, Scots, and English—but some were
Africans who had been sold into bondage. Typically, servants worked off their indentures and
were freed four to seven years after they began. During the earliest years of settlement, no slave
laws were in place. However, with increasing demands for labor, rising costs of indentured
servants, and increasing demands for land from newly freed servants, colonists established laws
in the mid-1600s to hold Africans and their descendants in perpetual servitude. Statutes decreed
slavery as a lifelong and heredity condition and enslaved people as the legal property (i.e.,
chattel) of their “owners” to be bought, sold, traded, or willed as owners wished (Bridgewater,
2005; Franklin, 1969). This system made labor more profitable and readily renewable across
generations. Laws ensured that any children born to an enslaved woman belonged not to the
mother but to the White man who owned the mother. Enslavers’ biological children—born of the
rape of enslaved women—had no legal right to any of the father’s property, which was ordinarily
granted via paternity (Bridgewater, 2005).
When the 13th Amendment was adopted as part of the U.S. Constitution in 1865,
officially abolishing chattel slavery, the newly freed people had no land, capital, or equipment
for farming. Ida B. Wells, a well-known Black journalist who lived in the late 19th and early
20th century, aptly summed up the situation, noting that the end of slavery left Black people
“homeless, penniless, ignorant, nameless, and friendless…We were turned loose to starvation,
destitution, and death” (cited in Darity & Mullen, 2020, p. 9). After leading the Union army to
victory over the Confederate states, General Sherman ordered the redistribution of 400,000 acres
of land along coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia (40 acres and a mule per family) to
help newly freed Black individuals gain economic independence. Shortly thereafter, President
Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson rescinded the order, and the land remained in White
possession (Darity & Mullen, 2020; Saito, 2020). Darity and Mullen (2020) argue that had
Sherman’s order been carried out, it “would have dramatically reversed black asset poverty and
reduce blacks’ economic vulnerability across generations” (p. 175).
Just as the economic prosperity stolen from Native Americans through land and people
theft is incalculable, so are the profits wrought from slavery, which touched every colonial and
U.S. institution, from law to the economy to social mores to universities. Economic historians
estimate that the present value for lost wages during the period of slavery range from $2.1 to
$4.7 trillion, not accounting for land loss or the opportunity costs of educational and
discriminatory practices (Darity & Mullen, 2020; Marketti, 1990). Labor exploitation and the

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stealing of property, land, and assets from Black Americans continued after the formal
dissolution of slavery. Between 1865 and the beginning of World War II, Black Americans in the
South experienced widespread labor theft and exploitation reminiscent of slavery that
impoverished generations of Black families (e.g., through sharecropping, convict leasing, and
peonage) (Blackmon, 2008; Carper, 1976; Mancini, 1996). Sharecropping was a system of land
tenancy in the South that kept Black people working the land they had worked as enslaved
people. With little to no capital of their own, they could not even afford the provisions to plant
and were thus forced to buy them on credit from White landowners, with agreements to repay the
costs upon harvest. Planters kept Black tenants in perpetual debt through unfair contracts and
accounting practices, backed by Jim Crow laws that accorded few to no rights to Black people
and by White terrorist violence. Box C-3-2 illustrates the experience of a sharecropper in Florida
in the 1920s.
BOX C-3-2
Labor Exploitation Through Sharecropping
Journalist Isabel Wilkerson (2011, 54) recounts a story told by George Swanson, whose
family sharecropped in Florida in the 1920s. Swanson’s uncle tried in vain to negotiate on equal
footing. Wilkerson writes:
“During the lull before harvest time, one of George’s uncles, Budross, went to the little
schoolhouse down in the field and learned to read and count. When it came time to settle up
over the tobacco George’s grandmother Lena had raised, the uncle stood by while the planter
went over the books with her. When they got through, George’s uncle spoke up.
“ ‘Ma, Mr. Reshard cheatin’ you. He ain’t addin’ them figures right.’
“The planter jumped up. ‘Now you see there, Lena, I told you not to send that boy to
school! Now he done learn how to count and now done jumped up and called my wife a lie,
‘cause my wife figured up these books.’
“The planter’s men came and pistol-whipped the uncle right then and there.
“The family had to get him out that night. ‘To call a white woman a lie,’ George said,
‘they came looking for him that night. They came, fifteen or twenty of them on horseback,
wagon.’ “
In cases like these, not only was the sharecropping family cheated out of their harvests
or wages, but they were also forced to flee their homes, taking as much as they could but losing
their property and productive investments in the cultivation of the land. Even greater violence
ensued if Black people organized against the theft of the sharecropping system. Two hundred
Black people were massacred in Elaine, Arkansas in 1919, after organizing a union to bargain
for fair wages (Stockley, 2004).
SOURCE: Committee generated
@hr@
The forced labor of prisoners, overwhelmingly Black men, was also rampant during this
period. In southern states in the period after the Civil War—and in compliance with the 13th
Amendment that allows for “involuntary servitude” in the case of criminal conviction—southern
jurisdictions arrested and convicted hundreds of thousands of Black men and some women
(LeFlouria, 2015) and sold their labor to private corporations without pay, or with remuneration
going to the local government. To replace the social controls of slavery removed by the

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Emancipation Proclamation, state legislatures in the south passed an array of interlocking laws
referred to as “Black Codes” in 1865–1866 that barred Black citizens from voting, serving on
juries, testifying against White people in court, and working in skilled jobs. These laws
criminalized many aspects of Black daily life (e.g., unemployment, indigency, and disrespect of
White people were made illegal) to provide pretexts for jail terms. Black people were often
unable to pay even minor fines and, as a result, were sentenced to labor (Carper, 1976; Mancini,
1996).
In his book, Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon defines convict leasing as “a
system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were
compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to
do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical
coercion” (2008, p. 4). Supposed convicts were sold to work in mines, on railroads, on
plantations, and in timber fields. The system was highly profitable for private firms who paid no
wages and for the state systems that sold the labor of people convicted of “crimes.” One contract
to the Walker Coal and Iron Company in Georgia in 1874 “called for the leasing of 100 prisoners
for five years at $11 per convict per year” (Mancini, 1978, p. 341), or about 7 cents per day,
when the average daily wage for miners in the United States at the time was $1.97 (Abbott, 1905,
Table XII).
Convict leasing was used not only to enrich private and public coffers but also to
impoverish newly freed Black people. Sociologist Christopher Muller (2018) shows that in
Georgia after emancipation, Black imprisonment in the convict lease system for property crimes
increased most in parts of the state where Black people were gaining an economic foothold
through valuable land ownership and leaving sharecropping through urban residence, while
White incarceration remained steady. White southerners used punishment as a method to
interrupt this progress and to instead return Black men and some women to the status of unpaid
laborers. Not only did disproportionate incapacitation stymie economically productive activities,
but convict labor was essential to the South’s agricultural production and industrialization, and it
enriched the jailers and their jurisdictions.
Even Black Americans who were able to escape this exploitative system had to contend
with discriminatory laws and lending practices that largely barred Black people from land
ownership, apprenticeship programs for skilled training, trade unions, and other routes to upward
mobility (Lancaster, 2000). During Reconstruction (1865–1877), the period after the Civil War
when efforts were made to reintegrate Confederate states and redress the inequities of slavery,
Black Codes were abolished. However, after Reconstruction ended, many of the provisions of
these codes were reenacted in Jim Crow laws. Adopted in southern states in the 1870s and 1880s
and enforced until 1965, Jim Crow laws legalized and mandated racial segregation in all public
facilities (e.g., schools, transportation, hospitals, prisons, morgues), relegating Black people to
inferior treatment, jobs, and facilities (Franklin, 2013; Lancaster, 2000).
Contemporary labor exploitation continues within prisons. While there is some
contracting of prisoner labor to private industry, the majority of this labor benefits federal, state
and local governments, lowering the costs of operating prisons and distorting the true costs of
mass incarceration. The ACLU and the University of Chicago Law School’s Global Human
Rights Clinic (2022) estimate that incarcerated people “produce more than $2 billion a year in
goods and commodities and over $9 billion a year in services for the maintenance of the prisons
where they are warehoused” (p. 6). Yet they are paid nearly nothing. Private companies, on the

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other hand, extract revenues through negotiated contracts for high-priced services targeted at
prisoners, such as food, telephone, and internet communications (Lara-Millan, 2021). This
unpaid labor represents resources that are not passed on to children of incarcerated people, most
of whom are living in poverty. Using the ACLU/University of Chicago assumption of 6.5-hour
workdays (across industry types) for 22 workdays per month, if 400,000 workers were paid the
2022 federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, and 20% of their wages were passed through to the
custodial parents for care of their children, that would be [(6.5 x 22 x 12 x $7.25) x 400,000] x
0.2 = $995,280,000 of income for their families.
One historical example of property theft concerns The Freedmen’s Bank, which was
established after the Civil War in lieu of land reparations and as a way to integrate Black families
into the national economy. Signed as The Freedmen’s Bank Act of 1865 by President Abraham
Lincoln, it established a bank that served more than 60,000 Black depositors across 34 branches
just before its demise in 1874 (Hunter, 2018). The bank’s White managers advertised
aggressively in Black publications while using the deposits for risky investments in railroads and
unsecured loans. Legal scholar Mehrsa Baradaran (2017, 29) writes “As one white observer
explained, the white managers, entrusted with guarding the meager savings of the freed slaves,
‘looted the bank’.” The economic crisis of 1873 was the final straw and the bank failed in 1874.
The deposits were not federally guaranteed, and only 62% of the more than $3 million in
deposits (or roughly $76 million in 2022 dollars) was ever repaid (Hunter, 2018). Half of the
Black people with holdings in the bank got nothing (Washington, 1997). Stein and Yannelis
(2020, p. 5374) show the effects of this asset destruction over the long run, finding that “African
Americans in the present day who live in counties that once had a Freedman’s Savings Bank
branch are more likely to list mistrust of financial institutions as a reason for being unbanked;
this association is not present for Whites.”
There was also property destruction in places of Black urban settlement. In the late
1890s, Black people made up more than half of Wilmington, North Carolina. They were
relatively prosperous and had significant representation in the city government, having been
enfranchised during the Reconstruction era. In 1898, White residents staged what historians now
label as a violent coup in order to regain power (Zucchino, 2020). Estimates are that between 60
and 250 Black people were killed. The economic effects were evident in Black employment and
labor status. All of Wilmington’s Black city workers were fired and replaced by White
employees. The number of Black business owners declined, and Black businesses were
disproportionately displaced from the downtown area (Hamilton & Darity, 2006).
The economic toll is even more quantifiable for the Tulsa massacre of 1921, in which as
many as 300 Black people were killed. White mobs—deputized and armed by the local police—
destroyed roughly 35 acres of the Greenwood section of the city, called Black Wall Street for its
concentration of thriving Black-owned businesses (Messer et al., 2018). The Oklahoma
Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (2001) reported claims for property damage
of $1.8 million, or nearly $30 million in today’s dollars. Messer et al. (2018) figure that if the
same 1,256 homes were destroyed in Tulsa in 2018, the cost would be roughly $150 million.
None of the property claims were ever repaid to Black families.
This historical violence and property loss reverberates in present-day socioeconomic
well-being. Albright & colleagues (2021) show that the Tulsa massacre lowered the occupational
status of Black Tulsans into the 1940s and lowered their homeownership rates up to 2000, the
last year of observations. Moreover, Black homeownership rates were also lower in Black areas

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across the country that received significant newspaper coverage of the Tulsa massacre. Just as
the failure of the Freedman’s Bank made Black people leery of banks (Stein and Yannelis,
2020), the Tulsa massacre “provided a warning of the danger of the accumulation of wealth
through home ownership” (Albright et al., 2021, p. 31) that has persisted for decades. In addition
to the reverberations from historical forms of expropriation, more recent and contemporary
practices of asset extraction are manifest through the racially disparate use of eminent domain
(US Commission on Civil Rights, 2014), unfair property tax assessments (Atuahene & Berry,
2018), and Black home loss through foreclosure and institutional purchases (Hwang, 2019), just
to name a few.
Scientific racism
During the mid to late 1600s, race ideology developed as justification for White
supremacy, land theft and genocidal wars against Native peoples, and permanent enslavement of
Black people. Native people were regarded as fierce, as evil, as savages fated by God for
conquest, and Black people as inferior subhumans without capacity for reasoning, imagination,
and sentiment (Franklin, 1969; Smedley, 1998; Stannard, 1992). Science played a supporting
role in hardening early folk beliefs among White colonists and settlers about “race” and
inequality. From the 18th century and well into the 20th century, anthropologists, biologists, and
psychologists developed techniques to measure differences in physical characteristics as a basis
for racial classification and subordination (Gould, 1996). For example, during slavery, a
physician invented the diagnosis of “drapetomania,” a mental illness hypothesized to cause
enslaved Africans, who were thought to be naturally servile, to flee captivity, for which the
prescribed treatment was severe whipping (Opara et al., 2022). “Studies” using these techniques
purported to confirm the inferiority of Black and Native people, and to support the belief that
“White blood” increased the mental capacity of Black and Native children of mixed racial
backgrounds (Guthrie, 1976; Smedley & Smedley, 2005).
Integral to the social construction of race ideology that developed during this period was
the valuation of phenotypic traits associated with European ancestry and the devaluation of those
associated with non-White people, biases that exist to this day among Black Americans (e.g.,
Adams et al., 2016; Maddox & Gray, 2002) as well as some Native tribal groups (Brown et al.,
2018). Color and phenotypic hierarchies established during slavery also cast a long shadow in
establishing practices of anti-Blackness (Frazier, 1957; Franklin, 1969). Studies have found that
lighter skin tone among Black people is positively correlated with socioeconomic outcomes
(Monk, 2021), higher self-esteem among Black youth (Adams et al., 2020), attribution of more
positive traits (Maddox & Gray, 2002), lower rates of school suspension, better physical health,
greater upward mobility, and increased odds of full-time employment and college attendance
(Han, 2020; Hannon et al., 2013; Hargrove, 2019; Keith & Herring, 1991; Ryabov, 2013).
Analyzing archival records of capital murder cases, Eberhardt et al. (2006) showed that
defendants whose appearance was perceived as more stereotypically Black were significantly
more likely to receive a death sentence than defendants whose appearance was perceived as less
stereotypically Black, controlling for numerous factors. Persistent skin tone stratification
illustrates the lasting effects of the ideologies created to justify racism and colonialism.

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Forced assimilation and legalized racial discrimination

The original U.S. constitution directed that for purposes of representation and taxes, the
population would be determined “excluding Indians not taxed, [and including] three fifths of all
other Persons.” This separation and erasure of Native Americans and sub-humanization of Black
people is built into the fabric of the United States and has clear contemporary manifestations,
such as in the “willful blindness toward Native American victimization” by law enforcement
(Perry, 2006, 412; also see Fryberg & Stephens, 2010), and the digital association of Black
people with apes in facial recognition internet searches (Noble, 2018, p. 6).
Anti-Indigeneity undergirded a variety of U.S. government policies that pressured Native
Americans to assimilate. The Dawes Act of 1887, for example, authorized a division of tribal
lands into individual plots to encourage Natives to farm and ranch like White homesteaders
(https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/dawes-act.htm). Laws such as the Civilization Fund Act of
1819 funded schools and forced Native children to attend boarding schools where displays of
Native culture and identity were forbidden. By 1925, some 60,000 Native children—about 80%
of Native school-age children—had been forced to attend boarding schools. In keeping with the
philosophy of assimilation, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” children in these schools were
forbidden to speak their native language, wear traditional clothes (which were replaced by
uniforms), or perform tribal practices (replaced by Christian practices). Long hair was cut, braids
were prohibited, and tribal names were replaced by English-language names (Adams, 1995;
Pember, 2019). Contact with family and community members was discouraged and sometimes
forbidden altogether (Adams, 1995; American Indian Relief Council, n.d.; Pember, 2019).
Evidence of abuses of students in off-reservation boarding schools led to passage of the Indian
Child Welfare Act in 1978, which gave Native parents the legal right to refuse their child’s
placement in off-reservation schools. Many large Native boarding schools closed in the 1980s
and early 1990s. Some located on reservations were taken over by tribes. Still, as of 2021, 15
such boarding schools remain open (American Indian Boarding Schools by State, n.d.;
Blakemore, 2021).
Forced assimilation is a form of structural racism whose psychological consequences for
Native Americans is the focus of a growing number of studies. Compared with all other racial
groups, Indigenous youth and adults have higher rates of suicide, substance use disorders, and
mental health problems. Research has linked these disparities to both current and historical racial
discrimination (Skewes & Blume, 2019) or “historical trauma,” conceptualized as “cumulative
emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from
massive group trauma experiences” (Yellow Horse Brave Heart, 2003, p. 7). The wounds include
the loss of religion, language, and culture—as experienced by Native youth removed from their
families to live in boarding schools—as well as loss of ancestral homelands.
Observational work suggests that Native parents who are alienated from Native cultural
and spiritual traditions may be less able to provide their children with a supportive, nurturing
family environment, putting their children at increased risk for mental and substance abuse
disorders (Zimmerman & Shannon, 2013). Evans-Campbell et al.’s (2012) study of Native
Americans found that former boarding school attendees, compared with non-attendees, reported
higher rates of current illicit drug use, alcohol use disorder, suicidal ideation, and attempted
suicide. In addition, adults raised by former attendees of boarding schools, when compared with
their counterparts, were more likely to have an anxiety disorder, PTSD symptoms, and suicidal
thoughts in their lifetime. In a similar vein, there is evidence of deleterious multigenerational

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effects of relocation experiences on Indigenous families. In Walls and Whitbeck’s (2012)

longitudinal study, grandparent-generation participation in government relocation programs, in
which reservation-dwelling Native Americans moved to large urban areas for vocational training
and job opportunities, not only harmed the well-being of the grandparent generation (e.g.,
alcohol and drug problems, depressive symptoms) but rippled downward to harm the mental
health of the parent and youth generations. These studies suggest that historical trauma could
contribute to higher rates of intergenerational poverty among Native Americans by undermining
the psychological functioning and nurturing capacities in the grandparent and parent generations,
in turn increasing substance use and mental health problems in the child generation that
ultimately lower educational and occupational attainment and reduce upward mobility.
For Black Americans, slavery and Jim Crow laws throughout the United States continued
to shape economic and social opportunity with lasting impacts into the present day. Baker (2022)
finds that a composite measure of Black people’s state-level exposure to slavery, sharecropping,
disenfranchisement and resistance to desegregation is significantly correlated with contemporary
Black poverty and Black-White disparities in poverty. Similarly, Althoff and Reichardt
(Unpublished) find that the socioeconomic status of Black families today depends strongly on
their historical exposure to racially oppressive institutions. Black people who were enslaved up
until the Civil War have lower education, income, and wealth today as compared with Black
people who were free before the Civil War. While the direct effects of enslavement continued
through 1940, the ongoing effects are due to the disproportionate exposure to Jim Crow laws
among those who were enslaved until the Civil War. Thus, state-specific factors perpetuated the
socioeconomic disparities that slavery had created among Black families. According to Althoff
and Reichardt (Unpublished, pp. 3-4), ” Black families freed in states with more oppressive
regimes experienced significantly lower rates of economic progress starting in the Jim Crow era
(1877–1964). For example, consistent with Louisiana’s Jim Crow regime being far stricter than
Texas’s, we find that families freed in Louisiana attained 1.2 fewer years of education by 1940
than families freed only a few miles away in Texas. The magnitudes of those border
discontinuities are virtually identical to the general state differences in how families fared after
slavery, suggesting that Jim Crow single-handedly shaped the geography of Black economic
progress. Althoff and Reichardt (2023, p. 5) conclude: “This result implies that systemic
discrimination—the higher exposure to ongoing discrimination because of past discrimination
(Bohren et al., 2022)—is at the core of the persisting legacy of racially oppressive institutions in
the US..”
Contemporary Drivers of Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Poverty
As with the section above, we offer additional discussion and detail about some but not
all of the domains covered in the main text, and add an additional section on Black immigrants.
The first two subsections here are titled to correspond with their respective section in the main
text.
Crime, victimization, and criminal justice

Slavery and colonialism are intertwined systems of racialized economic oppression to
benefit those in power. Power is maintained through violence and the threat of violence, often
justified under the guise of punishment for supposed wrongdoing or crime (for historical

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overviews on punishment against Black and Native people, see Ross (2010), Thompson (2019),
Ulmer and Bradley (2019), Hinton and Cook (2021). Early regimes of punishment against Black
and Native Americans were manifested in the physical acts of whippings, scalpings, and
murders, and also in economic practices of dispossession and indebting. There was punishment
for slow work, punishment for speaking one’s native language, punishment for playing musical
instruments, punishment for leaving or staying on designated lands (territories, plantations,
reservations, hunting grounds), punishment for reading or refusing to read, and punishment for
using resources from the land for survival (Ross, 2010). Punishment is linked to
intergenerational poverty because it limits or eliminates the ability of the parental generation to
invest in children economically, socially, psychologically, and culturally. When state punishment
is enacted against children, it stifles their educational, psychological, and economic growth.
The historical relationship between punishment and economic disfranchisement has been
illustrated above through the example of convict leasing. Punishment was similarly used against
Native Americans as a pretext for economic and land dispossession. California Statute Chapter
133 of 1850—very wrongly named “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians”—
deputized White settlers as police, judge, and jury, with the purpose of expropriating labor. The
text of the law makes clear the connection between criminal punishment and economic
exploitation authorized in the 13th amendment:
When an Indian is convicted of an offence before a Justice of the Peace, punishable by

fine, any white man may, by consent of the justice, give bond for said Indian, conditioned
for the payment of said fine and costs, and in such case the Indian shall be compelled to
work for the person so bailing, until he has discharged or cancelled the fine assessed
against him (quoted in Teran, 2016, p. 24).
Unlike the convict leasing system in the South, individual settlers were enriched by the
labor of supposedly criminal Native Americans, who were in turn deprived of the ability to
sustain themselves and their families. A frequent grounds for conviction was the “hunger offense
of stealing cattle” (p. 26), a crime that resulted from the systematic elimination of Native
American food sources (Ross, 2010). In 1861, in Northern California, several hundred Native
American men were killed for stealing cattle. In similar cases, the wives and daughters of slain
Native American men were taken by White settlers for forced sexual and physical labor.
Law is used strategically to define “crime” in ways that facilitate the maintenance of
power and economic hierarchies. Punishment against Black and Native peoples can be exacted to
extract labor and land, or for managing periods when their labor was not required (Muller and
Schrage, 2021; Western et al., 2006). The “crimes” for which punishment has been levied have
been in response to Black and Native people’s attempts at bodily, cultural, economic, and
spiritual freedom. These historical practices of shaping law and defining crime in anti-Black and
anti-Indigenous ways reverberate today in widespread stereotypes about Black and Native
lawlessness, disorder, aggression, and criminality (Ross, 2010; Muhammad, 2019), which justify
tough-on-crime policies that target Black and Native communities for policing, punishment, and
removal from their families and communities, including through supposedly supportive
institutions such as schools and the child welfare system (Jacobs, 2014; Roberts, 2022).
This brief history challenges a common starting point when discussing race, crime, and
punishment: the notion that Black and Native people commit more crime and therefore

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experience more punishment. The definition of crime and the accordant punishments are
themselves tools of control—from the vagrancy and trespassing laws of the 19th century to the
continued 18-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine possession. Even using
conventional definitions of crime, there appears to be a weak and small relationship between an
individual’s race and many areas of self-reported offending (Sohoni et al., 2021).
Disparities in incarceration rates between White and Black people are longstanding,
dating back to the earliest record keeping in the 1800s. Figure C-3-1 (from Muller, 2012)
compares Nonwhite and White incarceration rates from 1880 to 1950 (separate data for Blacks
are not available). At the beginning of the time period, the Nonwhite incarceration rate is roughly
two times the White rate, while by the end of the time period the gap had widened, with the
Nonwhite rate roughly five times the White rate. The ratio (or disparity) of the Black-to-White
incarceration rates peaked at about 7:1 in the early 2000s (National Research Council, 2014), and
has declined to roughly 5:1 in the most recent period (Nellis, 2021). In other words,
contemporary Black/White disparities in incarceration are roughly equal to what they were in
1950. Figure C-3-2 shows that contemporary racial disparities in incarceration rates are also
evident for juveniles, with Native and Black juveniles experience much higher rates than White,
Asian, and Latino youth.
FIGURE C-3-1 Incarceration rates by race from 1880 to 1950.

NOTE: The states included in the analysis are northern and southern U.S. states. Northern states
include Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New

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Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Southern states include Alabama,
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
SOURCE: Data from Muller (2012). The underlying data from the graph were obtained using the
software WebPlotDigitizer. https://automeris.io/WebPlotDigitizer/.
FIGURE C-3-2 Rate of youth confined in juvenile residential placement facilities per 100,000
by race/ethnicity, 2019.
NOTE: Youth are defined as persons 17 years old and younger.
SOURCE: Data from the Prison Policy Initiative (2021).
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/10/08/ indigenouspeoplesday/.
Racial disparities in offending and cumulative disadvantages across multiple domains

reverberate through the stages of criminal processing (e.g., policing, arrest, prosecution,
sentencing, incarceration) to produce racial inequality in the criminal justice system (Alexander,
2010; NASEM, 2022b). Researchers have discussed three policy changes that have been
important for how structural racism has contributed to these racial disparities in the criminal
justice system. The first policy change, collectively known as the War on Drugs, intensively
criminalized drug use and drug sales disproportionately in Black communities (Provine, 2011;
Tonry, 1996; Tonry & Melewski, 2008). The punitive effect of the War on Drugs can be seen in
the increasing probability of imprisonment given a drug arrest and the growing share of people in
prison convicted of drug crimes (Beck & Blumstein, 2018; Blumstein & Beck, 1999; Tonry &
Melewski, 2008). Given the large racial disparity in drug arrests and prison admissions, the

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growth in drug incarceration also tended to increase the racial disparity in incarceration through
the 1980s and 1990s. The second major policy change contributing to racially disparate
criminalization was the War on Crime, which encompassed a variety of changes in sentencing
policy at the state and federal levels that increased the duration of prison sentences, particularly
for violent offenses. Third, policing strategies changed in the final decades of the 20th century to
focus more on crime prevention and to allocate resources more intensively to areas and people
who were viewed as high risk (NASEM, 2022b).
Involvement in the criminal legal system has long-term economic effects for young
people and adults. People with a conviction experience a cumulative loss of roughly $100,000 in
earnings, and people who have experienced incarceration experience nearly $500,000 in lost
earnings over their lifetime (Craigie et al., 2020). Incarceration and conviction have similar
negative effects on wealth (Maroto, 2015; Schneider & Turney, 2015; Sykes & Maroto, 2016).
Given the racial disparities in criminal justice processing, the negative effects on employment
and earnings exacerbate racial gaps in socioeconomic outcomes (Gordon et al., 2021; Lyons &
Pager, 2007; Pettit, 2011; Western & Sirois, 2019). There is little research on the socioeconomic
outcomes after incarceration for Native Americans.
Housing and neighborhood environments

Racial disparities in housing are driven by the acts of both private citizens and state
actors in coordinating efforts to exclude Black people from property ownership and White
neighborhoods. For example, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, more commonly
known as the GI Bill, offered preferred mortgage financing, tuition for college and vocational
training, and enhanced unemployment benefits to returning veterans. While it was federal law, it
was administered locally. Black veterans returning to the Jim Crow South in the 1940s ‘50s and
‘60s were denied access to mortgages--as well as to the college tuition benefits (Turner &
Bound, 2003)—and thus to the wealth-enhancing possibilities of homeownership and education).
Black veterans in the North faced less absolute exclusion, but the federally-promoted practice of
redlining (discussed in Chapter 3) similarly made the GI Bill widely inaccessible for broadly
improving Black people’s housing situation (Agbai, unpublished; Cohen, 2003; Delmont, 2022).
Using conservative assumptions, Meschede, et al. (2022) estimate that “Black veterans received
at most 70% of the value that white veterans received,” and the gap was greatest for government
spending on housing benefits.
Another example is racially restrictive covenants—agreements written into property
deeds that prohibited owners from selling or renting to Black people and, in some places, other
marginalized groups such as Mexicans, Jews and Asians (Jones-Correa, 2000). These agreements
date from the late 19th century and were driven by antipathy to living near African Americans
and by widespread assumptions that Black neighbors provoked falling property values. After
racial zoning by municipalities was ruled unconstitutional in 1917 in Buchanan v. Warley,
proponents read a 1926 Supreme Court decision in Corrigan v. Buckley as tacitly supporting
private restrictive agreements. For example, one house in a White neighborhood in Chicago that
abutted a growing Black neighborhood to the west was covered by two restrictive covenants—
one in 1937 and another in 1944 (Pattillo, 2007). The covenant created an exclusionary bond and
opened up any violators to legal action and damages. Racially restrictive covenants were
supported and propagated by real estate boards, private institutions like universities, and federal

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agencies, even after the Supreme Court ruled them to be unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer
(1948). There is no national accounting of the spread of these restrictive covenants, but Santucci
(2020) documents at least 4,000 such agreements covering properties in Philadelphia alone, as
just one example.
The federal government began to play a major role in housing policy after the Great
Depression, creating a panoply of policies that reflected the racial prejudices and exclusionary
biases of the era. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), the establishment of the
Homeowners Loan Corporation (1933) and the Federal Housing Administration (1934), the U.S.
Housing Act (1937), and the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the GI Bill that established “VA
loans,” 1944) all set in motion a national building and financing program to stabilize the U.S.
housing market and provide shelter for low- and moderate-income families and, later, for
veterans returning from World War II.
The new regime of housing finance systematically disadvantaged African Americans.
While working-class European-immigrant urban neighborhoods received low ratings in the
rating system, their residents could assimilate and move into “White” neighborhoods where
mortgage dollars flowed (Guglielmo, 2003). On the other hand, federal government guidelines
warned against the presence of non-White residents. Historian Kenneth Jackson (1985) recounts
the example of Lincoln Terrace in St. Louis. The development was intended for and marketed to
middle-class White families but was unsuccessful in this plan, and Black families moved in. In
1937, even though the structures were only 10 years old, the federal HOLC gave the
neighborhood its lowest rating and withheld mortgage financing, stating that it had “little or no
value today, having suffered a tremendous decline in values due to the colored element now
controlling the district” (p. 200).
While the HOLC may have been relatively fair in some cities in apportioning home loans
to Black households (Fishback et al., 2022; Hillier, 2003), the Federal Housing Authority (FHA)
was certainly not. In Chicago in 1938, the Chicago Housing Authority created a map of
mortgage-lending risk based on the FHA’s evaluations. The entirety of the city’s Black
community was colored in red. The Chicago Housing Authority summarized the message of the
map bluntly: “All Negro census tracts fall within the area where loans have not been made by the
major loaning agencies, and loans will not be made” (quoted in Pattillo, 2007, p. 331).
Capitalizing on the exclusion of Black people from the conventional housing finance
market, private investors created a shadow market selling “on contract” (Satter, 2009). White
“sellers” retained the deed and imposed stringent requirements for maintenance and repayment.
With the slightest infraction, owners repossessed properties and kept all of the payments made
by the Black “buyer.” Contract selling extracted an estimated $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) in
wealth from Black families in Chicago in the 1960s (Dubois Cook Center, 2019), and has re-
emerged in the post-2008 housing collapse period in predominately Black cities like Atlanta
(Immergluck, 2018).
The most recent episode of housing discrimination is the subprime and foreclosure crisis
(Hwang et al., 2015; Rugh & Massey, 2010). In December of 2011, the U.S. Department of
Justice issued a press release with the headline, “Justice Department Reaches $335 Million
Settlement to Resolve Allegations of Lending Discrimination by Countrywide Financial
Corporation; More than 200,000 African-American and Hispanic Borrowers who Qualified for
Loans were Charged Higher Fees or Placed into Subprime Loans.” This was just one of many
lawsuits and settlements to come.

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Subprime loans are characterized by higher interest rates, payment plans that assume
upward value trajectories, deferred or “balloon” payments, interest-only payments, prepayment
penalties, and other complicated and disadvantageous arrangements that are often not fully
disclosed or explained to the homebuyer. Contrary to the exclusionary practices wrought by
redlining, predatory inclusion marks the targeting of Black households for financial instruments
that prove detrimental to their socioeconomic well-being.
The rash of subprime lending eventually led to the foreclosure crisis. Black and Latino
households were roughly twice as likely to be affected by foreclosure through home loss or
serious arrears (Bocian et al., 2011) and Black and Latino neighborhoods were also
disproportionately affected (Hall et al., 2015). Roughly eight percent of Black households
(240,000 households) lost their homes between 2005 and 2008 (Bocian et al., 2010). Disparities
in foreclosures and steep declines in housing values had a cascading effect on household wealth,
since homes represent the major portion of most people’s wealth profile. The median net worth
of Black Americans in the United States declined by 53% from 2005 to 2009 (and by an even
larger 66% for Latino households), but declined by only 16% for White households. This
represented a doubling of the racial wealth gap (Pew Research Center, 2011). The foreclosure
crisis and recession were particularly pronounced among Black families with children, widening
an already large Black-White wealth gap among such households. Percheski and Gibson-Davis
(2020, p. 10) report that by 2016, “black child households had 1 cent of median wealth for every
dollar of wealth held by non-Hispanic white child households.” The targeting of subprime
mortgages to Black buyers negatively impacted Black wealth and Black neighborhoods,
continuing a cycle of lowering household resources that might promote intergenerational
mobility.
Comparisons with Black immigrants

Although not included in the main text, a discussion of the socioeconomic status and
mobility outcomes of Black immigrants offers additional evidence on racism and discrimination
as drivers of intergenerational poverty. Black immigrants have been heralded as a “model
minority” (Ukpokodu, 2018), and their success is often advanced as a counter-explanation for the
poor social position of Black Americans. The logic goes like this: because both Black Americans
and Black immigrants share similar phenotypic characteristics, both groups must suffer from
similar levels of discrimination. Therefore, if Black immigrants can succeed despite the barriers
of racism and discrimination, then cultural differences, rather than racism, must account for
observed differences (Patterson, 2006, 2015; Sowell, 1979, 1981). Such arguments, however,
omit important factors discussed here that help explain disparities between immigrant and native-
born Black people (Hamilton, 2019; Model, 2008).
The Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965 paved the way for large waves of Black
immigrants to migrate to the United States (Portes & Rumbaut, 2014). In 1960, Black
immigrants accounted for less than one percent of Black people residing in the United States. By
2010, almost 10% of Black people in the United States were foreign-born, a 10-fold increase in
50 years (Hamilton, 2019). When these new waves of Black immigrants arrived, scholars noted
that some Black immigrants had better outcomes than Black Americans. For example, data from
the 1980 U.S. Census showed that prior to adjusting for relevant human capital characteristics,
Black immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean were more likely to be in the labor force,
had greater employment rates, and earned more than Black Americans, findings that led some to

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conclude that culture, rather than racism, explained the poor outcomes of Black Americans
(Sowell, 1979, 1981).
These early accounts of labor market disparities between Black immigrants and Black
Americans severely overstated the advantages of Black immigrants. After controlling for a
standard set of human characteristics, most subgroups of Black immigrants have similar or lower
employment rates and earnings than Black Americans (Hamilton, 2019; Model, 2008). Black
immigrants’ labor force participation rates are higher than those of Black and White Americans,
which suggests that disparities in labor force participation likely result from different reservation
wages between immigrants and natives, in general, rather than differences in cultural practices
(Hamilton, 2019).
Early studies of labor market disparities between Black immigrants and Black Americans
also ignored selection bias issues (Patterson, 2006; Sowell, 1981). Like other contemporary
immigrants, Black immigrants are a self-selected group of movers (Feliciano, 2005; Feliciano
and Lanuza, 2017; Hamilton, 2019; Model, 2008). Most Black immigrants are selected on a
range of factors that are positively correlated with better labor market outcomes, including age,
health, education, and social class position (Hamilton, 2019). For example, Black Jamaican U.S.
immigrants have 13.13 mean years of education, compared with 9.64 years among individuals
residing in Jamaica. Similarly, Nigerian U.S. immigrants have 15 mean years of education
compared with 6 years among adults residing in Nigeria (Hamilton, 2019). Given the dramatic
difference in the home country education distribution between the United States and most Black
immigrant sending countries, most Black immigrants also occupy a more favorable social class
position in their home country than in the United States (Feliciano, 2020; Hamilton, 2019).
Studies have consistently found that the outcomes of Black immigrants are more similar to those
of Black Americans who have also made a move across states since birth than to those of Black
American nonmovers, which suggests that the favorable outcomes of Black immigrants result
from unobserved factors associated with migration (both domestic and international) than from
cultural differences between Black immigrants and Black Americans (Butcher, 1994; Model,
2008; Hamilton, 2019).
Any advantages experienced by Black immigrants do not apply to all Black immigrants,
even those from the same region or country. For example, among Black women from the
English-speaking Caribbean, early arrivals tended to have better labor market outcomes than
more recent arrivals. Model (2008) argues that when the Hart-Cellar Act passed in 1965, there
were relatively few immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean residing in the United
States to sponsor the visas of family members. As a result, immigrants with skills needed in the
United States were among the early drivers of migration after 1965. This fact generated a flow of
women from the English-speaking Caribbean who were positive-selected on skills and education
(many were employed in the health care sector) as well as risk taking and motivation, given that
these women arrived in the country with a small or no established co-ethnic community. Over
time, however, family reunification drove an increase in migration, which resulted in a less
highly selected group of migrants.
Indeed, patterns of intergenerational mobility among immigrants highlight the role of
contemporary discrimination in affecting the outcomes of Black immigrants. Using a century of
U.S. censuses and contemporary tax records, Abramitzky and Boustan (2022) find that sons of
immigrants raised in the bottom 25th percentile of the income distribution were in a more
favorable position in the income distribution than the sons of U.S.-born fathers. For the post-

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1965 immigration era, the only countries of origin whose immigrants’ sons were in a lower
position than sons of U.S.-born fathers were Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica. Hence,
Black immigrants differ from non-Black immigrants and seem to face similar barriers to upward
mobility as Black natives.

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TABLE C-3-1 Interventions in Chapters 4 through 10 that have been shown to be effective for Black, Latino or Native American
children and families
Driver Program or policy example Key reference(s) (and Effect on Black people or Effect on Latino people or Effect on Native
supported by direct evidence limitations) mostly Black sample? mostly Latino sample? American people
or mostly NA
sample?
Education
Early childhood None identified in recent research
K-12 education Increase K-12 school spending in the Schanzenbach & Significant impacts for Black Not assessed Not assessed
poorest districts Rothstein, 2022 students
Increase K-12 school spending Johnson & Nazaryan, School funding is a Not assessed Not assessed
2019; Johnson, 2011 mechanism by which school
desegregation improves long-
term outcomes for Black
students
Recruit Black teachers Gershenson et al., 2022 Significant impacts for Black Not assessed Not assessed
students on HS graduation and
college enrollment (for males)
Reduce exclusionary school Bacher-Hicks et al., Harsh disciplinary practices Harsh disciplinary practices Not assessed
discipline 2019 increase arrest and increase arrest and
incarceration and school incarceration and school
dropout, and decrease college dropout, and decrease college
enrollment, especially for enrollment, especially for
Black and Latino males Black and Latino males
Develop Ethnic Studies courses Bonilla et al., 2021 Not assessed Increases HS graduation and Not assessed
strong suggestive results for
post-secondary enrollment
Post-secondary Expand effective financial aid ASAP: Miller and Significant impacts of ASAP Significant impacts of ASAP Not assessed
education programs for low-income students Weiss, 2021 Buffett: for Black student attainment; for Latino student attainment;
significant impact of HAIL for significant impact of HAIL for

259

and increase campus supports (such Angrist et al. 2017; Black students on application Latino students on application
as tutoring and case management) HAIL: Dynarski, 2022a; but not admission or but not admission or
enrollment enrollment
Career training Expand high-quality career and Fein et al., 2021 for Year Significant impacts of Year- Significant impacts of Year- Not assessed
technical education programs in high Up; Roder & Elliott, Up and Project Quest on Up and Project Quest on
school and sectoral training 2019 for Project Quest earnings of Black youth earnings of Latinos
programs for adults and youth
Family planning Increase funding for Title X family Bailey, 2013 does not Not assessed Not assessed Not assessed
planning programs and ensure that show subgroup results
Medicaid beneficiaries have access by race/ethnicity
to family planning services
Health insurance Expand access to Medicaid with Brown et al., 2020 does Wherry & Meyer (2016), Not assessed Not assessed
continuous 12-month eligibility and not show subgroup larger improvements in life
12-month post-partum coverage; results by race/ethnicity expectancy among Black
expand access to Indian Health children relative to White
Services for all eligible mothers and children
children
Pollution reduction Support EPA to work with local Isen et al., 2017 Significant impacts of Not assessed Not assessed
partners to adopt and expand document impacts for pollution reduction on
efficient methods of monitoring Black subsample; earnings of Black children;
outdoor and—especially in Currie et al., 2023 CAA accounts for 60% of the
schools—indoor air quality document the CAA racial convergence in air
disproportionately pollution exposure in the
improved air quality United States since 2000
among Black families
Nutrition Expand child access to existing East, 2020 analysis of Not assessed Significantly better birth Not assessed
nutrition programs for legal second-generation child outcomes for the children of
permanent residents and health based on women whose own mothers
undocumented parents; increase WIC immigrant eligibility were eligible for WIC benefits
enrollment by extending infant uses an 80% Hispanic when they were in utero.
certification, allowing adjunctive sample
eligibility, and increasing remote
access services

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Work-based income Expand the Earned Income Tax Bastian and Michelmore, Generally positive effects of Not assessed Not assessed
support Credit by increasing payments along 2018 EITC expansions on the
some or all portions of the schedule educational attainment and
and possibly by providing a credit to earnings of Black children
families with no earnings
Family Structure
None identified by research to date NA
Residential mobility Expand coverage of the Housing Bergman et al., 2019 do Not assessed Not assessed Not assessed
Choice Voucher program and couple not show race/ethnicity-
it with customized counseling and specific results or have
case management services majority-minority
sample.
Juvenile incarceration Eliminate most or all juvenile Aizer & Doyle, 2015; Significant effects of juvenile Not assessed Not assessed
detention and incarceration for non- Baron et al., 2023 detention on the completed
felony offenses and for felony schoolings and adult crime for
offenses, especially those that are Black youth
nonviolent
Child investment Scale-up evidence-based therapeutic Heller, 2017 uses a Significant reduction in crime Not assessed Not assessed
strategies interventions such as the Becoming a majority Black sample and increases in high school
Man program; improve school graduation for Black youth
quality and reduce lead exposure in
ways identified in the education and
health categories
Strengthen Scale up programs that abate vacant Branas et al., 2018 Significant reductions in Not assessed Not assessed
communities to reduce lots and abandoned homes; increase sample was majority crime
violent crime and grants to community-based Black
victimization organizations
Policing strategies Expand funding for policing in high- Chalfin et al., 2022 Significant reductions in Not assessed Not assessed
crime neighborhoods and use of homicides for Black people
effective strategies like community
policing
Reduce gun violence Reduce access to guns in ways that DeSimone et al., 2013 Not assessed Not assessed Not assessed
pass constitutional review; promote do not show subgroup

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child access prevention laws, results for child

restrictions on right-to-carry laws, protection laws; nor does
limited access of domestic abusers, Donohue et al., 2022 for
and sentencing add-ons for violence right-to-carry laws,
involving firearms. though the cities
included in the analysis
have large Black
populations.
Child Maltreatment
NOTE: ASAP = Accelerated Study in Associates Program; CAA = Clean Air Act; EITC = Earned Income Tax Credit; EPA =
Environmental Protection Agency; HAIL = High Achieving Involved Leader program at the University of Michigan; WIC = Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

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CHILDREN’S EDUCATION
This appendix provides a broader literature review on several of the drivers discussed in
Chapter 4 of the report, as well as on the interventions supported by direct or indirect evidence.
In the case of early childhood interventions, we review the literature that led the committee to
not propose any interventions.
EARLY CHILDHOOD INTERVENTIONS
Several home visiting and early care and education programs have demonstrated long-
term impacts on adult education, employment, incarceration, and health. In the case of
contemporary early childhood programs, however, few rigorous evaluations have shown similar
intermediate or long-term impacts. Moreover, it is not clear how current programs might be
changed in ways that would produce longer-term impacts. The committee was therefore unable
to identify specific ways in which further investments in these programs, as currently
implemented, would reliably reduce intergenerational poverty. This is not to say that all existing
programs are ineffective or that additional investments during this childhood period are bound to
fail, but simply that the current evidence base does not tell us how to make expansions of them
succeed. Below we provide a review of the literature that leads us to our conclusions.
Home Visiting Programs

Home-visiting programs typically involve trained professional or paraprofessional
visitors who make regular visits to parents and young children. These home visitors coach
parents, typically low-income mothers, on parenting during the prenatal period and early
childhood years. As a prevention strategy, home visiting is designed to promote infant and child
health, foster educational development, and help prevent child abuse and neglect. All 50 states
have home visiting programs (OPRE, 2021). Some of these programs, like the Nurse Family
Partnership home visiting program, have demonstrated long-term impacts on child outcomes like
substance use and academic skills during the school years—impacts likely to reduce
intergenerational poverty (Avellar & Paulsell, 2011).
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded federal funding for
home visiting programs but also required that 75% of its funds be used for programs, and that the
programs demonstrate their effectiveness in rigorous research studies. The Office of Planning,
Research, and Evaluation contracted to conduct a regular systemic review of home visiting
research, the Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVee) review, and publish findings
on its website (Avellar & Paulsell, 2011).
The 2021 HomVee review (OPRE, 2021) included 22 programs that reported statistically
positive outcomes in randomized control trials or rigorous quasi-experimental studies. As of
September 2021, the review included evaluations of 53 home visiting models, focusing on the 22
models that met the stringent OPRE criteria for evidence-based models. The impacts of those 22
programs on child outcomes were found to be ineffective much more often than effective:
Approximately 130 impacts were “positive,” in 600 cases there was “no difference," and in 7

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cases the impact was “negative.” A broader look at the results shows limited evidence that
programs changed parenting or child outcomes. Overall, they suggest that home visiting
programs can, but typically do not, increase cognitive stimulation in the home and decrease the
use of punitive, harsh punishment. Even when such programs are successful in changing
parenting behavior, the size of their impacts is modest—about 0.10 standard deviations
(Michalopoulos et al., 2019). In most cases, their positive impacts were limited to shorter-run
improvements in birth outcomes, reductions in hospitalization, declines in behavior problems, or
increased access to services like TANF or WIC.
Table C-4-1 provides a broader overview of the HomVee results from the most promising
home visiting programs that were evaluated between 2019 and 2020. Because the evaluations
include so many parenting and child outcomes, we set a statistical significance threshold of
p<0.10 and simply count the number of impact coefficients that fall below that threshold. Given
the nature of significance testing, we would expect to see 10% of the coefficients below p<0.10
even if there were no true impacts.
TABLE C-4-1: Ratio of statistically significant (p < 0.10) treatment impacts to outcomes
examined in the HomVee literature review
Positive Child Reductions in

Program cost per child
parenting development and child
per year
practices school readiness maltreatment
$7,000 to train parent

Attachment and
coaches. Families
Biobehavioral Catch- 11/23 8/19 Not measured
receive 10 1-hour
Up
sessions
Healthy Families
$4,101a 28/131 12/56 20/209
America
Home Instruction for
Parents of Preschool $4,246b 1/1 11/49 Not measured
Youngsters
Maternal Infant Not
$518c Not measured 0/18
Health Program measured
Nurse Family $6,000 (SC) -
7/37 13/142 7/26
Partnership $9,600(NY)d
Parents as Teachers $3,841e 3/92 7/67 0/4
Play and Learning
Strategies (PALS) $3,206f 1/13 6/14 Not measured
Infant
SOURCE: Adapted from Duncan et al., 2023.

NOTES: (a) https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/200#programcost
(b) https://www.wsipp.wa.gov/BenefitCost/Program/748
(c) HomVEE, 2022

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(d) www.nursefamilypartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/NFP-Benefits-and-Costs.pdf
(e) www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/1020/Wsipp_Evidence-Based-Programs-to-Prevent-Children-
from-Entering-and-Remaining-in-the-Child-Welfare-System-Benefits-and-Costs-for-
Washington_Report.pdf
(f)
https://www.utep.edu/education/cerps/_Files/docs/papers/CERPS_Working_Paper_2016_3.pdf
Promising evidence of longer-term impacts on problem behaviors was reported for both
the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) and Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up–Infant (ABC).
The NFP provides one-on-one home visits by nurses who focus on improving maternal and
infant health and promoting family economic self-sufficiency during pregnancy and the child’s
first two years. Follow-up studies of the NFP study participants in the early implementations of
the programs showed reduced behavior problems at 15 years, reduced substance use at 12 years,
and increased vocabulary and academic skills at 1 to 2 years post-intervention (Kitzman et al.,
2010; Olds et al., 2002).
But these findings were not replicated in other NFP evaluation studies. As seen in Table
C-4-1, a review of child impacts from a broader implementation of NFP found significant results
less than 10% of the time—which could easily have occurred by chance. ABC–Infant provides
trained parent coaches to mothers of infants, many of whom are either foster parents or parents
deemed to be abusive. ABC focuses on promoting mutually responsive interactions by having
parents and coaches watch videos of interactions together (OPRE, 2021). Follow-up studies of
early implementations of ABC–Infant reported higher rates of attachment security at 9 years,
higher levels of emotional regulation at 8 years, and higher vocabulary skills at 3 and 5 years
(Raby et al., 2018; Zajac et al., 2019). Again, these promising findings were not replicated in
other studies. Across all ABC-Infant studies, Table C-4-1 shows significant child impacts less
than half of the time (OPRE, 2021).
An independent meta-analysis of home visiting programs, which was limited to RCTs
and rigorous quasi-experimental studies, also showed mixed results (Fryer, 2016). Fryer (2016)
concluded that home visiting, as currently implemented, was not generating statistically
significant impacts on children’s development, perhaps partly because of problems conducting
the regular visits with parents. Consistent with the HomVee review, he pointed out that widely
touted programs like the NFP show promise in reducing child abuse and improving child
outcomes, but even these programs show inconsistent findings of long-term impacts across
follow-up studies (Fryer, 2016).
Some international at-scale programs have shown substantial impacts. For example, the
Preparing for Life Program (Doyle, 2020) in Ireland incorporates home visiting, group parenting
classes, and baby massage into an intensive 5-year intervention for economically disadvantaged
Irish families. An RCT indicated the program raised children’s cognitive scores by two-thirds of
a standard deviation and socioemotional/behavioral scores by one-quarter of a standard
deviation. Earlier analyses indicated Preparing for Life improved parent-child interactions,
cognitive stimulation, time use, nutrition, and discipline strategies, and these changes may
mediate the cognitive gains but not the socio-emotional goals (Doyle, 2020).
In summary, home visiting is widely implemented in the United States. Careful
evaluations of the funded programs in the country have yielded some promising findings but
provide little cause for confidence that additional investments in scaled-up programs would

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consistently improve parenting and child outcomes. Some findings from a few programs in the
U.S. and from programs in other countries provide evidence that home visiting programs can be
successful, but further development is needed to develop at-scale home-visiting programs in the
United States with sustained positive impacts.
Early Care and Education (ECE)

Early care and education programs are widely viewed as one of the most successful
policy levers for promoting the educational success and social mobility of young children living
in low-income homes (Heckman, 2011). Based in part on long-run evidence of early care and
education programs impacts on adult outcomes, both state and federal governments have
invested heavily in these programs to improve opportunities for children raised in poverty. The
federal government spends about $9.66 billion annually to serve nearly 1,000,000 infants,
toddlers, and preschoolers and their low-income families (Barnett & Friedman-Krauss, 2016),
and in 2019 state and local pre-kindergarten programs spent $8.75 billion to serve about
1,900,000 preschoolers, most of whom are from low-income families (Friedman-Krauss &
Barnett, 2020).
Perry and Abecedarian

The ability of intensive model programs to improve the life chances of disadvantaged
children is illustrated by the well-known Perry Preschool and Abecedarian interventions. Perry
was implemented in the 1960s in Ypsilanti, Michigan, while Abecedarian ran during the 1970s in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Perry provided center care and home visiting to 65 3- and 4-year-
olds from low-income Black families. The first Perry cohort received 1 year of program services
and the remaining four cohorts received 2 years. Costs across the five cohorts averaged $23,000
per child (Heckman et al., 2010). Heckman & colleagues (2010) estimate that the dollar value of
benefits generated by the program amounted to between six and nine times the cost of the
program, with benefits driven in roughly equal measure by increases in earnings and reductions
in crime. When considering that high benefit/cost ratio, however, it is important to recognize that
the home environments of the comparison group of children were of much lower quality relative
to the home environments of today’s children. Only 21% of Perry mothers and 11% of Perry
fathers had graduated from high school, and family sizes averaged 6.7–much larger than today
(Schweinhart, 1993).1
Abecedarian provided considerably more services than Perry and over a much longer
period. These included center care and pediatric care for about 100 low-income, predominantly
Black children from 3 months of age to kindergarten entry. The per-child cost of this five-year
1
In the 1960s and 1970s, children from low-income families, especially Black children, faced conditions best
described as deplorable. In the mid-1960s, the Food Stamp program and tax credit programs such as the Earned
Income Tax Credit had not yet been introduced. Racial discrimination in parts of the country denied Blacks access to
quality schools and hospital care, including childbirth in hospitals with a physician present. Parental schooling levels
were much lower than they are today, and family sizes were much larger (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). Today
families, including low-income families, are about twice as likely to use child care, especially center-based child
care (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). These factors produced conditions that made it much easier for a Head Start or
model program like Perry to demonstrate effectiveness for enrolled children when compared with children
experiencing business-as-usual conditions. This explanation probably accounts, at least in part, for the fact that end-
of-treatment impacts are substantially smaller in more recent evaluations (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013).

266

program has been estimated at $105,000 (García et al., 2021. Even given the program's expense,
its long-run benefits have been estimated to total more than six times its costs: More than two-
thirds of the benefits were driven by crime reductions and the remainder reflect differences in
adult health and the labor income of participants and their parents (the five years of full-time
child care enabled parents to establish and maintain more continuous and higher-paying careers;
García et al., 2020). As in the case of Perry, the low-quality nature of the home environments of
children in the Abecedarian evaluation is reflected in the low average levels of mothers'
completed schooling (10.2 years), IQ (85.5), and age at their child’s enrollment (19.9 years)
(Ramey et al., 2000).
Both Perry and Abecedarian focused on encouraging adult-child interactions, hands-on
learning activities, and frequent conversations between children and teachers (Schweinhart &
Weikart, 1980; Ramey et al., 2012). The teachers, their supervisors, and researchers collaborated
in developing the interventions and classroom activities that were later incorporated into many
early childhood curricula. However, the evaluations were not designed to enable researchers to
disentangle the separate contributions of these components to improving children’s development,
and these programs differ in many ways from today’s early care and education programs (as
discussed in more detail below).
Results from these two early RCT interventions provide convincing evidence that early
care and education programs can improve educational attainment, income, and health in
adulthood (Heckman, 2011). The key policy and program issue for the committee is whether
much larger-scale and less expensive versions of early care and education programs programs—
run or supervised by governments rather than researchers, provided to children from families
with higher incomes and schooling levels, and living in communities with a much richer set of
center-based child care options in programs that do provide the same types of educational
experiences as Perry and Abecedarian—can generate impacts comparable to those of Perry and
Abecedarian.
Head Start
Head Start began in 1965 as part of the War on Poverty and provided part-time center-
based ECE to low-income children (Office of Headstart, 2023). It was offered to thousands of
children in its early years, with a focus on promoting health and social skills. Strong quasi-
experimental studies have demonstrated long-term benefits for children who attended Head Start
during the period from 1965 to 1980 in terms of higher rates of college enrollment (Bailey et al.,
2021; see also Johnson, 2011; Ludwig & Miller, 2007). Evidence from cohorts that entered Head
Start in the 1980s and 1990s tends to show higher levels of education and reductions in special
education and grade retention, even if impacts on academic and social skills fade out during
elementary school (Deming, 2009; Garces et al., 2002).
Head Start has changed over time: It now provides longer hours of care, employs more
teachers who have completed a bachelor’s degree, and includes a focus on promoting early
academic skills (Office of Headstart, 2023). Evidence is mixed regarding the effectiveness of its
more recent incarnations, which have been offered to low-income children in an environment
with many more alternative center-based programs. The Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), a large
RCT begun in 2001, was based on a random sampling of Head Start centers that reported waiting
lists. HSIS showed consistent end-of-program impacts on language and literacy that faded out by

267

third grade, no consistent impacts on math, and some mixed evidence on reducing problem
behaviors (Table C-4-2, based on Puma et al., 2012).
A careful reanalysis of these data revealed larger gains for children who would not
otherwise have used center care than for those who would otherwise have enrolled in other ECE
centers, as well as for children who did not speak English at home (Feller et al., 2016; Kline &
Walters, 2016). Finally, more recent analyses of adult outcomes suggest that the young-adult
impacts reported for the earlier cohorts faded in later adulthood. Moreover, later Head Start
cohorts did not show the same young-adult impacts as did the earlier cohorts, and there were
even some negative impacts (Pages et al., 2023).
TABLE C-4-2 Ratio of statistically significant (p < 0.10) treatment impacts averaged over the 2
cohorts on outcomes examined in the Puma et al., 2012 Head Start Impact Study
End of Head Start year End of 3rd grade
Literacy 11 of 16 1 of 6
Math 1 of 4 0 of 4
Problem behaviors 2 of 18 6 of 30
SOURCE: Data from Puma et al., 2012.
Public pre-kindergarten programs

Public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs are public ECE programs that are typically
funded by states or localities and often require local matching funds. Almost all states (44 out of
50, plus DC and Guam) provide pre-K programs. Overall, 34% of 4-year-olds and 6% of 3-year-
olds were enrolled in state-funded preschools in the 2019–20 school year (Friedman-Krauss et
al., 2021). As of 2020, 35 of the 55 state and local programs were targeted to serve children from
low-income families, albeit with qualifying incomes that were often twice the qualifying
incomes for Head Start (35 state programs have income eligibility requirements; Friedman-
Krauss & Barnett, 2020).
Promoting children’s school readiness skills, especially early literacy skills, is the
primary goal of public pre-K programs (Phillips et al., 2017). Most offer few, if any, support
services, such as transportation or health screenings and referrals (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021).
As state or local programs, their performance standards vary widely. Most pre-K programs have
standards regarding curricula, teacher education, class sizes, and adult-child ratios. However,
only about one-third of the pre-K programs have performance standards that meet or exceed
those of Head Start, according to the National Institute for Early Educational Research (NIEER)
(Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021). Not surprisingly, given substantial differences in the number of
hours per week these programs provide care and in their performance standards, per-child costs
to the state range widely, from under $4,000 for programs that meet fewer than half of the
quality criteria recommended by NIEER to over $18,000 for programs that meet all those criteria
(Friedman-Krauss & Barnett, 2020).
Evaluations of state pre-K programs suggest that children completing the programs show
better school-readiness outcomes than similarly-aged children who had not (or not yet) enrolled

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in a pre-K program. A summary of the findings (Phillips et al., 2017 ) indicates that pre-K
attenders entered kindergarten with much higher math and literacy skills (effects of 0.50 standard
deviations or larger). Many evaluations also reported small to moderate impacts on language and
executive functioning (effects of between 0.10 and 0.50 standard deviations; Phillips et al.,
2017).
However, evaluations of longer-term impacts reveal that the advantages enjoyed by pre-K
attenders often fade out or disappear completely as nonattenders catch up. Yet some evaluations
show longer-run gains despite shorter-run fade-out. The most rigorous study of longer-term
impacts examined Boston’s universal pre-K program (Gray-Lobe et al., 2021). It showed that
pre-K attenders were more likely to enroll in and graduate from college than those who applied
for but lost the attendance lottery. In the context of this report, it is important to note that impacts
were generally smaller for participants whose families were in the lowest income categories.
It is striking to note that medium-term impacts shown in the most rigorous evaluations of
recent pre-K studies include worrisome negative effects in elementary school. A random-
assignment evaluation of the Tennessee Pre-K program reported significant negative longer-term
pre-K impacts on both academic and social-emotional outcomes in third through sixth grade
(Durkin et al., 2022; Lipsey et al., 2018). In sixth grade, the English and math scores of pre-K
children were .28 and .40 standard deviations lower than the scores of children who applied for
admission but lost the lottery. Attenders drew significantly more disciplinary actions than non-
attenders. An RCT evaluation of the North Carolina Pre-K program (Peisner-Feinberg et al.,
2020) reported that at the end of kindergarten, pre-K children had lower scores (effect sizes of
0.24 to 0.28 standard deviations in math, executive functioning, and social skills) than non-pre-K
children. However, these differences were not statistically significant after adjusting for the large
number of comparisons in the study (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2020).
Less rigorous studies provide inconsistent evidence regarding differences between pre-K
attenders and nonattenders.2 The most promising results are from a follow-up study of children
who were eligible in 2005–2006 for the Tulsa Universal Pre-K. Gormley et al. (2023) reports
that pre-K attendees were more likely than nonattending children with similar demographic
characteristics subsequently to enroll in college (increase of 12 percentage points). In other
studies that attempted to match attenders and nonattenders using propensity score methods on
school-age demographic characteristics, pre-K attenders in Boston, North Carolina, New Jersey,
Maryland (Minervino, 2014) and Georgia (Early et al., 2019) showed slightly higher reading and
math scores on state-mandated reading and math tests in third and fifth grade.
ECE programs in other countries provide some evidence of positive impacts on adult
outcomes of their at-scale ECE programs. One of the ECE programs showing long-term impacts
is the Norwegian program, which requires a college-educated teacher, good adult-child ratios
(typically 16 children and 3 adults), and a play-oriented experiential orientation to instruction
(Havnes & Mogstad, 2011). Uneven expansion of the Norwegian program during the 1970s
allowed for a difference-in-difference analysis that demonstrated that attending preschool
between the ages of 3 and 6 led to a substantial increase in completed schooling, labor market
attachment, and earnings (Havnes & Mogstad, 2011).
2
These studies use propensity score matching without having access to pre-treatment assessment of skills. The
committee judged that this method was not as rigorous as random assignment or regression discontinuity methods.

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Possible Explanations for Discrepant Findings on Long-Term ECE Impacts
Whereas the two large publicly funded ECE programs, Head Start and public pre-K, have
shown positive impacts on school readiness, the evidence for medium and longer-term impacts is
mixed. The earliest ECE programs, like Perry and Abecedarian, were clearly effective at
improving earnings, educational attainment, and health, as well as at decreasing crime and
incarceration—all of which are factors that tend to lower the rate of intergenerational poverty
(Campbell et al., 2012; Heckman et al., 2010). Earlier Head Start and pre-K programs also
showed promising long-term impacts on educational attainment and crime (Bailey et al., 2021;
Deming, 2009; Gary-Lobe, 2021). In contrast, the most rigorous evaluations of today's Head
Start and pre-K programs suggest that they have null to negative medium-term impacts. It is
possible that longer-run follow-up will show the kinds of positive impacts seen in Perry and
Abecedarian. However, until the evaluation evidence shows more consistently positive impacts
for these programs, the committee cannot, based on the evidence, confidently recommend
expansions as an approach that is likely to reduce intergenerational poverty.
Transforming Model Programs Into At-Scale Public Programs
Programs like Perry and Abecedarian were small, conducted by developmental

researchers and led by trained ECE teachers. Classrooms were carefully monitored to ensure that
the program was being implemented successfully and teachers were actively engaged in
developing the curriculum. It is naïve to believe that findings from those programs will
generalize to large public programs that serve millions of children each year (Tseng, 2017). Even
replications like the Infant Health and Development Program, which used the Abecedarian
curriculum and included almost 1,000 low-birthweight children, predominantly from low-income
families, were led by researchers who continued to monitor the implementation carefully (Ramey
et al., 2012). Today’s programs rely on performance standards that are less focused, yet more
comprehensive. They include substantially less monitoring and supportive collaborative
coaching than the early RCT studies (Friedman-Strauss & Barnett, 2020). Again, these factors
are probably one reason why today’s programs have smaller impacts on the outcomes collected
in early RCT studies, although they are unlikely to explain fade-out.
Targeting Recipients of ECE Services
Evidence shows that Head Start impacts were larger and more likely to be sustained when
the children who attended Head Start would otherwise have stayed home with their parents or
been cared for in a home-based ECE setting (Feller et al., 2016; Kline & Walters, 2016), and this
suggests that increasing funding for Head Start might have longer-term impacts and reduce
intergenerational poverty if the program could specifically target those children. However, a
Head Start expansion could not be designed to exclude children who would otherwise be in other
center-based care.
Growing evidence indicates that children who do not speak English at home may gain
more and maintain those gains longer when they attend ECE programs (Phillips et al., 2017). In
the RCT HSIS, children whose home language was not English showed larger gains in
vocabulary skills if they attended Head Start, and those gains remained statistically significant
through first grade (Feller et al., 2016). The RCT evaluation of North Carolina pre-K reports

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statistically significant impacts on kindergarten language skills for children who did not speak
English at home, even when those impacts faded in the sample as a whole (Peisner-Feinberg et
al., 2020). These impacts were small in both studies (< 0.20 sd), however, raising questions
about whether they were sufficiently large to reduce intergenerational poverty even if maintained
past first grade.
To What Extent Subsequent Experiences Support Initial Gains
The extent to which communities and schools support and build on the skills children
have acquired in ECE programs is clearly important for maintaining the programs’ impacts and
may play a role in fade-out. Children from low-income families who attend public ECE
programs, especially if they are members of racially minoritized groups, tend to transition to
lower-quality schools, encounter lower teacher expectations, and experience harsh punitive
discipline in schools and by the local police (for details, see the sections on K–12 schools and
juvenile justice). A lack of “sustaining environments” after low-income children leave their ECE
programs makes it difficult for children to maintain the gains they have made in those programs.
The lack of sustaining environments to maintain ECE short-term impacts has been widely
cited as an explanation for the fade-out of those impacts over time (Abenavoli, 2019). Despite
some studies reporting that pre-K attenders continued to show higher levels of skills than
nonattenders when they transition from pre-K programs into more effective schools or have more
effective teachers (Abenavoli, 2019), this conclusion was not supported in a comprehensive
meta-analysis of all studies testing the sustaining environment hypothesis published through
2018 (Bailey et al., 2020b). Others argue that redundancy in instruction between pre-K and K,
especially in literacy and math, accounts for the marked convergence in those skills, but pre-K
fade-out did not diminish when pre-K and K instruction included less redundancy, despite wide-
scale evidence of considerable overlap in early reading and math instruction (Burchinal et al.,
2022). Thus, findings do not suggest that current “sustaining” elementary schools support
learning more effectively for pre-K attenders than nonattenders. Nevertheless, it is logical to
assume that there would be less fade-out of pre-K impacts if kindergarten teachers were
encouraged to differentiate instruction based on entry skills (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2021).
Changes in Instructional Focus Over Time
Another explanation focuses on changes over time in the instructional content and
approach of ECE programs. Abecedarian and Perry focused on strong caregiver-child
relationships, with frequent multi-turn conversations, and on hands-on learning activities in
which teachers scaffolded learning (Weikart and Schweinhart, 1997; Ramey et al., 2012). Head
Start initially focused heavily on promoting health and social skills. Around 2000, ECE
programs began to emphasize teaching early literacy and math skills to address kindergarten-
entry gaps between low- and middle-income children (Office of Headstart, 2023).
Some have argued that preschool instruction in language, executive functioning, and
social skills is more likely to be maintained over time than instruction in basic reading and math
skills (McCormick et al., 2021). Early programs like Abecedarian did not teach the basic skills
and children entered kindergarten with large treatment impacts on cognitive skills, no treatment
impact on reading skills, and small impacts on math skills (Burchinal et al., 2022). Large
differences in both reading and math skills emerged in second grade and were maintained

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through 21 years of age (Campbell et al., 2012). Similar adult impacts for the Abecedarian
Project were reported for the Norwegian ECE program, which had a similar instructional focus
on experiential learning and frequent teacher-child interactions (Havnes & Mogstad, 2011). In
contrast, more recent evaluations of Head Start (Puma et al., 2012) and pre-K (Phillips et al.,
2017) consistently show impacts at the end of the program on literacy and math skills that appear
to fade out by second grade.
This focus on teaching these basic skills in preschool and the way they are too often
taught is likely difficult for children. Teaching early academic skills often involves instruction to
the entire class, with preschoolers being expected to sit still for relatively long periods (Bratsch-
Hines et al., 2019). Focus on teaching these rote basic skills results in large gains in the pre-K
year (Phillips et al., 2017), but these same skills are often taught again in kindergarten, once
more typically in large groups (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2021). Sitting still in large group instruction
is difficult for all children, especially very young children, and some teachers may become
impatient and harsh, which may in turn exacerbate children’s problem behaviors (Christopher &
Farran, 2020). The combination of redundant instruction and harsh interactions with teachers
may cause children to disengage from learning, perhaps setting them on less positive academic
trajectories during the early school years. Again, extensive time in whole-group instruction was
not part of the Perry, Abecedarian, and Norwegian ECE programs. Those programs focused on
hands-on learning, typically through individual or small group activities in centers.
Given all this mixed evidence, and especially given that positive long-term impacts have
been largely limited to earlier programs that did not focus heavily on teaching basic reading and
math skills (e.g., Campbell et al., 2012; Deming, 2009; Heckman et al., 2010; Gormley et al.,
2023), or limited to programs that have made center-based ECE available to children who would
otherwise have been cared for by parents or in a home-based setting (Feller et al., 2016), the
committee was unable to recommend the expansion of Head Start or pre-K enrollment. However,
we hope that these ECE programs will help us identify engaging teaching practices for
promoting the skills that appear to be fundamental to subsequent learning, such as language and
general knowledge, executive functioning, and social skills (Burchinal et al., 2020; Fuhs et al.,
2014; Pace et al., 2019; Welsh et al., 2010), and enable us to coordinate learning experiences that
allow children to use the skills they acquired in ECE when they transition to public school.
Quality Improvement Initiatives
Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are a policy initiative that rates the
quality of ECE settings, using state-determined performance standards, and incentivizes
improvement by making the ratings visible to parents and providing financial incentives for
higher-quality programs (BUILD Initiative, 2021). These state-level policies promote smaller
class sizes, better-credentialed teachers, the high-quality implementation of proven curricula, and
professional development programs for teachers. While there is considerable evidence that
higher-rated programs do in fact provide higher-quality ECE, it has not been consistently shown
that QRIS ratings are related to child outcomes, even by correlational studies based on national
data (Sabol et al., 2013) or in state evaluations (Boller et al., 2015; Hong et al., 2015; Sabol &
Pianta, 2015). Perhaps even more worrisome is correlational evidence that children do not
benefit from attending programs with higher levels of “quality” in terms of most of the QRIS
components (Hong et al., 2019).

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Child Care Subsidies
Another approach to supporting out-of-home care for young children is through child
care subsidies to low-income parents who work or attend school. Studies have shown that such
subsidies funded by the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) increase the
likelihood that recipient parents will enter the workforce or enroll in school or training programs
(Tekin, 2005; Herbst and Tekin, 2010; Herbst, 2017).
But would subsidies reduce intergenerational poverty? The most direct evidence on child
impacts comes from a study linking eligibility for subsidies to indicators of child development
(Herbst and Tekin, 2010; see also Johnson & Ryan, 2015). It found a negative effect of subsidy
receipt on reading and math test scores and an unfavorable effect on behavior problems, and
some of these perverse effects were found to persist until the end of kindergarten. This may be
because the original funding provided relatively low subsidies that led to enrollment in low-
quality child care settings. Reauthorization addressed this issue, but too recently to allow us to
examine impacts. Two Canadian studies reported positive links between subsidies and child
outcomes among very-low-income children in Canada overall (Polyzoi et al., 2020) but negative
impacts in Quebec among a largely middle-income population (Baker et al., 2019).
Increasing the nation’s investment in child care subsidies may benefit low-income
families by increasing their resources, promoting parental education and training, and supporting
parental work. As in the case of Head Start and pre-K expansions, however, we cannot conclude
that the evidence supports subsidy expansions as a reliable way of reducing intergenerational
poverty.
K-12 EDUCATION
Increase K–12 School Spending in the Poorest Districts
Plausible expansions of federal funding could make a difference at the margin to both
between-state and within-state gaps, but only if they are not offset by reductions in state and
local funding. Hoxby (2001) argues that many redesigned state funding formulas are poorly
conceived, creating incentives for local districts to cut taxes when state funding is available and
potentially reducing overall spending in targeted districts. Similarly, Gordon (2004) finds that
changes in federal Title I spending are fully offset by reductions in local funding over the next
few years. On the other hand, the examination by Lafortune et al., (2018) of more recent state
finance reforms indicates 100% “stickiness” of the additional state funding, with no offset via
reduced local funding even many years in the future. Thus, the literature does not fully resolve
the question of “stickiness” of intergovernmental grants, though it seems likely that some
maintenance of effort rules would be required for any federal program to be effective.
While the recent literature is clear that additional funding yields benefits for children that
persist into adulthood, it does not provide clear estimates of optimal funding levels. Baker et al.,
(2021) estimate that the shortfall of education spending from a standard for “adequacy” totals
$104 billion per year—substantially more than total current federal spending on K–12 education
of around $60 billion. It seems implausible that the federal role could expand that much.
We explore one potential federal policy change short of closing the entire adequacy gap.
We base it on Lafortune et al., (2018)’s analysis of post-1990 state finance reforms. They

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estimate that a typical reform raised spending in the lowest-income fifth of districts in the state
by $1,377 per pupil (in 2013 dollars), or about 12% of the average of $11,595. Total public-
school enrollment is about 50 million, so approximately 10 million students attend schools in the
bottom fifth of districts. Thus, increasing spending in these districts by $1,000 per pupil would
increase total spending by $10 billion per year.
As noted above, not all federal funding would “stick.” If we assume that changes in state
and local effort reduce the effectiveness or intended concentration of federal spending by one-
third, federal expenditures would need to rise by $15 billion to achieve the above increase in
expenditures in low-income districts.
What would be the impact of this? Jackson et al. (2016)’s results indicate that a 12%
increase in spending would reduce the adult poverty rates of low-income children growing up in
these districts by 0.12*0.61=7 percentage points and increase their adult family incomes by 21%.
Using more recent reforms, Rothstein and Schanzenbach (2022) find that exposure to a typical
reform for 12 years raises average earnings of students in a state by 4% but note that this
combines effects on low- and non-low-income students and on high- and low-income districts.
How many children would be affected? Approximately 17% of public-school students
(8.5 million) are in poverty (Digest of Education Statistics, Table 102.70). Lafortune et al.,
(2018) finds that about one-third of free and reduced-price lunch students (a proxy for student
poverty) attend school in the lowest-income fifth of districts. Thus, the above reform would
reach approximately 2.8 million children from families below the poverty line. (Though note that
above we assumed that states would divert one-third of spending to other districts than the lowest
income. These districts have children in poverty as well, so the number of children in poverty
who would be affected would be larger.) If this reform reduced their adult poverty rate by 7
percentage points, that would reduce intergenerational poverty by 16,000 students out of each
birth cohort.
Promising Approaches Within K–12
As discussed in the report, there is limited evidence about long-term effects of specific
programs or practices within the K–12 system, but there are a number of promising approaches
that have been shown to have strong shorter-term impacts. If these early impacts are found to
persist, these approaches would be candidates for recommended interventions; in the meantime,
we see them as promising and worth consideration, but not meeting our evidentiary standards for
committee recommendations. We discuss several here, acknowledging that this list is not
exhaustive.
High-dosage tutoring for struggling students

Evaluations have demonstrated that programs providing frequent tutoring sessions,
individually or in small groups, to students with skills below grade level improves academic
skills (Fryer, 2016). Although improved academic skills do not translate directly into lower
poverty in adulthood, the evidence on shorter-run improvements from carefully crafted tutoring
programs is promising enough to include in our list of profitable ways districts might promote
school success among disadvantaged students.
The tutoring programs that appear to be successful involve sessions provided by trained
volunteers or educators to struggling students, individually or in groups of six or fewer, for at

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least 50 hours over the school year (Fryer, 2016). They range from programs like Reading
Recovery for early elementary students (D'Agostino et al., 2017) to tutoring sessions for high
school students (Guryan et al., 2023). Rigorous evaluations summarized in a meta-analysis
indicate that these programs have moderate short-term impacts and, in the studies with longer-
term follow-ups, those impacts were maintained for at least a year and translated into higher rates
of high school graduation. Tutoring programs that did not meet these two criteria showed neither
short- nor long-term impacts (Fryer, 2016).
Based on this evidence, Kraft and Falken (2021) propose creating a national tutoring
network that could be adopted by school districts and encouraged by federal funding. In the
proposal, tutors could include high school students who tutor in elementary schools as an
elective class, college students who tutor in middle schools via the federal work-study program,
and full-time 2- and 4-year college graduates who tutor in high schools via AmeriCorps. Their
estimates suggests that targeted approaches to scaling schoolwide tutoring nationally, such as
focusing on K–8 Title I schools, would cost between $5 and $15 billion annually. They do not
provide estimates of the impacts on either the tutors or the students being tutored.
Several large evaluations estimated both long-term impacts and program costs. A meta-
analysis examined Reading Recovery, a widely implemented early-grade intervention in which
struggling elementary school students receive 20 weeks of individually designed diagnostic
teaching by trained professionals (D’Agostino et al., 2017). Synthesizing results from RCTs or
high quality quasi-experimental studies yielded an effect on reading achievement of 0.59
standard deviations at a cost of $2,500 to $9,000 per student. Guryan et al. (2023) report on a
multi-study evaluation of the Saga Education tutoring program, which provides similar high-
dosage tutoring to 9th and 10th graders at a relatively low cost ($3,500 to $4,300 per participant
per year) that yielded higher math test scores and increased grades in math and non-math
courses, with estimated impacts of 0.37 standard deviation that persisted several years later.
In sum, high-dosage tutoring for struggling K–12 students that focuses on matching
instruction to skills level appears effective at improving skills in the short-term and improving
important young adult outcomes such as high school graduation. These programs may be cost-
effective when educated young adults serve as the tutors and follow carefully crafted
instructional plans.
Improving teacher quality

It has long been known that schools serving low-income students have a more difficult
time attracting and retaining high-quality teachers and that students of color do better in school
when matched with teachers of color (Gershenson et al., forthcoming; Gershenson et al., 2016;
Lindsay & Hart, 2017). So the problem is both one of allocating teachers across schools and
school districts as well as increasing the supply of high-quality teachers, and in particular high-
quality teachers of color.
One promising model for increasing teacher quality is university programs that encourage
and facilitate STEM undergraduate majors to be certified as public-school teachers. The UTeach
program at the University of Texas-Austin is an exemplar; as of 2018 programs similar to it are
also available at 44 universities in 21 states. As explained in Backes et al. (2018), UTeach
recruits math and science majors to pursue careers in teaching and offers free field-based courses
that enable interested students to try out teaching before committing their early careers to it. It

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was funded by grants from, among other places, the nonprofit National Math and Science
Initiative, but could presumably be supported in some way with federal money.
The Backes et al. (2018) non-experimental evaluation found that Texas students taught
by UTeach graduates perform significantly better on end-of-grade tests in math in middle school
and end-of-course tests in math and science in high school by 8% to 15% of a standard deviation
on the test, depending on grade and subject. As to teacher diversity, UTeach increased the
fraction of Hispanic (but not Black) science and math teachers in the schools they studied.
Other approaches to diversifying the teacher labor forces include urban teacher residency
models, such as Alder Graduate School of Education and the Boston Teacher Residency
programs. An evaluation of the latter found that program graduates were more diverse than
Boston Public School teachers, were more likely to remain teachers and, after several years,
outperformed veteran teachers in the district (Papay et al., 2012). Teacher training and
certification programs drawing students from community colleges and minority-serving
institutions—such as the Department of Education’s Center of Educational Excellence for Black
Teachers Program at Historically Black Colleges and Universities—are also likely to draw and
train minority group teachers than traditional programs, but the evaluation literature on this is
thin.
Reducing punitive school discipline

Experimental and correlational evidence reviewed in the main text shows that exposure to
harsh discipline in schools leads to worse adult educational and criminal legal outcomes. Given
the disproportionate experience of school discipline by low-income and Black, Latino, and
Native American children—which is not accounted for by behavioral differences (Skiba et al.,
2011)—this experience likely also contributes to these children’s lower rates of intergenerational
mobility. Teacher-student race matching has been shown in both correlational and experimental
studies to reduce punitive discipline for students of color (Lindsay & Hart, 2017; Shirrell et al.,
2021). Another promising approach—and one of the few that includes outcomes for Native
American students—is restorative justice practices (Anyon et al., 2016; Gregory et al., 2016).
A meta-analysis of RCT interventions to reduce harsh discipline found that students’
academic skills, counseling, mentoring programs, and teacher training all showed promising
results for reducing in-school or out-of-school suspensions (Valdebenito et al., 2019). For
example, Okonofua and colleagues (2016) tested a brief randomly assigned on-line intervention
with math teachers in five middle schools in three school districts that “encouraged teachers to
understand and value students’ experiences and negative feelings that can cause misbehavior and
to sustain positive relationships when students misbehave.” This “empathetic mindset” reduced
suspension of students of the treated teachers by half during the academic year as compared with
the control group. The effect was consistent across racial, gender, and prior-year suspension
groups. While this study had a 1-year observation period, Valdebenito et al. (2019) find that the
effects of most interventions faded after six months, suggesting the importance of ongoing and
repeated training and awareness.
A practice known as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) has been
shown in randomized controlled trials to reduce exclusionary discipline (Bradshaw et al., 2010).
PBIS is a schoolwide practice in which “schools establish a set of positively stated, schoolwide
expectations for student behavior, which are taught to all students and staff” (Bradshaw et al.,
2012, e1137; also see www.pbis.org). Descriptive studies in Canada and Oregon showed that

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PBIS schools showed no Native American-White disparities in punitive discipline (Greflund et

al., 2014; Vincent et al., 2015) and an RCT of PBIS with a racial equity focus showed greater
reductions in punitive discipline for Black students (McIntosh et al., 2021). PBIS with added
school mental health supports shows additional effectiveness. Weist and colleagues (2022) report
RCT results that this “Interconnected Systems Framework” compared with either PBIS or just
mental health services showed “reduced office discipline referrals (ODRs) and in-school
suspensions, as well as reduced ODRs and out-of-school suspensions for African American
students.”
There are no studies of the direct effects of discipline practices and interventions on
children’s later adult outcomes. However, the evidence reviewed here and in the main section
establishes a clear indirect relationship between school discipline and intergenerational mobility.
There is causal evidence on policies and practices that effectively reduce punitive discipline and
causal evidence that children who experience more punitive school discipline are less likely to
graduate from high school and attend college and more likely to have criminal legal contact.
Smaller class sizes in the early grades

The well-known STAR evaluation used randomization to study the effect of small classes
in K–3 on test scores of low-income students in Tennessee. Assignment to a smaller class had
positive effects on test scores through these grades (Krueger 1999, 2003). Although there has
been some criticism of the experiment on the grounds that it did not incorporate modern
practices like careful collection of baseline data, subsequent reanalysis has shown both that the
treatment arms were balanced (supporting the interpretation of the treatment effects as causal)
and that the early-grade effects persisted to later grades and even to college enrollment (Chetty et
al., 2011; Krueger & Whitmore 2001). There is also suggestive evidence of effects on adult
earnings, though the sample was not large enough to measure these precisely (Chetty et al.,
2011). In the case of class size reduction, there is little evidence about whether this is more or
less effective than alternative ways of spending the same resources.
When California attempted to quickly reduce class sizes in the 1990s, districts had to hire
many new, inexperienced teachers to fill the new classrooms, which may have offset the benefits
of the small classes (Jepsen & Rivkin, 2009). This appears to be an implementation issue; in the
longer run, there is no evidence that a gradual increase in teacher hiring requires bringing in
lower-quality teachers.
Expand high-quality (“no excuses”) charter schools

Several recent evaluations of a group of charter schools in Boston have used admissions
lotteries to identify the causal effect of enrollment in these schools. The schools have in common
a “no excuses” model, characterized by high expectations, rigid curricula, and strict discipline,
and serve a high-poverty population. The lottery studies find very large positive effects on
student test scores (Abdulkadiroğlu et al., 2011). Studies of other schools using similar models
elsewhere also indicate large effects (e.g., Dobbie and Fryer, 2011). This stands in stark contrast
to estimates of the effect of the average charter school, which is generally near zero (CREDO
2013). Longer-term follow-ups indicate positive effects of the Boston no-excuses schools on
students’ eventual four-year college enrollment and persistence, an outcome that these schools

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specifically target (Angrist et al., 2016). There is not yet evidence of effects on college
completion or adult poverty.
This evidence is strongly suggestive that it would be beneficial to expand the no-excuses
charter school sector, though the absence of longer-term evidence prevents us from adopting this
as a recommendation. Moreover, the rigorous studies to date examine high-poverty urban
populations in a few large cities with struggling public school systems, and it remains unclear
how specific the no-excuses effects are to these settings (Angrist et al., 2013).
Increase racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity within schools

Another driver of disparities in educational quality is school segregation. In particular,
majority non-White schools tend to have less funding, fewer resources, and less skilled teachers
(Bischof & Owens, 2019; Elder et al., 2012). In 1954, the Supreme Court passed its landmark
Brown v. Board of Education, and other subsequent court orders further reinforced it. This
resulted in court-ordered desegregation in school districts around the country, which led to slow
but substantial racial integration throughout the United States (Orfield et al., 2016; Reardon et
al., 2012; Reardon & Owens 2014). In studies using national data that exploited quasi-random
variation in the timing of the initial court orders, the resulting desegregation in the 1960s and
1970s was found to improve educational and occupational attainment among Black adults
(Johnson, 2011). Specifically, each additional year of exposure to court-ordered desegregation
led to a 1.8 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of high school graduation, and the
average effects of a 5-year exposure to court-ordered school desegregation led to about a 15%
increase in wages. This study also found effects on potential mechanisms, including increased
per-pupil spending and reduced class sizes, and it showed improvements in other downstream
outcomes like overall self-reported health (Johnson & Nazaryan, 2019).
In 1991, the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Education v. Dowell that earlier court-
ordered desegregation plans were not intended to be permanent. Roughly 600 of the nearly 1,000
school districts that were under court-ordered desegregation were subsequently released from
oversight. These more recent court decisions resulted in “resegregation” of the released school
districts (Reardon et al., 2012; Reardon & Yun 2002), and highly segregated schools with less
than 10% White enrollment have more than tripled in recent decades to nearly 20% (Orfield et
al., 2016). While no studies to our knowledge have examined the effects of these recent changes
on adult earnings or poverty, a handful of studies have leveraged the longitudinal and geographic
variation in the timing of these local court decisions to demonstrate worsened health among
affected children while they are still in school (Wang et al., 2022) as well as negative effects on
health as they age into adulthood (Kim et al., 2022b; Shen, 2018). Another study examined the
end of race-based busing in North Carolina during this period, exploiting changes in maps for
school boundaries, and found that attending a more segregated school district resulted in
decreased high school exam scores among both White and racial/ethnic minority students,
deceased high school graduation and college attendance among White students, and increased
crime among minority boys (Billings et al., 2013).
Post-Secondary Education
Community college completion provides low-SES students with meaningful economic

returns relative to noncompleting students (Mountjoy, 2022), and 4-year degree completion

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provides low-SES students substantially larger returns (Card, 1999; Zimmerman, 2014). Even for
low-SES students, higher education provides relatively greater returns when students enroll at
higher-value universities (Black et al., 2023; Bleemer 2021, 2022) and in higher-paying fields of
study (Bleemer & Mehta, 2021). Federal higher education policy would thus maximally promote
economic mobility by increasing aggregate college-going, improving educational quality at
institutions and in programs where low-SES students enroll, and shifting low-SES students
toward higher-value institutions and programs.
Effective financial aid for low-income students

The evidence on the effectiveness of the Pell grant program has been quite mixed (Eng &
Matsudaira, 2021), though there is some support for increasing its maximum value while limiting
offsets by states and localities by reducing their financial support (Denning et al., 2019).
Stronger evidence on the effectiveness of scholarship assistance to low-income students include
the HAIL program by the University of Michigan (Dynarski et al., 2021, 2022a) and the Buffett
Scholarship in Nebraska (Angrist et al., 2022).
Direct federal support for colleges and universities that enroll low-SES students
Increasing spending at less-selective colleges and universities has larger positive effects
on completion than reducing tuition (Deming & Walters, 2017), and attending universities with
greater support for student services to promote college engagement improves retention and
degree attainment (Cohodes & Goodman, 2014). Federal funding targeted toward increased
academic support at universities with large low-SES enrollment is therefore important. Increases
in Pell grants often offset state educational funding instead of improving educational and support
services (Turner, 2012; Turner, 2017), though there have been cases where such offsets are
restricted and where increases in Pell grant generosity have led to higher attainment of
credentials (Denning et al., 2019).
University enrollments are responsive to institutional incentives to increase low-SES
enrollments (Hoxby and Turner 2019). The universities that face the excise tax are well funded
and likely very high-value for low-SES students (Chetty et al., forthcoming) but enroll relatively
few low-SES students (Chetty et al., 2020).
College tutoring and other student services substantially increase retention and
completion (Bettinger & Baker, 2014; Canaan et al., 2022a, 2022b; Scrivener et al., 2015).
AmeriCorps tutoring programs have also been very successful in improving low-SES student
outcomes at younger ages (Markovitz et al., 2022). A range of support programs for low-income
students in community college, including the Accelerated Study in Associates Program (ASAP)
(Azurdia et al., 2020; Miller et al., 2021) and Stay the Course (Evans et al., 2020) have also been
successful in raising student persistence and program completion (see also Dawson et al., 2020).
Our cost estimate of $8 to $10 billion a year for institutional supports to improve
completion rates among low-income students is based on the facts that ASAP and Stay the
Course cost about $10,000 and $6,000 respectively per student over 3 years, and a similar
number of students in 4-year institutions with less intensive supports (like Inside Track or Project
STAR—see Dawson et al., 2020).

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Minority serving institutions and intergenerational mobility

The evidence regarding the effects of attending minority serving institutions (MSIs) on
graduation rates, earnings, and occupational status shows likely long-term occupational and
graduation benefits, but mixed effects on earnings (Boland et al., 2021; Elu et al., 2019; Gordon
et al., 2020; Fryer & Greenstone, 2010; Kim and Conrad, 2006; Price et al., 2011; Park et al.,
2018; Strayhorn, 2008). However, MSIs enroll more than three times the proportion of students
from the lowest income quintiles and exhibit twice the mobility rates—defined as moving
students from the lowest to the highest income quintiles by age 30—compared with
predominately White institutions, despite having fewer resources (Espinosa et al., 2018). MSIs
enroll and graduate a disproportionate number of Black, Hispanic, and Native American
students. Chetty et al. (2017) show that 5 of the top 10 colleges and universities that promote
upward intergenerational mobility are Hispanic-serving institutions. Black students who attend
historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) with high proportions of Pell-eligible
students are more likely to graduate than Black students at similar but predominately White
institutions (Education Trust, 2019). And Native Americans who attended tribal colleges and
universities had lower debt loads compared with peers at non-TCUs (Gallup 2019). A National
Academies of Sciences report (2019, 125) suggested seven steps to improve student success at
MSIs, with a particular focus on improving STEM education and increasing STEM majors.
Beyond the upward mobility of their own students, MSIs can serve as important pipelines
into professions that can increase the upward mobility of the next generation of low-income
youth. Rigorous causal studies show that Black students—especially low-income Black boys—
have better educational outcomes when they are taught by Black teachers in elementary school
(Gershenson et al., forthcoming; Gershenson et al., 2016; Lindsay & Hart 2017), just as racial
concordance between patients and doctors has been found to improve health outcomes for adults
and children (Alsan et al., 2019; Greenwood et al., 2020; Saha et al., 1999; Shen et al., 2018;
Traylor et al., 2010; Takeshita et al., 2020; Thornton et al., 2011).
Adjustments to federal financial aid formulas and IPEDS data collection

FAFSA completion is a substantial barrier to low-SES students’ college application and
enrollment (Bettinger et al., 2012). Low-SES students become more likely to apply to and enroll
in college if universities reveal their expected costs of attendance, net of financial aid, prior to
application, at least in circumstances where those costs are low, as is often true for low-SES
students (Dynarski et al., 2021, 2022b).
College major attainment is a first-order determinant of the return to higher education,
with the relative economic return to certain majors (like economics and computer science)
rivaling the baseline return to a college education (Altonji et al., 2016). Many universities restrict
access to lucrative college majors on the basis of prior academic preparation and performance,
and these restrictions disproportionately exclude low-SES students from lucrative fields of study
(Bleemer & Mehta, 2021). Providing information on major restriction policies through Integrated
Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) could better inform students about their access to
lucrative fields of study and incentivize universities to widen access for low-SES students.

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Target federal higher education funding toward high-value-added college programs

Information on which universities and university programs provide high-value education
to low-SES students is improving over time (e.g. Chetty et al., 2020). It is important that federal
support for higher education institutions be increasingly targeted toward high-value programs as
such information becomes available. For example, community college nursing programs tend to
provide outsized economic returns to relatively low-SES students (Grosz 2020, 2021).
Career Education
Career and technical education pathways in high school

There is rigorous evidence that high-quality career and technical education (CTE)
improves higher education and labor market outcomes for disadvantaged students from a number
of studies, all of which are based either on RCTs or lotteries among students who had applied to
high school programs that were oversubscribed. For example:
1. Career academies—Career Academies are programs within comprehensive high schools

that orient CTE and work experience toward specific sectors of the economy—like health
care, IT or finance. Kemple and Willner (2008) shows that, eight years after random
assignment (and five years after the completion of high school), career academies raised
the earnings of males by 18% and of students overall by 11%. They also improved
marriage rates and stable household formation. But they had no lasting impact on
educational attainment, either through dropout rates or higher education. But Hemelt and
Lenard (2019) show that an IT academy in North Carolina increased high school
graduation (by 7-8 percentage points) and postsecondary enrollments 3 to 6 years after
entry in the 9th grade.
2. Technical high schools—Studies by Dougherty (2018), Ecton and Dougherty (2023), and
Brunner et al. (2021) of technical high schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut—the
enrollments of which were oversubscribed—show evidence of lower high school dropout
rates and higher earnings for students who did not enroll in college. Seven years after
enrollment, low-income students from technical high schools in Massachusetts had
annual earnings approximately $3,500 higher than similar students from other high
schools, among those who did not attend college (Ecton & Doughtery, 2023); on-time
graduation rates were also 7–10 percentage points higher (Doughtery, 2018). Among
male technical school attendees in Connecticut, dropout rates were 10 percentage points
lower and earnings were $1,600 higher (Brunner et al., 2021).
3. P-Tech and other pathways—P-Tech is a program which began as a collaboration in New
York between high schools, the City University of New York and IBM. It is a program
covering grades 9–14, where students engage in IT training and work experience along
with their academic work. The model is now spreading to other locations and industries.
According to Rosen et al. (2020), high school students in P-Tech had passed their New
York regents exams and enrolled in postsecondary programs more frequently than
students in other high schools. Bonilla (2020), in a study of a competitive grant to build
pathways to postsecondary education and work in high-demand industries in California
high schools, also found significantly lower rates of dropping out.

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If the impacts on dropping out and high school completion persist, then these programs
generate large positive impacts. The total social and economic cost of high school dropout,
analyzed by Belfield and Levin (2007) and updated to current dollars, suggests social costs of
approximately $1 million in present discounted value over the life cycle for each dropout, in
terms of lost earnings, higher costs to taxpayers, and higher nonpecuniary costs (with the last two
primarily associated with crime and poor health).
Moreover, the costs of these CTE approaches per student are not terribly high. For
instance, the marginal costs for each Career Academy student are roughly $1,100–2,400 per year
(Hemelt & Lenard, 2018), while the overall costs of technical high schools are $6,000; assuming
that the cost of high school without either program is nearly $5,000, the two figures suggest the
costs of the two approaches are quite comparable. So the expected value of a program that raises
high school graduation rates by 10 percentage points would be at least $100,000 per person while
costing vastly less. Also, while some models of CTE have traditionally produced evidence of
lower enrollments in four-year colleges, the studies above mostly show little evidence of this.
One concern about CTE programs has been that they might “track” students away from
four-year colleges and universities. As indicated, they appear to raise enrollments in two-year
colleges, especially when “career pathways” are created that explicitly link students to programs
there. But the studies above show little evidence that high-quality CTE lowers enrollment in
four-year programs or attainment of BA degrees.
Post-secondary sectoral training programs

A number of sector-based training program models have been developed in the past 20
years and have been subjected to rigorous random-assignment evaluations. Among the most
successful, Per Scholas (one of the WorkAdvance3 programs), Project Quest,4 and Year Up5
generated average earnings gains for participants of approximately $5,000–$8,000 that last for at
least 5 to 11 years in RCT evaluations, while direct costs of training and supports (but not
employment under Year Up) are about $6,000 to $12,500:
Here is a summary of these three programs, their participants and impacts:
Annual
earnings
Target Description of program Direct cost per gains
population participant
Year Up Ages 18–24, high 6 months of classroom $23,000 total, of Nearly
school diploma or training, 6 months of which employers $8,000 per
GED internship plus program-based cover all but year by
supports 40% ($9,200) year 5
3
For more information see https://www.mdrc.org/publication/employment-and-earnings-effects-workadvance-
demonstration-after-seven-years
4
For more information see https://economicmobilitycorp.org/eleven-year-gains-project-quests-investment-
continues-to-pay-dividends/
5
For more information see https://www.yearup.org/about/newsroom/press/year-announces-significant-
sustained-earnings-gains-young-adults-five-year

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Per Ages 18 and Training in IT by private $5,800 $4,800 in

Scholas above, high providers plus program-based year 7
school diploma or supports
GED
Project Ages 18 and Training primarily in health $12,500 $4,600 in
Quest above, high care certificate programs at year 11
school diploma or community colleges with
GED program-based supports
It is important to note that not all sectoral training programs are as effective as these. For
example, Per Scholas is one of four sectoral training programs evaluated by MDRC. Across all
four, earnings impacts averaged about $2,500 per year. We do not understand enough about what
made Per Scholas so effective, so it is important that the process of scaling up the program
models we discuss be done in a way that carefully monitors implementation quality and program
effectiveness.
Also noteworthy is that these programs have not been proven for general populations of
disadvantaged youth. All employed careful screening, with some reporting acceptance rates
ranging between 10% and 30% (Kazis & Molina, 2016; Maguire 2016).
And finally, in addition to the direct costs listed in the table, all of these kinds of training
programs carry an opportunity cost of lost earnings during the training period for participants,
which can last six months to two years.
Details of our calculations

In arriving at our aggregate cost estimate, we assume an average direct cost of about
$10,000 per trainee.6 Year Up—which involves about six months of classroom training and six
months of paid internship at a private company for low-income high school graduates—costs a
lot more if you include the costs of the internship. Employer payments tend to cover about 60%
of its costs and we assume that would also be true for our scaled-up programs. (Year Up is also
working on variations of their model, to see if they can generate lower-cost versions of it.)
So, comparing benefits to costs, the very best programs can pay for themselves in roughly
3–4 years (if earnings are foregone for 1–2 years) while a somewhat wider range of programs
can take more than 5–6 years to pay for themselves. Assuming no further fadeout of impacts, the
present discounted values of future earnings streams for program participants generate
substantial benefits for them and the public (especially if the earnings gains can reduce crime,
poor health, or the need for participants to rely on public benefit programs in the future).
Assuming some moderate fadeout can still generate public benefits that clearly exceed costs.
At what scale would one need to provide these programs, and at what total cost?
6
For more information see https://www.mdrc.org/publication/employment-and-earnings-effects-workadvance-
demonstration-after-seven-years. We include it in these options for the following reasons: a) earnings impacts have
been estimated over longer time periods than for the other programs; b) students earn college credentials which might
draw returns for longer periods and with greater portability; and c) as a community college program, it might be easier
to scale. And although Year Up is considerably more expensive than Per Scholas, we include the latter because of its
exclusive focus on youth, its broad industry range, and its larger impacts to date on youth earnings.

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• Youth - About 3.2 million students graduated from high school in 2019, and two-
thirds of them enrolled right away in college. So just over a million had no immediate
chance of getting a postsecondary credential. If we add in high school dropouts who
might get a GED, plus enrollees who will not complete any credential or earn enough
credits to raise their earnings, plus those who obtain very weak credentials, we end up
with about 1.5–2 million students every year who could benefit. On the other hand,
Year Up and the other sectoral programs screen out many students (with poor
cognitive skills and other barriers to work), so many of these youth would not be
eligible to enter these programs, or might not even apply for other reasons. If we offer
Year Up or another program to 1 million of these students per year, it would cost $10
billion annually (not including foregone earnings of the students)—or less if fewer are
enrolled.
• Adults - In this case, we use a stock estimate of the population of potential low-
income participants in these programs, rather than a flow. We can consider offering
something like Project Quest or Per Scholas to adults at ages 25–44 (or perhaps a bit
lower) who have moderately young children (perhaps below age 13) and have
incomes below 200% of poverty. Roughly 30% or so of such adults meet the income
criteria, and we assume that around 60% have children in this age range (though the
true number might differ). There are 88 million Americans in that age range, so about
15–16 million fit the additional eligibility criteria. If we offered 1 million of them
entry into Per Scholas or Project Quest each year, that would also cost $10 billion a
year.
Scaling challenges
In all cases, scaling these programs up while maintain quality would be challenging – so
the scaling would need to take place slowly and deliberately. The original sites that have been
evaluated to date are fairly small. Each of the programs is now trying to replicate itself, but these
efforts will not generate nearly enough scale to achieve our goals. The programs are also
exploring ways to achieve more scale while maintaining quality, such as the use of online
training to reduce cost, and partnerships with other providers (like community colleges) to
expand their reach. The efforts of the city of San Antonio to scale up Project Quest have been
described in presentations.7
7
For more information see https://www.bexar.org/DocumentCenter/View/30320/Project-QUEST---Bexar-
County-SBED-Webinar.

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CHILD AND MATERNAL HEALTH
This appendix provides details on a number of the driver sections and interventions in
Chapter 5.
Inadequacy of Funding for the Indian Health Service
Not all Native American individuals are eligible for the Indian Health Services (IHS), a
direct provider of health care services for the IHS. Out of 5.7 Native American individuals, 2.7
are eligible. They include those who reside in geographic areas covered by the IHS. However, a
recent government report concluded that “[f]unding for IHS addresses only an estimated 48.6%
of the health care needs of Native American children and has historically been subject to year-
by-year discretionary allocations from Congress, which creates substantial long-term uncertainty
in funding and makes it challenging to maintain and modernize needed health care
infrastructure.” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2022). The IHS served 64% of
the eligible population in 2020.
Per capita spending is considerably lower for IHS, at $4,078, than it is for Medicaid
($8,109) and for the U.S. population more generally ($10,742). Multiple factors explain this
difference. One has to do with the types of services provided, with IHS providing primary and
emergency care but not tertiary care. Another is that IHS operates under a global budget, so that
if the number of people served increases, per capita spending, by definition, declines. Medicaid
and Medicare, in contrast, increase funding with the number of people and services provided. A
tribal budget formulation workgroup concluded that nearly $50 billion is needed to adequately
fund the IHS in FY2023. To put this in perspective, funding for the IHS in 2022 was $6.8 billion
(IHS budget appropriation), plus an additional $1.26 billion in reimbursements from health
insurance providers. This excludes temporary COVID-19 funding. Tribal priorities for IHS
funding include mental health, alcohol/substance abuse, and health care facilities construction
(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2022).
Mental Health
Youth suicide rates have increased significantly over time for all racial and ethnic groups.
In 1980, suicide was the seventh most common cause of death. By 2018, it had risen to the third
most common cause. Importantly, the method of suicide has shifted to include more use of
firearms, which are deadlier. Suicide by firearm among 10- to 14-year-olds increased 146% over
the past decade and increased by 51% for 15- to 24-year-olds (Everytown, 2022). Differences in
suicide rates by gender, race, and ethnicity underscore the disproportionate burden borne by
Native American populations, for whom rates can be more than six times higher than the group
with the lowest rate, Latino youth. The group with the next highest rate is White adolescents.
While suicides among Black and Latino youth are less frequent, the rate for Black youth has
risen more quickly over time.
There is some research showing that mental health treatment can make a difference.
Analyses of multiple cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions, including CBT and

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interpersonal psychotherapy for adolescents, have found them to be effective for the treatment of
adolescent depression (Klein et al, 2007). Research on the effectiveness of pharmacological
treatments is more varied, with some of the stronger evidence for selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRIs) (Cipriani et al., 2016; Strawn et al., 2015). Most research on the effectiveness
of treatment focuses on mental health outcomes. Given the strong evidence that mental health
affects educational attainment and earnings, research linking mental health treatment with future
economic outcomes would be very informative.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) have each developed evidence-based
guidelines and strategies to address gaps in youth mental health care. The CDC has outlined the
importance of early identification, providing resources to support families, and identifying gaps
in workforce development funding. This includes training professionals from fields that are
connected to mental health and also integrating mental health care with routine healthcare.
SAMHSA has focused on reducing emergency department utilization for children with mental
health issues, reducing criminal justice interactions, and encouraging community-based care
coordination.
With research pointing to the importance of location-based policy levers (e.g., So et al.,
2019), SAMHSA has prioritized Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs)
which are a central part of the agency’s strategy, with 400 grantees nationally, but is also
supporting school-based services. Another area where there is growing evidence of effectiveness
in addressing both physical and mental health care needs, especially among low-income
communities, is in school-based health centers (SBHCs). A review of the evidence on the
effectiveness of SBHCs on educational and health outcomes led the Community Preventive
Services Task Force to recommend continued implementation and maintenance of SBHCs
(Community Preventive Services Task Force, 2016). SBHCs receive funding from multiple
sources (50% from the federal government and the rest from local and state sources). From 1996
to 2017, total funds dedicated to SBHCs have increased from $42 to $91 million, and the number
of SBHCs has grown from 900 to 2,584. However, this growth masks significant geographic
disparities: the number of states with SBHC programs declined over this period from 34 to 17.
Pollution
Federal clean-up of Superfund sites has been linked, causally, with important medium-
term outcomes. Using data from 1994–2002 on the timing of Superfund site clean-up and
comparing the outcomes of siblings born to the same family before and after a clean-up,
researchers have linked Superfund site clean-ups with improved cognitive test scores and halving
in the rate of children with a cognitive disability (Persico et al., 2020). If one only considers the
reduction in special education expenditures associated with the clean-up, the researchers
calculate that Superfund clean-ups would pay for themselves within 40 years. Researchers have
also linked Superfund Site clean-ups with reduced child blood lead levels and improved infant
health (Currie et al., 2011b; Klemick et al., 2020).
Children living in households below the poverty line and Black children are more likely
to live near one of the 300,000 facilities that emit toxic chemicals, known as toxic release
inventory (TRI) sites (Perlin et al., 1999). There is research linking childhood exposure to toxic
chemicals at these sites to short-term, and more recently long-term, outcomes including

286

educational attainment and wages. Researchers address the nonrandom placement of TRI sites in
various ways. In the short term, evidence suggests that proximity to TRI sites increases infant
mortality and reduces birthweight. In a recent working paper, Persico (2022) exploits variation in
exposure across siblings derived from the opening of a plant and/or a family moving. Children
exposed to a TRI site in-utero complete 1.2 fewer years of school and have nearly 60% lower
income in adulthood than their unexposed siblings. It is important to note that the TRI program,
managed by the EPA, tracks the management of 770 toxic chemicals and publishes this
information for the public.1 The TRI program does not set standards for chemical emission
levels.
Nutrition and Food Insecurity
For pregnant individuals, accessing healthy nutrition is critical to ensure healthy birth
outcomes, such as lowering the risk of low birthweight (da Silva Lopes et al., 2017), as well as
developmental outcomes into childhood, such as cognition (Borge at al., 2017; Ramakrishnan et
al., 2012; Veena et al., 2016). Nutritional status during pregnancy is also associated with
overweight and obesity in children. For example, there is a correlation between obesity during
pregnancy and poor neonatal outcomes, such as higher risks of having preterm birth, large for
gestational age, and perinatal death (Aviram et al., 2011; Marchi et al., 2015). Obesity during
pregnancy is also correlated with poor infant and childhood outcomes, including child obesity,
and with poor health outcomes into adulthood (Langley-Evans, 2015; Poston et al., 2011).
The federal nutrition programs have been shown to be effective at reducing food
insecurity in childhood and improving child health and future economic outcomes. SNAP in
particular has been linked to improvements in newborn health, improved child outcomes,
reductions in poverty, and improved economic and health outcomes in adulthood (Almond et al.,
2011; Bailey et al., 2020; Hoynes et al., 2011; Hoynes et al., 2015; Hoynes et al., 2016; Hoynes
& Schanzenbach, 2015;). However, SNAP benefits are often consumed before the end of the
month, resulting in increased food insecurity, decreased food consumption and other spending,
and impaired dietary quality (Calloway et al., 2015; Franckle et al., 2019; Gregory & Smith,
2019; Hamrick & Andrews, 2016; Todd, 2015; Weinstein et al., 2009; ; Whiteman et al., 2018),
which in turn have negative impacts on academic achievement (Bond et al., 2021; Cotti et al.,
2018; Gassman-Pines & Bellows, 2018; Gennetian et al., 2016). Another complication is that
SNAP benefits are to a large degree fungible with cash incomes, making it difficult to know to
what extend intergenerational impacts are the result of increased food consumption or increased
economic resources.
The Special Supplementation Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children
(WIC) is associated with positive impacts on nutrition, dietary intake, food security, and health,
including birth outcomes, the latter of which is causally associated with educational attainment
and later economic outcomes (Black et al., 2007; Royer, 2009). Improvements in 2009 to the
nutritional content of WIC food packages—including the addition of a fruit and vegetable
voucher and requirements that bread be whole grain and milk be low fat—have been found to
1
Facilities that manufacture, process or otherwise use these chemicals in amounts above established levels must
annually report the amount released (i.e., emitted into the air or water) and/or managed through recycling, energy
recovery, and treatment. According to Persico, 221 million Americans lived in a zipcode with a TRI as of 2016.

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improve dietary quality, perinatal outcomes, and early child development (Guan et al., 2021;
Hamad et al., 2019a; Hamad et al., 2019b; Tester et al., 2016).
Despite these numerous benefits, participation rates among eligible children decline
significantly after infancy (>98%) across 1–4 years of age, (65%, 49%, 44%, 25%, respectively),
and only 52% of eligible pregnant individuals participate (USDA, 2022). These numbers
increased during the pandemic due to the multiple waivers that existed (remote benefits issuance,
physical presence, allowance of uploading electronic certification documents, etc.) that
streamlined certification, but quantitative data on national impact does not yet exist. COVID-19
waivers increasing the WIC fruit/vegetable benefit also improved dietary intake, but evidence is
still needed to prove its positive impact on health.
Factors contributing to the high numbers of children who are WIC eligible but not
enrolled include concerns regarding immigration status, lack of transportation to attend in-person
appointments, and administrative barriers that made it more difficult for families to enroll or stay
enrolled in WIC (NASEM, 2017e; Vargas & Pirog, 2016). For SNAP, take-up rates are generally
high (82% nationally, though they can be as low as 55% in some states). The main barrier to
SNAP utilization among children is the ineligibility of many immigrant groups. Among
immigrants, only those with permanent residency and those who are refugees can access SNAP
benefits. The undocumented and those awaiting permanent residency are not eligible. Having
parents or siblings in the latter categories affects the benefit levels of eligible children who are
U.S. citizens. As a result, children in immigrant families are at higher risk for food insecurity
(Capps et al., 2009; East, 2020; Kaushal et al., 2013; Van Hook & Balistari, 2006).
There is causal evidence that expanding coverage to immigrant families is effective in
improving child outcomes. East (2020) examines the experience of U.S. born children of
immigrants whose parents were subject to changes in eligibility for SNAP over time, though the
children maintained their eligibility throughout. Eliminating (restoring) parental eligibility for
SNAP while maintaining child eligibility effectively reduced (increased) total monthly SNAP
benefit payments. East (2020) also explores the impact of having SNAP from infancy through
age 5 on health outcomes at ages 6–16, including parent reports of child health. She documents
effects of SNAP benefit levels on parent-reported child health that are similar to the effects on
self-reported health generated from the roll-out of SNAP as documented by Hoynes,
Schanzenbach, and Almond (2018). An additional year of eligibility for SNAP reduces the
probability of fair/poor health by 5% at ages 6–16 in the more recent study, compared with a
three percent reduction in the same measure of self-reported health by adults associated with
SNAP roll-out.
Paid Family and Medical Leave
There are some interventions that may be promising avenues for increasing
intergenerational mobility through improvement in child and maternal health. . These include
paid family and medical leave. Only 23% of U.S. civilian workers report having access to paid
leave for medical, caregiving, or parental obligations (Beach & Walsh, 2021). Lack of access to
paid leave disproportionately impacts low-income and racial and ethnic minority workers (Bartel
et al., 2019; Boyens et al., 2022). Paid family and medical leave policies improve neonatal health
outcomes, including reductions in rates of low birthweight and the risk of prematurity especially
for unmarried and Black mothers (Rossin-Slater, 2011; Stearns, 2015), which in turn affect

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health in childhood (Lichtman-Sadot & Bell, 2017) and educational attainment and earnings later
in life.

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CHILDREN’S FAMILY INCOME, WEALTH, AND PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT
This appendix first details the evidence regarding the likely impacts of expanding
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Next, it describes the distribution of family wealth
and reviews the correlational and causal evidence linking wealth to intergenerational
outcomes. Finally, it provides more details on income and wealth interventions supported
by direct or indirect evidence.
Impacts of the Earned Income Tax Credit on Child Outcomes
Much of the report’s discussion of the effects of family income and of income-oriented
interventions centers around the EITC, which has been prominent in both policy and research for
decades. There is an extensive literature on the EITC and its impacts (Hoynes & Rothstein, 2017;
and Nichols & Rothstein, 2016, for reviews). The paper that most directly tackles the specific
question of the EITC’s impact on intergenerational poverty is a working paper by McInnis et al.
(2023). They relate variation in EITC receipt during childhood to the probability of being in
poverty as an adult, between ages 25 and 45, and as measured by the Official Poverty Measure.
They found that a $1,000 increase in annual EITC exposure during childhood reduces the
likelihood of being in poverty as an adult by nine percent.
They conclude that this effect is driven by increases in both children’s adult employment
and earnings. They find that a $1,000 increase in annual EITC exposure during childhood
increases adulthood employment by four percentage points and increases annual earnings by
between 10% and 30%. They do not find evidence that childhood EITC exposure affects
adulthood family structure (marrying or having children), which rules out one potential
alternative mechanism.
Some papers have studied the effect of the EITC on childhood outcomes that plausibly
affect whether children grow up to be in poverty as adults. Dahl and Lochner (2012) found that
increases in family income due to EITC expansions raised math and reading test scores by about
0.06 standard deviations per $1,000; Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff (2011) found slightly larger
effects, 0.06-0.09. Bastian and Michelmore (2018; see also Michelmore, 2013) showed that a
$1,000 increase in EITC exposure boosts the odds of high-school completion by 1.3%, of college
completion by 4.2%, and of young-adult employment by 1%. They suggest that the mechanism
is through higher family income. Manoli and Turner (2014) found that an extra $100 of EITC
rebate in a student’s senior year of high school increases college enrollment by 0.2 to 0.3
percentage points.
There are also studies that show effects of EITC on various aspect of health among
recipients’ children, which may plausibly reduce later poverty as an adult (e.g., if child health
improves subsequent education and employment; see Chapter 5). For example, Hoynes et al.
(2015) showed that a $1,000 increase in EITC exposure is associated with a modest decline in
low birthweight. Similarly, Klevens et al. (2017) found that state EITCs are associated with a
decrease in pediatric abusive head trauma, while Batra and Hamad (2021) found reduced food

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insecurity in the months after EITC refund receipt, and Hamad and Rehkopf (2016) found
reduced behavioral problems with increased EITC refund size.
Studies vary in whether they find that effects are larger for EITC payments received
while young or later in childhood. With respect to heterogeneous effects by race, a handful of
studies of nonpoverty outcomes have found larger effects for Black recipients. For example,
Komro et al. (2019) and Batra et al. (2022) both found larger effects of state and federal EITC
benefits, respectively, for birth outcomes among Black mothers.
An ambiguity in all of the work on the EITC’s impacts on child outcomes concerns
whether the EITC’s impact derives from the additional resources available to families, from
increased maternal employment in response to the EITC’s incentives or from a combination of
the two. Although papers often describe their effects as reflecting the impact of $1,000, they all
identify this from a policy that encourages greater work among mothers, but they cannot
separately identify that effect. Distinguishing these effects is critically important to evaluating
the potential impact of policies that might raise income with no or negative effects on
employment. What evidence we have on this issue derives from other studies, for example of the
effects of winning lotteries (Bulman et al., 2021; Cesarini et al., 2017).
Wealth
This appendix section focuses on the relationship between wealth and intergenerational
poverty. We briefly cover trends in wealth and wealth inequality, followed by causes of these
trends with a focus on differences by race and ethnicity. We then examine evidence from studies
on parental wealth and adult child outcomes, and conclude with our suggested policy
intervention, establishing federal child trust accounts or baby bonds.
Wealth-based metrics have become increasingly important for explaining the economic
lives of Americans. They serve both as a mechanism of social mobility and as a means of
solidifying social, political, and economic status. Studies have shown that differences in familial
wealth holdings exist at birth. They persist across the life course and perpetuate
intergenerationally; at least 25% of the younger generation’s wealth is directly attributable to
their parents’ level of wealth (Feiveson & Sabelhaus, 2018). As a result, the life chances of
children from families at the lower end of the wealth distribution, on average, follow
significantly different trajectories from those whose families were at the middle and top end
(Pfeffer & Killewald, 2019). Lack of wealth constrains opportunities, inhibits choice, and
increases economic vulnerability.
Trends in wealth and wealth inequality

Wealth in the United States is highly skewed. Average household wealth was
approximately $748,800 in 2019, while the median value was $121,7001. These numbers are
explained by two related phenomena. First, most households are concentrated at the lower end of
the wealth distribution with a wealthy minority at the top. And second, the share of wealth held
by the top 1% of U.S. families was 33.1%, while the top 10% held 71% of U.S. wealth,
compared with the 27% and 2% held by the bottom 50-90th percentile and bottom 50% of U.S.
1
These values do not include defined benefit pension assets. The Federal Reserve estimates that median wealth
increases to $172,000 when inclusive of DB reserves (Bricker et al., 2020).

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households. The wealth distribution has become more unequal in recent decades, with the top 1%
owning an increasing share of overall U.S. wealth. From 1989 to 2019 the share owned by the
top 1% increased from 25 to 34% (Bricker et al., 2020). The Gini coefficient, a measure ranging
from zero for perfect equality to 1 for maximum inequality captures how evenly distributed
wealth is in an economy, provides another way of showing this trend. For the United States, the
coefficient peaked in 2016 at 0.86 (last year calculated) yet it remained relatively unchanged
between 1950 (0.83) and 2007 (0.82), rising most recently post-Great Recession (Kuhn et al.,
2020)
Wealth holdings vary by many of the same group traits that cause income to vary
including age, education, household composition, geography, and race and ethnicity. U.S.
households with children are less wealthy than households without children. In 2019 they had a
median wealth level of $64,050 compared with $114,850 of households with nonresidential
children. They are also more unequal than nonchild households, with a Gini coefficient of 0.90
compared with 0.86 for nonchild households (Gibson-Davis & Hill, 2021).
Trends in wealth and wealth inequality by race and ethnicity

A focus on wealth reveals extreme economic inequality by race and ethnicity. In 2019,
median wealth for White households was $188,200 compared with $24,100 and $36,100 for
Black and Latino households, respectively (Bhutta et al., 2020). Few data sets are available that
specifically track the wealth of Native Americans, but research from the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth estimated that in 2000, the median wealth for Native Americans in the survey
was $5,700, compared with the median wealth of $65,000 for the sample overall (Zagorsky,
2006).
Percheski and Gibson-Davis (2020) found that between 2004 and 2016, Black-White
wealth inequality grew faster in households with children than among all households. By 2016,
they found, non-Hispanic White child households had a median wealth of $47,250, compared
with a median wealth of $294 among Black child households. Pfeffer and Killewald (2019)
found that Black children born in the middle 22% of the wealth distribution are two and one-half
times more likely to fall into the bottom 20% of the wealth distribution than White children born
into the same tier of wealth.
Causes of wealth inequality trends

Kuhn et al. (2020) explored trends in household wealth inequality between 1950 and
2016, and the growing concentration of wealth at the higher end of the distribution. They found
that private business revenue explains much of the increase for the wealthy minority. Growth in
wealth among households in the middle of the wealth distribution has been driven by increases in
homeownership and, more notably, home equity.
Several recent papers have examined the importance of intergenerational wealth on
present wealth inequality (Adermon et al., 2018; Pfeffer and Killewald, 2018; Toney, 2022).
Pfeffer and Killewald (2018) found that grandparent wealth is an independent predictor of adult
grandchildren’s wealth using U.S. panel data, and Adermon et al. (2018) found the same with
Swedish data. Pfeffer and Killewald (2018) found that for both White and Black families,
education explains more of the intergenerational wealth gaps and social-class persistence than
homeownership, bequests or inheritances, business ownership, or marriage. Toney (2022)

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showed that the composition of assets within wealth portfolios is static across generations,
although the relationship is weaker among Black households.
Causes of wealth inequality by race and ethnicity

Racial and ethnic wealth gaps reflect historical and contemporary processes and policies
that have predominantly supported wealth accumulation for White Americans and impeded or
exploited wealth opportunities for Black Americans from slavery and sharecropping and debt
traps to more recent evidence of biased home appraisal practices and targeted subprime mortgage
lending (Bayer et al., 2016; Berger, 2018; Faber, 2013; O’Connell, 2012; Perry et al., 2018;
Reece, 2020). Racial differences in wealth accumulation and growing wealth gaps over time
have been also attributed to differences in asset holdings and returns on those investments. In
recent decades, greater amounts of financial asset ownership among White households and
appreciation in stock equity have rewarded them over time. Returns to housing, where Black
households hold much of their wealth, have appreciated less due to longstanding patterns of
residential racial segregation (Boulware & Kuttner, 2020; Derenoncourt et al., 2022). Other
contributing factors include differences in the incidence and size of inheritances (Bhutta et al.,
2020). Not only are White households more likely to receive financial inheritances, but they are
also more likely to expect them (Addo & Darity, 2021).
Obstacles to wealth accumulation have also operated partly through disparities in income
throughout the life course, as income from employment and capital are the primary ways
households are able to set aside money to save and build wealth via investments, educational
attainment, and asset purchases (Elmi & Lopez, 2021). Derenoncourt et al. (2022) showed that
Black-White differences in savings rates are explained by initial wealth levels, age, and
education, and Gittleman and Wolff (2004) found no differences in savings after accounting for
income.
Background Section for Interventions
EITC proposal
Graphs depicting the three examples of modifications to the EITC are shown in text
Figure 6-7. In the panels for Options 1-3, the 2022 EITC payment for a single parent with two
children is shown as a solid line. The phase-in and phase-out rates (the slopes of the two lines),
the maximum credit, and the exact locations of the earnings thresholds all vary with family size,
but the general pattern is similar. The final graph shows only the incremental credit payments
associated with each one.
Taking the example of Option 1, the solid line in the figure shows the current
(2022) value of the credit as a function of family earned income. Families with zero
earnings are not eligible for any EITC benefits. As family earnings increase up to
$15,410 (the “phase-in” portion of the schedule), EITC payments increase as well – up to
a maximum payment in 2022 of $6,164. Between $15,410 and $20,130 (the “flat”
portion), this maximum payment is constant. Once earnings exceed $20,130, the credit
payment is gradually reduced, so that when earned income reaches about $50,000, EITC
payments fall to zero. The dashed line shows how much higher tax credit payments
would be if all payment amounts from the 2022 schedule were increased by 40%.

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Combining the EITC with other programs to increase income stability

The committee considered expansions along the lines of the 2021 Child Tax Credit,
which made credits available to families without earnings without increasing the incentive to
work. On the plus side, it would provide resources to more low-income families with children
than the EITC alone, but it would probably lead to a reduction in maternal employment relative
to the status quo. Option 3 in Figure 6-7 combines the addition of credits for families without
earnings with an increase in the credit for those with earnings, in order to preserve (and indeed
increase) the incentive to work relative to current policy.
The EITC’s annual payments are typically distributed as tax refunds one or two months
after the end of the year in which the income is earned, which may limit the credit’s usefulness in
financing recurrent monthly expenses, like child care. Prior work has shown that the lump-sum
annual nature of the EITC leads to fluctuations in spending and food security across the year
(Batra & Hamad, 2021; McGranahan & Schanzenbach, 2013). It also could limit the work-
promoting effects insofar as this annual structure restricts the ability of new mothers to use the
credit to finance child care during their first year as new parents. At the same time, the annual
structure of the EITC makes it a form of involuntary savings, which people use to help purchase
durable goods that are likely to increase workforce participation, such as vehicles (Goodman-
Bacon & McGranahan, 2008). The temporary, six-month-long expansion of the Child Tax Credit
in 2021 was implemented as a monthly advance payment, and early quasi-experimental evidence
indicates that the 2021 expanded CTC improved household food sufficiency and parental mental
health (Batra et al., 2023; Shafer et al., 2022). This indirect evidence suggests that more regular
payments could help to provide more income stability, though there is no rigorous evidence of
the effect of a monthly payment structure on employment, earnings, or multiyear poverty.
The report discusses several combinations of the EITC proposals with other programs
that might help increase income stability. Here are more details for the three possible options
listed in the text:
• Combine an expansion of the EITC with expanded coverage of the Child Care and
Development Fund block grant. Evidence reviewed in the report suggests that the
Child Care and Development Fund child care subsidies have raised maternal
employment, especially in low-income families. Because these subsidies are paid
when child care services are received, they help to address the mis-timing problem
that arises between child care expenses and EITC receipt during a child’s first year of
life.
• Combine an expansion of the EITC with a restructuring of the Child and Dependent
Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) to provide more generous and timely reimbursement for
the child care expenses of low-income parents. Following Ziliak (2014), the NASEM
(2019a) report proposed making the CDCTC fully refundable and, for low-income
families with children under the age of 6, reimbursing up to $4,000 per year in child
care costs for the first child and a total of $6,000 for two or more children under age
6.
• Combine an expansion of the EITC with a monthly refundable CTC. An expanded
CTC was also recommended in the 2019 NASEM report and was temporarily
implemented for the 2021 tax year. This would be most feasible for an expansion
such as EITC expansion Option 3. Past efforts to provide the EITC as a monthly

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payment have encountered resistance from recipients who were concerned that they
might have to repay the credit if their earnings turned out to be lower than expected.
Thus, this combination would be most feasible for expanding Option 3, which
guarantees at least $1,000 per child for all families with earnings lower than $43,560.
The minimum wage

In theory, minimum wages have offsetting effects: They raise wages for some workers,
but by increasing the cost to businesses of employing workers, they reduce employment. Thus,
their impact on poverty is theoretically ambiguous.
It is worth noting that even the employment effect is itself ambiguous. While competitive
models of the labor market yield an unambiguous prediction of negative effects on employment,
in other models that allow for employer market power, job search, or other deviations from
perfect competition, modest minimum wages can have small or even positive effects on
employment. Even in these models, though, sufficiently large minimum wage increases will
reduce employment. These models are well reviewed by Dube (2019a) and Belman and Wolfson
(2014).
It is thus an empirical question whether increases in the minimum wage will reduce
employment, and by how much. There is no consensus in the economics literature about the
exact amount, with high-quality studies reaching opposite conclusions. Neumark and Shirley
(2021) observe that the minimum wage is an unusual research topic in that the state of the
literature itself is under fierce debate.
Neumark and Shirley assemble the entire set of published minimum wage studies from
the past three decades. They identify the “core estimates” from each study, in most cases
identified by the authors of the studies. They find that 79.2% of estimated employment
elasticities are negative, and that the evidence of negative employment effects is even stronger
for teens and young adults, lesser-educated workers, and workers directly affected by the
minimum wage. This is surprisingly consistent with other literature reviews. For example,
among the 36 papers he considers, Dube (2019a) obtains a median estimate of the own-wage
elasticity (the percentage employment reduction induced by a 1% increase in average wages
induced by a higher minimum wage) of −0.17. Of those 36 studies, 26 are based on “narrow
subgroups,” including teens, restaurant or retail workers, and lower-educated immigrants.
Among those 26 studies, Dube reports a median own-wage elasticity of −0.19.
This negative average effect reflects a number of estimates indicating positive or zero
effects. One prominent recent study (Cengiz et al., 2019) finds that each 1% increase in average
wages induced by increases in the minimum wage actually raises employment by 0.41%, though
the confidence interval includes some negative effects, as large as −0.45%. This implies that
employment reductions offset no more than half of the effect of wage increases. Other studies
come to similar conclusions as Dube’s (2019a) review. Clemens and Strain (2021) estimate own-
wage elasticities of −0.26 for less-educated workers and −0.23 for younger workers.
In the committee’s view, the evidence supports an own-wage elasticity in a range that
includes near-zero, that is centered around −0.2, and that includes larger magnitudes for certain
subgroups of workers.
Some studies find that larger minimum wage increases are associated with relatively
larger employment reductions—that is, the employment elasticity is nonlinear. The average
minimum wage increase in the 138 state-level changes studied by Cengiz et al. (2019) was

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around eight log points. Clemens and Strain (2018; 2021) studied the last decade of minimum
wage increases and found little evidence that “small” increases of under $1 are associated with
disemployment effects. For “small” increases, Clemens and Strain’s results are qualitatively
similar to the results in Cengiz et al. Dube (2019a, p. 3) concludes that “the best evidence
suggests that the employment effects are small up to around 59% of the median wage.”
However, Clemens and Strain find larger disemployment effects of “large” increases of
over $1. Among individuals ages 16 to 25 with less education than a high-school degree, they
find that a one percent increase in wages induced by a higher minimum wage reduces
employment by around one percent. For workers ages 16 to 21, they find a reduction in
employment of −0.4%.
Jardim et al. (2017, 2018, 2022) studied Seattle’s path to a $15-per-hour minimum wage,
which reached as high as $11 in 2015 and $13 in 2016. Using administrative data from
Washington State, Jardim (2022) found larger employment effects than are typically found.
However, their point estimates have wide confidence intervals, and their results are also
consistent with a selection effect deriving from the booming Seattle economy, or even spillovers
from the minimum wage itself (Rothstein & Schanzenbach, 2017).
A contrasting result comes from Godoy and Reich (2021), who studied low-wage
counties where minimum wages reached as high as 82% of the median wage. They did not find
adverse effects of minimum wage increases on employment, hours, or annual weeks of work.
Another outstanding question is whether the long-run effects of minimum wage increases
differ from the short-run effects that have been more studied. Clemens and Strain (2021) found
that the medium-run disemployment effects of relatively large minimum wage increases are
larger than the short-run effects. Meer and West (2016) argue that minimum wage increases
affect employment by reducing its growth over time rather than by quickly reducing its level.
Adjustment costs—driven in part by firm entries and exits within an industry—might help
explain larger longer-term disemployment effects (Aaronson et al., 2015; Sorkin, 2015).
Brummund and Strain (2020) found larger disemployment effects from the practice of indexing
minimum wage increases to inflation, and speculate that modest, nominal increases are easier for
firms to absorb without adjusting headcount than longer-lasting increases.
A minimum wage increase could reduce poverty even if it also reduces employment, if
the benefits to the still-employed workers are larger than the costs to those who lose
employment. (Note that for any own-wage elasticity above −1, the aggregate earnings of near-
minimum-wage workers rise; the literature is clear that employment responses are much smaller
than this threshold.) The picture is clearer here; studies generally find at least some poverty
reduction (as measured by the Official Poverty Measure) from minimum wage increases, though
there is disagreement about the magnitude. Dube (2019b) found that over three or more years,
each 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces poverty by between 2.2 and 4.6%, a large
effect. Godoy and Reich (2021) found substantial declines in both household and child poverty.
Other studies suggest much smaller effects. Using Survey of Income and Program
Participation data from 1996 to 2007, Sabia and Nielsen (2013) found little evidence that federal
or state minimum wage increases reduce poverty, material hardship, or receipt of public program
benefits among workers, younger individuals without high school degrees, or younger black
individuals. Neumark and Wascher (2002) concluded that the minimum wage redistributes
income among low-income families. They found that minimum wage increases make it more

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likely that poor families escape poverty, but also more likely that families above the poverty line
fall into poverty. These effects roughly offset one another.
As with employment effects, the best available option is to try to aggregate these
disparate findings. The Congressional Budget Office (2019) concluded that the weight of the
evidence points to modest effects on poverty. Using the TRIM3 model and the Supplemental
Poverty Measure, the National Academies’ Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty (2019a)
estimated modest poverty reductions from minimum wage increases, as well.
Union-Related Interventions
The Chapter 6 text discusses the contribution that the decline in unionization has made to
low wages and poverty, particularly for non-college workers. An expansion of union
representation in the U.S. labor market would lift the wage distribution and reduce both parents’
and children’s poverty. Policies to accomplish this are a perennial topic of discussion. Advocates
for unions argue that the legal framework created by the National Labor Relations Act no longer
works well, and that it is too easy for employers to prevent union recognition through both legal
and extra-legal methods.
Proposals include changes in the union recognition process, changes in the rules
governing union behavior, and changes in the way that union bargaining units are funded. In the
former category are proposals like “card check” recognition, whereby unions can be recognized
based on a majority of workers signing cards in support, outside of a formal election. Another
proposal, contained in the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act introduced in 2021, would
prohibit employers from holding mandatory meetings from which union representatives are
barred, to argue against the union. The PRO Act also includes provisions that would permit
secondary strikes to place pressure on employers to recognize or bargain with unions, increase
fines for employers who violate labor law, and weaken state “right to work” laws. The evidence
base for these proposals is limited, and the report does not include specific recommendations
regarding unions or labor law.
Assisting and incentivizing the creation of more good jobs

Besides increasing union membership or raising the minimum wage, other proposals to
help or incentivize employers to create more “good jobs”—jobs with atypically high pay relative
to the skills of workers (Andersson et al., 2005)—have already been implemented or proposed
and are under discussion.
For instance, the Biden Administration has created a Good Jobs Challenge at the U.S.
Department of Commerce and a Good Jobs Initiative at the U.S. Department of Labor. The
former is a competitive grants program to fund training explicitly linked to “good jobs,” using
$500 million allocated to the Department of Commerce from the American Relief Plan Act of
2021.2 The latter seeks to improve worker awareness of ways to improve job quality, and also to
form partnerships between the department and employers or various government agencies (with
appropriate technical assistance) to help create more good jobs.3
2
https://eda.gov/arpa/good-jobs-challenge
3
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20220121#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9CGood%20Jobs%E
2%80%9D%20initiative%2C,all%20workers%20and%20job%20seekers.

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Regarding incentives and assistance to firms, the idea of rewarding firms for creating
good jobs is embodied in a legislative proposal called the Patriot Employer Tax Credit, proposed
by Senators Brown (D-OH) and Durbin (D-IL) in 2021.4 Another approach is to provide tax
credits to publicly owned firms that set themselves up as “B-corporations” (or “Benefit”
corporations) rather than the more traditional “C-corporations”; the former allows firms to
explicitly consider benefits conferred on workers and society among its goals, while the latter
allows firms only to maximize shareholder value. Kim (2018a) has called for encouraging the
formation of more B-corporations through explicit corporate tax cuts.
Regarding assistance to state, local, and regional government agencies and their partners,
Rodrik (2022) calls for assistance at the local level to economic development partnerships that
will create more “good jobs,” while also calling for federal creation of a new entity (which he
calls the Advanced Research Partner Agency for Workers, or ARPA-W) to fund technological
innovation that is worker-friendly and would therefore create more good jobs as firms automate.
In addition, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) (2022) has proposed a range of such efforts,
though they are focused on smaller cities and rural areas that have suffered job and income loss
in recent decades.
Of course, while these kinds of ideas have some broad support, we have virtually no
rigorous evidence to date on their cost-effectiveness. Further experimentation with and rigorous
evaluation of such efforts is justified and needed.
Improving access of disadvantaged workers to better jobs

Proposed or actual efforts to improve employment opportunities for the most
disadvantaged workers—such as returning citizens (people released to life in the community
after incarceration) or those with particular disabilities, especially among people of color—take a
variety of approaches. These include:
1. Strengthening enforcement of federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) law

provisions that forbid broad discrimination against returning citizens;
2. Providing direct assistance to workers who face employment barriers;
3. Offering incentives or assistance to employers who hire such workers or are located
in impoverished locales, where many such workers live; and
4. Issuing federal “Second Chance” grants to states and localities or other partnerships
that provide job training and other assistance to returning citizens or other hard-to-
employ groups.
EEO law forbids employers to explicitly deny employment to anyone with a felony
conviction or criminal record—since it creates a disparate impact on less-educated men of
color—unless the decision to deny is explicitly tied to the requirements of a job, the offense
committed by the job applicant, whether he or she has reoffended since that time, and the
duration of time that has elapsed since the last conviction (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, 2012). The EEOC has also brought some high-profile cases against major private
4
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-
bill/223/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22S.+524%22%5D%7D.

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firms that appeared to violate such rules (such as BMW and Dollar General) and obtained
convictions against them.
Still, it is almost certainly true that many employers, especially in small- and medium-
sized companies, violate these rules. There are also literally thousands of federal and state rules
that explicitly bar returning citizens from particular occupations where they are perceived as
being high-risk (especially those involving children or very elderly populations that are regarded
as more vulnerable), and from obtaining occupational licensure. Scholars in this area understand
that some of these restrictions are sensible, while others might be less so (Bushway et al., 2022).
Thus, efforts to both increase enforcement of existing law and periodically review other barriers
created by various federal or state rules might constitute a reasonable way to reduce such barriers
and hardships.
Direct assistance to workers who face these barriers to employment includes subsidized
or transitional jobs, in which a public or nonprofit entity funds temporary jobs for these
workers—usually for 6 to 9 months in duration—with a public or private employer, in the hope
that the worker’s employability grows over time and might eventually be sustainable without any
public assistance. The primary goal is therefore to raise employment and earnings during the
time of the subsidy as well as afterwards, and to reduce long-term dependence on government
benefits or incarceration. But, except for a few well-known success stories (like the Center for
Employment Opportunity in New York or Recycle Force in Indiana), short-term employment
improvements usually dissipate fairly quickly once the subsidy expires, and other outcomes, like
recidivism, are not broadly improved except for specific populations (Cummings & Bloom,
2020).
Another approach involves efforts to allow more offenders to participate in work release
programs while they are still incarcerated (Berk, 2008) or to facilitate their hiring through the
issuance of “certificates of rehabilitation” or “certificates of relief” (Leisure & Anderson, 2016).
Evidence suggests positive and cost-effective impacts of both approaches, though only small
efforts have been rigorously evaluated to date.
Direct assistance to employers who hire returning citizens or others facing such barriers
are provided by the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC). This is a federal tax credit to
companies that hire from a list of workers facing such barriers, including “returning citizens;”
but take-up by employers is usually low, and evidence of its cost-effectiveness in expanding
employment and earnings is quite limited (Hamersma, 2008).
Another body of policies includes incentives, like tax credits, to employers who locate in
low-income parts of cities and want their concerns validated. Neumark (2018) reviewed the
evidence to date on “enterprise zones” and other tax credits associated with location in or near
poor neighborhoods, finding that such programs are generally not effective or cost a great deal of
funding per net job created for the poor. He also includes his own proposals for subsidies to
firms that hire low-income local residents.
Finally, the federal government has funded some “second chance” programs with grants
to states or to partnerships of employers and other community-based organizations. Examples
include the Reentry Employment Opportunities (REO) program and Pathways Home, both
administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. Rigorous evaluations of these efforts are in
progress, though such evidence is not yet available to date.
Overall, more experimentation with and evaluation of a wide range of such policy efforts
is encouraged, including attempts to scale programs like REO that appear successful.

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Steps to increase the wealth of low-income households

Attempts to increase the wealth of low-income households and improve short-term
outcomes for their families and longer-term outcomes for their children have focused on building
financial savings in preparation for paying for college. This is unsurprising given that a college
degree remains one of the key engines of social mobility in the United States (Hout, 2012). Thus,
intergenerational poverty is reduced through the educational attainment of one’s children. More
specifically, in obtaining a college degree, that wealth is a necessary component for enrolling in,
persisting through, and completing one’s degree. Proposals include expanding college savings
plans (i.e., 529 plans), encouraging child development accounts (CDAs), and obtaining assets,
such as by becoming a homeowner. Although promoting homeownership was not its original
intent, the mortgage interest deduction is the main federal program associated with promoting
homeownership. This tax benefit for homeowners with a mortgage is regressive,
disproportionately benefits White households, and is not associated with reducing costs of entry
for low-income households (Meschede et al., 2021; Sommer & Sullivan, 2018). Therefore,
efforts to increase wealth through financial savings program are the focus.
Unlike 529 college savings plans, CDAs are savings plans primarily targeted at low- and
moderate-income families. They are designed to reduce the barriers to long-term household
savings by eliminating transaction costs while decreasing cognitive burdens. CDAs have been
associated with college retention (Elliott & Beverly, 2011) and reduced college debt (Elliott et
al., 2014). Evidence from national CDA studies on low-income households found that parents in
the treatment group were more likely to open 529 plans and accumulate higher average balances.
Except for the initial seed deposit, these initiatives rely on policy levers such as matching funds
and the motivations of the parents to build savings. They draw upon the already limited resources
of these households rather than increasing the inflow of assets into them. When initial seed
money was provided, it was found to be low ($500-$1000) and did not increase the average
amount of personal savings held (Grinstein-Weiss et al., 2014).
To raise wealth among low-income households, especially those of Black and Native
American families, the committee considered proposals to create Baby Bonds for children born
in the United States, with the value of the bonds determined by the family’s income and net
worth at the time of the child’s birth and targeting families with incomes below the SPM
thresholds and total net worth less than one fourth of the federal poverty line.
Baby Bonds would address the intergenerational perpetuation of wealth inequality via
familial inheritance and inter vivo wealth transfers (Hamilton & Darity, 2010; Darity & Hamilton
2012). The approach recognizes that a substantial wealth endowment is necessary for social and
economic prosperity. Similar to CDAs, these funds would be earmarked for the child’s college
costs, homeownership, or business investments, so they would not be accessible until young
adulthood; in contrast to CDAs, the initial investment funds would be means-tested and require
no additional monies from the households.
In the United States, the idea of Baby Bonds has captured the interest of scholars and
politicians for many years. The idea is currently being tested in Washington, D.C., and
Connecticut. In fall 2007, as part of her 2008 presidential bid, Hillary Clinton proposed a $5,000-
at-birth baby bond, which she mentioned again on the presidential campaign trail in the fall of
2016 (Matthews, 2019). In the 2020 presidential election, candidate and U.S. senator Cory
Booker leveraged the research of economists Darrick Hamilton and William Darity(2010) to
announce his new Baby Bond bill, American Opportunity Accounts (Kliff, 2018). Notably, the

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American Opportunity Accounts legislation calibrates the amount of the endowment based on
parental income, although the original version of the proposal calibrates the amount based on
parental wealth. The proposal had an estimated cost of 2% of federal expenditures.
There has been limited research conducted on the impact that Baby Bonds could have at a
national level. Zewde (2020) used longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
to simulate wealth accumulation among young adults (18–25-year-olds in 2015) if they would
have received Baby Bonds when they were newborns. Individuals were divided into five
quintiles of household wealth at birth, with initial bond values defined categorically and tied
inversely to household wealth at birth (from $200 for the top 20% of households to $50,000 for
the bottom 20%). Bond values were assumed to grow at 2% annually through 2015. The
estimated cost of this proposal is $82 billion per year.
The American Opportunity Accounts proposal is like Zewde’s with the exception that
means-testing would be based on household income, not wealth. Households would receive
$1,000 at birth and up to $2,000 every year through age 18, with 2% to 3% annual returns.
Baby Bonds are a universal wealth intervention program that could yield a
disproportionate benefit for Black and Native American families, because their wealth (and
income) levels are so low. However, even if the assumptions in Zewde’s simulation are basically
sound, a Baby Bond program that markedly narrows the racial gap in wealth by early adulthood
still leaves other drivers of the racial wealth gap in operation as youth move through adulthood
(e.g., differential incomes, differential savings, differential rates of return on real estate,
differential inheritances) (Bruenig, 2019). This argues for considering Baby Bonds as part of a
package of strategies to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in wealth (Cassidy et al., 2019).

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CHILDREN’S HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOOD ENVIRONMENTS
This appendix provides details on a number of intervention areas mentioned in

Chapter 8.
Evidence on Housing Assistance for Intergenerational Mobility
Housing assistance comes in many forms, including rapid housing services, housing
choice vouchers (HCVs), public housing, project-based vouchers, tax credits, and other state and
local programs for both renters and homeowners. In various ways, these means-tested programs
reduce the cost of housing for low-income families. Currently, the largest federal housing
subsidy is the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners, which mostly benefits middle and
high-income households. For low-income households, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
program (LIHTC) is the largest housing subsidy program. LIHTC provides funding to investors
for the costs of developing low-income rental housing.
It is possible that housing subsidies alone—without requirements about where recipients
use them—might decrease intergenerational poverty; however, the evidence on this is mixed and
limited. As an income subsidy alone, housing assistance lifted roughly 3 million people out of
poverty in 2019, including 936,000 children (Fischer et al., 2021). This intervention interrupts
child poverty and thus makes it more likely that children will remain out of poverty as adults.
Furthermore, housing assistance is not merely an income subsidy, but may also improve housing
quality, promote stability, and reduce parental stress (Gubits et al. 2018; Schapiro et al. 2022;
Warren et al., 2015; Wood et al., 2008).
Correlational studies of the effects of housing assistance on children’s outcomes show
positive results, such as reduced blood lead levels (Ahrens et al., 2016), less overcrowding and
grade retention (Currie & Yelowitz, 2000), and improved performance on standardized tests
(Schwartz et al., 2020). Longitudinal studies find positive effects of growing up in various kinds
of subsidized housing on educational attainment, employment, and earnings (Kucheva, 2018;
Newman & Harkness, 2002). Using national data on over 1.7 million children eligible for or
receiving housing assistance and using a between-sibling analytical model, Pollakowski et al.,
(2022) found that growing up in public or HCV housing increases earnings for all groups, and
reduces adult incarceration at age 26, especially for Black women. In addition, a handful of
quasi-experimental studies comparing families receiving HUD assistance with families on a
waiting list have consistently found improved health outcomes, including better child mental
health, and fewer missed school days and better physical and mental health among adults, a
reduction in the uninsured rate, and fewer unmet medical needs (Fenelon et al., 2017; Fenelon et
al., 2018; Fenelon et al., 2021; Simon et al., 2017).
However, the evidence from randomized trials or natural experiments regarding the long-
term effects of housing subsidies on children does not show uniformly positive effects. The
Welfare to Work Voucher Experiment offered vouchers to families receiving welfare in six
cities. It reduced poverty, homelessness, crowding, and residential moves, but it showed no
consistent direct effects on children’s educational or socioemotional outcomes (Wood et al.,
2008). The authors of that study suggest that longer-term tracking of outcomes for children is

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warranted by the short-term housing impacts. A study of an HCV lottery in Chicago found no
statistically significant effects of receiving a housing choice voucher for children’s long-run
educational, criminal, or health outcomes up to 14 years after the lottery (Jacob et al., 2015).
On the other hand, the Family Options Study—which was a randomized controlled trial
at 12 sites that offered permanent housing subsidies to families experiencing homelessness—
reduced homelessness, food insecurity, the number of schools that children attended, school
absences, and behavior problems among children by the three-year follow-up. Other
experimental and quasi-experimental research, such as studies of the Moving to Opportunity
(MTO) experiment (discussed in Chapter 8) or public housing demolitions, cannot compare the
effects of receiving or not receiving housing subsidies, since all participants were in either
voucher or public housing at baseline. While MTO gave vouchers without restrictions on where
they could be used, all families already had housing assistance by virtue of living in public
housing. Although correlational and longitudinal evidence is available on the positive long-term
effects of housing subsidies, there are few randomized studies. It is also important to note that
although the LIHTC program has surpassed the HCV program in the number of households
served, there is no correlational or causal evidence on the long-term effects of tax credit units.
There are many proposals for increasing housing subsidies for low-income families.
Collinson et al. (2019) discuss a range of considerations in making the current policy landscape
more effective. They believe that the variation in local markets renders a one-size-fits-all housing
policy less effective. They also discuss the possibility of broadening the reach of current subsidy
dollars by providing more “shallow” subsidies and possibly time limits, instead of the long and
deep subsidies that the HCV, LIHTC, and public housing currently offer. Finally, they point out
the need to address locational challenges with the disproportionate siting of public housing and
LIHTC units and the disproportionate concentration of HCVs in high-poverty neighborhoods,
both of which contribute to intergenerational poverty.
In another proposal, Collyer et al. (2020) focus less on how housing subsidy programs
function and more on expanding their reach. They propose combining a universal entitlement to
housing assistance with increased EITC and Child Tax Credit funding. They estimate that the
expansion of the HCV alone would cut the national poverty rate by 9%. Overall, housing
assistance is an area that needs a stronger causal evidence base. Several experts we consulted
suspected there was promise for housing subsidies to improve long-term outcomes, but lacked
the strong evidence to support that view without uncertainty.
Evidence on improving the housing supply

It is important to complement efforts to increase demand for housing in high-opportunity
neighborhoods by expanding the supply of housing overall, which could increase supply in
neighborhoods that are good for children’s long-term outcomes. Researchers agree that there is a
supply problem in the United States, but there is debate about the reasons for low supply and the
consequences for affordability (Been et al. 2019; Schuetz 2022). Boosting supply using existing
policy might be achieved by incentivizing development through a targeting of LIHTC projects in
opportunity-rich areas, as well as by relaxing zoning restrictions (i.e., “upzoning”) in high-
opportunity neighborhoods. While we do not have direct evidence on the efficacy of such
interventions, research shows that the price of opportunity—that is, the ratio of average levels of
upward mobility to average rent—is currently much higher in metro areas that have stricter land
use regulations (Chetty et al., 2016).

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Evidence on improving neighborhood characteristics

While the best evidence to date on the intergenerational mobility effects of improving
housing and neighborhoods for children focuses on moving to higher opportunity neighborhoods,
it is equally important to consider how to bring better opportunities to neighborhoods that
currently do not offer good prospects for upward mobility. There is a growing body of strong
experimental evidence that remediating vacant lots and abandoned buildings reduces crime and
violence (Branas et al., 2018), and there is correlational evidence that increasing the density of
community organizations and increasing community investments (e.g., through mortgage
dollars) also reduces crime (Sharkey et al., 2017; Velez et al., 2012). This literature is reviewed
in Chapter 9. There is also evidence that desegregating neighborhoods, improving the quality of
schools, reducing pollution, and focusing on factors such as social capital may help to promote
intergenerational mobility (Ananat, 2011; Card & Krueger et al., 1992; Hohl et al., 2019; Isen et
al., 2017; see Chyn & Daruich, 2022, for a simulation analysis).
Evidence on improving housing for Native Americans

Native American families face distinct housing-related barriers to intergenerational
mobility. Overcrowding, poor housing quality, homelessness, infrastructural deficits, complex
land ownership, and limited mortgage availability are acute issues for Native Americans,
especially on reservation lands (Kunesh, 2021; Pindus et al., 2017). Advocacy organizations,
such as the National American Indian Housing Council, call for the reauthorization of the Native
American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996, which expired in 2013.
Congress has continued to fund its programs every year, in any case, but continued
appropriations have not kept up with housing needs (Walters, 2022). Moreover, self-
determination and community control are important prerequisites for Native American housing
justice (Kunesh, 2021). We could identify no studies on the short- or long-term effects of
targeted housing interventions on Native American children.

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NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
This appendix discusses the nature and causes of trends in crime and incarceration, as
well as racial/ethnic differences in those trends. It then provides details on a number of the
intervention areas mentioned in Chapter 9.
TRENDS IN CRIME AND INCARCERATION: CAUSES AND POLICY

IMPLICATIONS
Declines in Crime Over Time

After peaking in the early to mid-1990s, crime in the United States fell dramatically to
levels not observed since the 1960s (see Figure C-9-1). Between 1993 and 2019, violent crime
per 100,000 declined from 747 to 379 and property crimes fell by a similar proportion, from
4,740 to 2,109 (Gramlich, 2020). Violent crime has again risen somewhat since 2014 (FBI,
2019a, Table 1), and homicides have spiked since 2019, although those rates remain well below
their peak in the early 1990s. Nearly 80% of all recent homicide victims are killed with guns
(Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 2022), and new “right-to-carry” laws in
many states have contributed substantially to the surge in gun violence (Donohue et al., 2022).
One aspect of violent crime that has not declined over time is school shootings, which increased
over the past 50 years more than tenfold, from 19 in 1970 to 240 in 2021 (Naval Postgraduate
School, 2023).
Concurrent with the decline in crime has been unprecedented growth in incarceration in
the United States, which increased by a factor of three or four between 1980 and 2013 (Figure 9-
5). While crime began to fall starting in the early to mid-1990s, incarceration rates continued to
increase through 2009, peaking at 1.61 million individuals in U.S. state and federal prisons.
Some of the persistently high rates of incarceration in the US can be traced to those cohorts
coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, when the punitiveness of the criminal justice system
increased, resulting in high incarceration rates for these cohorts. Researchers have shown that
even though current punitiveness has declined, because the current sentencing structure escalates
punishment for those with prior offences, those who came of age in the 1980s and 90s have
continued to be incarcerated at high rates for many years after (Shen et al., 2020).

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FIGURE C-9-1: U.S. violent crime rate per 100,000, 1960–2021.

NOTE: The violent crime rate is the sum of reported homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated
assaults per 100,000 people in the U.S.
SOURCE: Figure adapted from James (2018) for years 1960–2016 and using data from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (2022) Crime Data Explorer for violent crimes for years 2017–
2021.

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FIGURE C-9-2: Incarceration rates by race, age, and education from 1960-2010.
NOTE: Data represent the percentage of each group experiencing incarceration in a given year.
Percentages were calculated using cohorts of births in five-year increments. Data on
incarceration come from 1960-2000 U.S. Census data and the 2010 American Community
Survey (ACS) from IPUMS.
SOURCE: Data from Neal & Rick (2014).
The population of adults in prison is largely male, with low levels of formal education
(the majority have less than a high school degree) and disproportionately Black, and to a lesser
extent Latino (Raphael & Stoll, 2013) (see Figure C-9-2). The increase in incarceration is
explained in large part by tougher sentencing laws. Lofstrom and Raphael (2016, p. 123)
conclude that “the vast expansions occurring during the 1990s and during the first few years of
the new century have bought little in terms of crime reduction but imposed substantial costs on
the sanctioned, their families, and their communities.” This suggests that most of the decline in
U.S. crime over this period can be explained by other factors, such as the aging of the
population, the waning of the crack-cocaine epidemic, a decline in blood-lead levels in children
following the elimination of lead from gasoline, and policing practices (Lofstrom & Raphael,
2016).
Juvenile Crime and Confinement

Like adult crime, juvenile crime has been declining over time from a high in the mid-
1990s through 2019. Unlike adult incarceration, however, juvenile confinement has decreased by
60% since 2000. This decline is primarily attributed to falling crime rates, though increasing
reliance on diversion and other alternatives to detention, as well as capping juvenile sentences,
may have played a secondary role.

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It is important to note that despite the decline in juvenile detention, youth are still
incarcerated in the United States at rates far higher than in nearly all other countries (Nowak,
2019). Moreover, while for all young people involvement in the criminal justice system has
fallen, Black, Latino and Native American youths are still significantly more likely than their
white counterparts to be arrested, referred to court, and placed in out-of-home facilities after
adjudication (OJJDP, 2022) (see Figure C-9-3).
FIGURE C-9-3: Rate of juvenile confinement by race/ethnicity, 1997–2019.

SOURCE: Data from OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book.
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/special_topics/ qa11801.asp?qaDate=2019.
Disproportionate Impact on Communities of Color

The declines in crime experienced since the mid-1990s were felt most profoundly in poor
communities and Black and Latino neighborhoods (Kneebone & Raphael, 2011). Cities with
larger shares of households under the poverty line and of Black and Latino families experienced
sharper declines in crime than did higher-income cities. This pattern is observed within cities as
well; high-poverty, high-minority neighborhoods have experienced the sharpest declines in crime
since the mid-1990s (Sharkey, 2018a). Individual victimization rates by income are not
available, but rates by race can be found in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
Between 1993 and 2013, the largest declines in violent and nonviolent victimization were
experienced by Black and Latino individuals.
But declines in crime have also come at a cost to low-income communities. Incarceration
rates tripled between 1980 and 2008, and the share of the adult population under criminal justice
monitoring more generally (probation, parole, prison, or jail) also tripled, with the result that

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three percent of the adult population in 2013 was being monitored or supervised. It is therefore
estimated that nine percent of children born between 1999 and 2005 had a caregiver in prison at
some point during their childhoods (Finlay et al., 2022). Policing has become more aggressive in
many cities. While some policing tactics appear to have reduced crime, not all have had that
effect. Policing tactics such as stop-and-frisk, for example, do not appear to have reduced crime
in New York City; instead, it appears that they have reduced the educational attainment of young
people most likely to be affected by frequent police stops (Bacher-Hicks & de la Campa, 2020;
Cullen & Grawert, 2016).
Overall, the increase in criminal sanctioning in the United States has been borne largely
by poor, Black, Latino, and Native American families. This has imposed substantial costs on
poor families, causing an increase in household debt from fines (Harris et al., 2010) as well as a
decline in earnings and household resources owing to incarceration (Comfort et al., 2016;
Johnson, 2009; Mueller-Smith, 2015). Research has documented strong correlations between
parental incarceration and children’s problematic behavior and depression (Wakefield &
Wildeman, 2013), leading to worse health, lower levels of education, and greater reliance on
public assistance later in life (Miller & Barnes, 2015). Causal evidence on the intergenerational
transmission of criminal justice involvement is mixed; some studies have found that children
whose parents were incarcerated are more likely to be incarcerated themselves (Dobbie et al.,
2018; Wildeman, 2020), while others have found that parental incarceration actually reduces the
probability of child incarceration (Norris et al., 2021).
Underlying Causes
What’s behind recent trends in crime and incarceration for adults and juveniles? The
divergence in those trends beginning in the early to mid-1990s, as crime fell but incarceration
continued to rise, suggests that the increase in incarceration is driven not by rising crime rates,
but by changes in criminal justice policy. Specifically, increasing bail amounts, mandatory
minimum sentencing, three-strikes laws, truth-in-sentencing laws, increased plea bargaining, and
longer sentencing more generally have all played a role in increasing rates of incarceration. State
and local expenditures on jails and corrections rose from $5 billion in 1977 to $30 billion in
2017, with an average annual cost per person in jail of $34,000 (Pew, 2021). Spending on jails as
a percentage of local spending is uncorrelated with state crime rates.
While incarceration during the 1980s may have played an important role in reducing the
crime that peaked in the early 1990s, research suggests that while crime rates also dropped
during the period that followed, that cannot be attributed to the increased incarceration that
occurred at the same time. Canada and Western European nations experienced similar declines in
crime beginning in the mid-1990s without increases in incarceration, and California, forced to
dramatically reduce the number of people imprisoned in the state, saw crime continue to fall
(Sundt et al., 2016). In addition to the studies reviewed in the main text, research has identified
other strategies to reduce neighborhood crime and violence:
• Mello (2018) reports that adding one police officer prevents 4 violent crimes and 15
property crimes.
• Reductions in lead pollution have been shown to have a causal impact on crime and
disciplinary infractions in school (Aizer & Currie, 2019; Grönqvist et al., 2020;
Reyes, 2007).
• Evidence on “proactive policing” methods like “focused deterrence” and “hot spots
policing” is analyzed in Braga et al. (2019a); and a review of the cost-effectiveness of

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these and other tactics (like community policing) as well as negative evidence on
“stop-and-frisk” can be found in the National Academies report on policing (National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2018).
• Braga et al. (2019b) argue that more effective and targeted policing could reduce gun
violence and that more community policing might help repair frayed relationships
between the police and residents of color in poor neighborhoods.
• Community efforts to reduce violence appear to be successful, according to Webster
et al. (2012), who evaluated the Safe Streets program in Baltimore and showed the
benefits of training local leaders to de-escalate situations where violence is likely.
• Safe lighting and environmental design has been shown to lower crime (Chalfin et al.,
2021; Cozens et al., 2005).
DIRECT-EVIDENCE INTERVENTIONS
Reducing Juvenile Detention
The committee’s policy idea to reduce most or all juvenile detentions and incarceration is
based on several bodies of evidence. Most importantly, juvenile detention and incarceration,
even for short periods of time and for both nonviolent and violent crimes, is likely to increase the
intergenerational persistence of poverty. Detention and incarceration have been shown to reduce
the likelihood that a young person will complete high school by about 10 percentage points and
increase the likelihood of incarceration in adulthood (Aizer & Doyle, 2015; Baron et al., 2023).
Additional evidence shows that youth build “criminal capital” when they are detained; that is,
their arrests after detention or incarceration are influenced by the types of crime committed by
the detained or incarcerated youth they interacted with (Bayer et al., 2009).
Furthermore, although impacts on public disorder are a very important issue, the
committee knows of no strong research showing that the incarceration of juveniles for low-level
offenses promotes public order. Causal studies show that the threat of juvenile detention or
incarceration has little deterrent effect. Since more severe sanctions do not appear to significantly
deter juvenile offending, it is likely that reducing reliance on prison for juveniles will not
increase crime, but may well reduce it (Cullen et al., 2011; Lee & McCrary, 2017; Mulvey &
Schubert, 2011).
It should also be noted that if incapacitation is the goal, there are many much cheaper
ways to achieve it. Diversion programs for low-risk offenders in adult courts have been shown to
reduce incarceration, increase future earnings, and reduce future recidivism (Mueller-Smith &
Schnepel, 2021). These results are based on a sample of offenders over the age of 18, but roughly
one-quarter of the sample is aged 18–22, and the impacts are largest for the youngest offenders.
Nationally, 25% of juveniles are diverted. National Institute of Justice’s Office of Justice
Programs rates juvenile diversion programs as “promising” based on two meta-analyses of
evaluation studies that find negative effects on reoffending, although one meta-analysis finds no
results (Schwalbe et al., 2012; Wilson and Hoge, 2013; U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). The
Adolescent Diversion Program has shown statistically significant reductions in youth reoffending
over multiple replication studies (Smith et al., 2004). The program relies on community-based
interventions with families and working with young people to identify their goals. Given the high

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numbers of juveniles detained or incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, there is scope for
expanded diversion.
However, diversion for juveniles must accord with best practices for supporting young
people who are diverted. According to Schlesinger (2018, p. 60), “current eligibility rules and
program requirements often lead to the de facto exclusion of youth of color from formal
diversion programs, while punitive responses to small rule violations produce sometimes
shockingly low completion rates.” High-needs youth, in particular, have struggled to complete
diversion programs. Research suggests that diversion programs for youth should provide needed
services in community and home-based settings free of charge and include only youth at high
risk of detention or incarceration (and exclude low-risk youth who would otherwise be released
on their own).
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides grants to
state and local agencies to support efforts to improve their juvenile justice system and support
delinquency prevention programs. To receive grants, states must demonstrate that they are in
compliance with the core requirements of the OJJDP, which include deinstitutionalizing status
offenders, reducing racial and ethnic disparities, and removing or separating all juveniles from
adults. However, funding for the OJJDP has declined significantly over time, from $565 million
in 2002 to $360 million in 2022. With less funding available to states, but significant monitoring
and compliance costs, some states have chosen to forgo OJJDP funding altogether. As of 2019,
48,000 youth were still detained, often for nonviolent offenses or before they had had a hearing,
which suggests that there is room for additional declines that would be unlikely to jeopardize
public safety. The reduction in OJJDP funding will probably stall progress in this regard.
Eliminating the detention of juveniles committing status offenses, technical violations, public
order offenses, and nonviolent offenses would reduce juvenile detention rates by 45% (for as
many as 13,380 of the 27,635 youth currently in such facilities).1
The committee disagreed about the precise implications of its recommendation. It
agreed that the evidence indicates positive impacts on juvenile offenders of moving from
detention and incarceration to proven monitoring, supervision, service, and programing
strategies, but disagreed about the potential for possible impacts on crime and disorder
(McCarthy et al., 2016; Shem-Tov et al. 2022). Thus, most committee members believed
that the above principle would eliminate all detention of juveniles for non-felony and
nonviolent offenses (and most detention for felony offenses), while others believed that it
would merely eliminate most such detention, and less for serious offending.
Reducing Offending Through Human Capital Investments Such as Becoming a Man

(BAM)
The committee identifies funding BAM so that it can eventually serve more of the
population of at-risk adolescent boys, which is estimated to range between 300,000 and 500,000
annually. This range is based on those at risk of not graduating from high school and/or of arrest.
The number of male high school dropouts (excluding those who had obtained GEDs) as of 2018
was approximately 300,000, based on a male graduation rate of 82% (Reeves et al., 2021). Half a
1
The remaining youth are in residential treatment (10,256), group homes (3,375), and adult prisons and jails
(4,535) (Sawyer, 2019).

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million male juveniles were arrested in 2019, the last full year before the onset of the Covid-19
pandemic (Puzzanchera, 2021).
Scaling the intervention to serve this population will likely be challenging, given the need
to identify appropriate partners for implementation, and must be done incrementally. It is
important that funding be made available and provided gradually, as the program scales up
appropriately over time.
Grants to Remediate Vacant Lots and Abandoned Homes
A possible grant program for neighborhood physical improvements would require

cities to use funds to clean up, improve, and erect welcoming fencing around vacant lots
or stabilize and treat the facades of abandoned or unsafe and deteriorating homes. Funds
must be used in high-poverty (defined, for example, by a Census-based poverty rate of
20% or more) neighborhoods with above-city-average rates of violent crime.
Jurisdictions would be allowed to partner with community-based organizations or provide
grants for low-income property owners.
Grants to Community-Based Organizations
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocated $350 billion to state, local, and tribal
governments to support recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic (U.S. Department of
Treasury, 2023). Many cities have partnered with local organizations to address violence, but
nonprofit growth in general (not just focused on violence) can decrease community violence
(Sharkey et al., 2017). The National Council of Nonprofits has developed principles for
distributing these funds, which include recommendations for appropriate (not prohibitive)
application, monitoring, and reporting requirements that allow smaller organizations to compete.
Existing ARPA money must be spent by 2024. Maintaining the level of funding to nonprofits
achieved through ARPA would avoid a contraction of nonprofit capacity and a vacuum in
services after this date.
Adopting Proven Policing Strategies
Although policing has been shown to lower crime, especially homicides, and can be an
effective means of reducing premature death and victimization, any efforts to increase or
enhance policing to reduce crime must consider the potential for strong negative impacts of
aggressive policing and frequent stops and searches of low-income and particularly minority
youth.
In the case of hiring additional police officers, the cost of each additional police officer in
the United States is about $170,000 (in 2022 dollars; Chalfin & McCrary, 2018); every extra $1
billion spent will generate approximately 6,000 officers and save 600 lives (Chalfin et al., 2022),
assuming that the crime-reducing returns to new officers do not diminish. Of course, the costs of
policing vary greatly across geographic areas, so the homicide-prevention gains would also be
greater in areas where the police cost less.

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Reducing Firearms-Related Deaths Among Children and Youth
The rise in firearm-related injuries has occurred against a backdrop of loosened gun
restrictions and increased gun ownership: Between 2007 and 2017, the number of guns owned in
the United States increased by one-third and now stands at 393 million (Ingraham, 2018).
INDIRECT-EVIDENCE INTERVENTIONS
A number of interventions that may be promising avenues for increasing

intergenerational mobility by reducing crime and the footprint of the criminal justice system still
lack strong evidence of their effectiveness. One set of interventions addresses parental and
caregiver interaction with the criminal justice system, which can negatively impact child
development through multiple channels, including, but not limited to, a reduction in household
resources available for child investment. Another set of interventions provides additional
supports to at-risk youth that have the potential to reduce offending and/or the negative impact of
interaction with the criminal justice system. More research is needed to establish whether these
interventions can increase intergenerational mobility.
Reducing the Negative Impact of Caregiver Involvement in the

Criminal Justice System
The high level of caregiver involvement in the criminal justice system among poor and
especially minority children has implications for child well-being. Not only does incarceration
reduce earnings during and after detention, but court fees and fines increase household debt,
further reducing the resources available for investing in children. While there is no evidence
estimating the direct impact of fines and fees on children, and evidence of the impact of parental
incarceration on children is mixed, the committee considered policy proposals that have the
potential to increase intergenerational mobility by reducing the disruptions in resources caused
by parental involvement with the criminal justice system. Policy proposals explored:
• Courts could consider the best interest of the child in pretrial detention and
sentencing decisions.2 Illinois, for example, has recently amended its state law to
mandate that courts consider how a decision to detain or incarcerate a defendant
will affect a dependent child. This “Best Interests of the Child Act” became
effective in 2020 and has not yet been evaluated.3
• Courts could consider financial obligations to children in setting court fees
and fines. Correlational research shows that low-income defendants are less able
to pay their court fines and fees (Bing et al., 2022; Sykes et al., 2022), and that
legal financial obligations are associated with prolonged contact with the criminal
justice system and an increased likelihood of technical violations for people on
probation (Link, 2021; Pager et al., 2022; Ruhland et al., 2020). O’Neill et al.
(2022) show that fines and fees are concentrated among residents of high-poverty
2
Lerer (2013) makes the legal case for why and how such considerations can be codified in law.
3
The law, Illinois Public Act 101-0471, can be found here: https://ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/101/PDF/101-
0471.pdf.

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and non-White neighborhoods, and that higher per-capita fines and fees in a
neighborhood are associated with a higher neighborhood poverty rate in the
future. Relief for parents with criminal legal debt would reduce families’ financial
stress and free up resources for investments in children.
Programs to Support At-Risk Youth: Mentorship, Community-Based Support, Restorative

Justice, Reduction of Financial Hardship, Reduction in School Shootings
• Choose to Change4 targets at-risk youth and provides them with community-
based, individualized support as well as cognitive behavioral therapy to help them
process trauma and develop healthy decision-making tools.
• Mentoring. Mentoring relationships provided through programs or occurring
naturally have a well-established potential to help reduce delinquent behavior and
juvenile justice system involvement among youth. A recent comprehensive
review of mentoring programs found evidence of potential benefits, but no
evidence yet of reducing juvenile justice system involvement (Hawkins et al.,
2020).
• Restorative justice in the juvenile justice system and schools. Restorative
justice is defined as a system of justice that focuses on the rehabilitation of
offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large.
Restorative justice has been implemented within the criminal justice system and
in school disciplinary settings (Shem-Tov et al., 2022).
o Restorative justice in the criminal justice system. Meta-reviews (Kimbrell
et al., 2022; Wilson et al., 2017) of the evidence on the overall efficacy of
restorative justice in the juvenile justice system concluded that overall, it
appears to lead to a “moderate reduction in future delinquent behavior
relative to more traditional juvenile court processing”; however, there are
large variations depending on the type of study and setting. The most
promising programs seem to be those that incorporate victim-offender
conferencing, arbitration/mediation, and circle sentencing programs. It is
important to note that not all restorative justice programs aim to reduce
juvenile detention; for some, the program offers an opportunity to remove
a conviction from a juvenile’s record among those at no risk of detention.
One such study is Make It Right, evaluated by RCT by Shem-Tov et al.
(2022), which has been shown to reduce re-arrest after six months by 44%
and after four years by 30%.
o Restorative justice in schools. Restorative justice is also being
implemented in schools as an alternative to suspension, again with
significant variation in effectiveness across programs and settings. A 2019
review (Fronius et al., 2019) of the evidence suggests that restorative
justice does in fact dramatically reduce suspension (note that only one
RCT was carried out [Augustine et al., 2018]). Few studies evaluate
impacts on other domains.
4
https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attachments/dd47d0bf9f85c9543e871d03b25fa1dcc8ee779f/store/cf2bff02b6f5
4df79d84cd3c2b20d7bd0ec398cdd7a4de0744e6e8860d6f/Choose+to+Change+Research+Brief.pdf

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• Eliminating fines and fees for juveniles. In 2016, Santa Clara County,
California, spent nearly $450,000 to collect $400,000 in fines and fees assessed
against juvenile defendants (Shapiro, 2019). In 2018, the State of California
abolished all new juvenile fees (but not fines). Eliminating juvenile fines and fees
has the potential to reduce the financial burden on low-income families
(Chambers et al., 2021) and decrease recidivism. Given the high costs of
collection, efforts are likely to be revenue-neutral in the short run and have the
potential to lower costs in the long run if they reduce recidivism.
• Reducing school shootings. School shootings are the result of suicidal thoughts,
despair, and access to guns, specifically assault weapons (Gius, 2017). Addressing
mental health (see Chapter 5) and gun safety is key to reducing school shootings.
Research is needed on the most effective ways to address both issues, and
findings should be distributed widely to state and local governmentn

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CHILD MALTREATMENT
This appendix presents details on the descriptive literatures on the causes and possible
consequences of involvement in the Child Protective System.
Descriptive Studies of the Possible Consequences of CPS Involvement
Many, but not all, children who are maltreated are referred to child protective services
(CPS), also known as child welfare services. Font and Maguire-Jack (2020a) compared children
who were reported to CPS—90% of whose families received SNAP—to children whose families
received SNAP but were not reported to CPS. They excluded the relatively small subset of
children who were reported to CPS and placed into foster care or group care. They found that
children and youth reported to CPS had lower rates of high school graduation and employment,
and higher rates of teen parenthood and incarceration, than youth without maltreatment
allegations (see also Casanueva et al., 2014). Although correlational, their study confirms that
low-income children involved with the child welfare system are at elevated risk of poor mobility-
related outcomes in young adulthood, making them a group at high risk of intergenerational
poverty. Using similar data and methods, Font et al. (2021) showed that child welfare
involvement persists across generations.
Mental health is likely an important mechanism linking child maltreatment with
intergenerational transmission of poverty (Chapter 5; Jones Harden and Slopen, 2022;
Yoshikawa et al., 2012). Moreover, substantial literature links a child’s history of maltreatment
with mental health challenges when they are older (Edwards et al., 2003; Jaffee & Maikovich-
Fong, 2013; Negriff, 2020; Southerland et al., 2009). For example, Jonson-Reid et al. (2009)
found that, even after controlling for family poverty, maltreated children were more likely to
receive mental health services than their non-maltreated counterparts.
The research literature provides conflicting evidence on whether associations between
maltreatment or child welfare involvement and both time in the system and later outcomes vary
by race and ethnicity. In their review of outcomes for children in the child welfare system and
differences by race, Barth et al. (2020; 2022) found that, once socioeconomic status and related
risk factors are controlled, Black children’s trajectories through the child welfare system are
similar to those of other racial and ethnic groups. An exception is Black children’s duration in
foster care, which has been found to be about 25% longer than that of children from other
groups, potentially attributable to their reduced likelihood of experiencing reunification and
adoption as permanency outcomes (Wulczyn, 2020).
In a large study of children in Mississippi, Yoon et al. (2021) documented that children
involved in the child welfare system had worse educational outcomes than those who were not,
specifically with respect to grade retention and chronic absenteeism. Further, they found that
Black male children who were involved in the child welfare system had worse educational
outcomes than either White males or Black or White females who were involved in the system.

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Mersky and Topitzes (2010) analyzed data from the Chicago Longitudinal Study, which
included 1,539 racial and ethnic minority children (93% Black; 7% Latino) from economically
disadvantaged backgrounds. They found that children with substantiated reports of maltreatment
had an increased likelihood of adverse education and employment outcomes during early
adulthood. Jonson-Reid et al. (2009) found that, even after controlling for family poverty, Black
youth who were maltreated were less likely to have obtained mental health services than White
youth who were maltreated, suggesting racial disparities in mental health service receipt that may
have implications for intergenerational poverty among Black children.
Descriptive Studies of the Possible Consequences of Foster Care Placement
Foster care
Research using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW) to
examine outcomes of young adults who had been in foster care as adolescents indicates that over
40% lived as adults in households with incomes below the poverty line, which exceeds the
proportion of youth living in poverty in the general population (Administration for Children and
Families, 2008). Further, while the authors found no differences in adult poverty by race and
ethnicity, they did find that young adult females who had been in foster care were more likely to
be living in poverty than males. On the other hand, employment levels (approximately 58%
working full- or part-time) of young adults who had been in foster care were similar to those of
the larger population of young adults.
A recent meta-analysis by Kennedy, Potter, and Font (2022) found that associations
between having been in foster care and lower employment and financial stability in adulthood in
the descriptive literature tend to be larger for Black youth than for White youth, although the
reverse is true for associations with poor mental health; associations between foster care and
educational achievement tend not to differ by race.
In a study comparing economic outcomes for Black, White, Latino, and Native American
youth who had been in foster care, which used data from the National Youth in Transition
Database (NYTD), Watt and Kim (2019) found more educational attainment but less
employment among Black than White youth who had been in foster care. White and Latino
youth had similar educational outcomes, while Native American youth displayed worse
educational outcomes than youth from other racial and ethnic groups. Native American youth
also exhibited a higher likelihood of homelessness and incarceration after emancipating from
foster care than other racial and ethnic groups.
Kinship care
Kinship care refers to foster care by a relative, such as a grandmother, aunt, or uncle. The
correlational evidence on the long-term poverty-associated outcomes for youth who have
experienced kinship care is limited and ambiguous. Some studies document increased mental
health challenges (Bramlett et al., 2017; Rufa & Fowler, 2016), whereas others point to enhanced
mental health outcomes (Ehrle & Geen, 2002; Gleeson, 2012; Winokur et al., 2018). Similarly,
some research suggests that kinship care is associated with criminal justice involvement for
youth (e.g., Ryan et al., 2010), while other research documents that kinship care may protect

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youth from criminal justice involvement (e.g., Cutuli et al., 2016; Winokur et al., 2008).
Noteworthy in this literature is that Black youth who have been in foster care have a much higher
likelihood of involvement in the criminal justice system than White youth in similar
circumstances (Barth et al., 2010; Boyd, 2014; DeFina & Hannon, 2013; Jonson-Reid et al.,
2009; Ryan et al., 2016; Watt & Kim, 2019). And while Black and White male youth who had
been in kinship care have been found to be at increased risk of delinquency, Latino males in
kinship care were at reduced risk of delinquency (Ryan et al., 2010).
Apart from criminal justice involvement, some studies suggest that placement in kinship
care (rather than placement with unrelated foster parents) confers benefits for children from
racial and ethnic minority backgrounds that include increased placement stability, safety, and
child well-being (Gleeson, 2012; Winokur et al., 2018). At the same time, however, other
research suggests that the lower socioeconomic status of kinship care parents (e.g., poverty, food
insecurity, reduced receipt of foster care payments; Fuller-Thomson & Minkler, 2000; Miller-
Cribbs & Farber, 2008; Taylor et al., 2020) potentially contributes to the poverty rates found
among young adults who have been in the foster/kinship care system (Harris & Skyles, 2008;
Miller-Cribbs & Farber, 2008). Research is clearly needed in these areas, particularly regarding
the family factors (e.g., poverty, service utilization) that contribute to these conflicting outcomes
(Coleman & Wu, 2016; Xu et al., 2021).
Background Sections for Interventions
Economic support policies

Theory suggests that parental income may impact maltreatment and child welfare
involvement through the two primary mechanisms discussed in Chapter 6. The resource and
investment model, which is rooted in economic theory (Becker, 1991), emphasizes the
detrimental consequences of material resource deprivation. Such limited resources may directly
constitute child neglect or may produce circumstances that prompt child welfare involvement,
such as insufficient resources to provide safe child care. The family stress model described in
Chapter 6 offers psychological and sociological perspectives (Elder, 1974; Masarick & Conger,
2017), highlighting the effects of stress produced by economic deprivation on parental and child
behavior and mental health. Family stress may lead to parental maltreatment behaviors or
produce mental health challenges that pose maltreatment risks or prompt child welfare
involvement.
Evidence presented in the text on the impacts of economic support policies on child
maltreatment was limited to areas with the strongest evidence—a child support experiment, the
Earned Income Tax Credit program, Medicaid, and food and nutrition programs. Here we review
evidence based on other economic support programs.
Studies of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary Assistance to
Needy Families Programs
A handful of studies (and many correlational studies, which are not reviewed here) have
assessed the effects of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) programs on child maltreatment. (Welfare reforms
enacted in 1996 replaced the AFDC program with the TANF program.) For example, Paxson and

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Waldfogel (2002) leveraged state-level variation in combined AFDC/TANF and food stamps
benefit generosity from 1990–96, as well as a host of other state-level factors, to examine the
association of benefit generosity with child maltreatment. They found that a 10% increase in a
state’s maximum combined benefit was associated with a 24% reduction in its foster care
caseload. However, they found nonsignificant associations of benefit generosity with both child
maltreatment reports and substantiations.
Some AFDC-related studies have found welfare-related work requirements to be
associated with fewer physical abuse investigations and foster care entries, work incentives to be
associated with reductions in overall and neglect substantiations, and time limits to be associated
with increased substantiations. Ginther and Johnson-Motoyama (2017) used state-level variation
data from 2004 to 2015 to examine the effects of TANF behavioral requirements on child
welfare caseloads. They found that severe sanctions (e.g., loss of benefits if a household does not
meet work requirements) are associated with greater maltreatment substantiations and foster care
caseloads, and that time limits of less than five years are associated with greater substantiations.
Consistent with this finding, Slack et al. (2007), using individual-level data from Illinois and
fixed-effects models, found that welfare sanctions without income supplementation from other
sources are associated with increased risk of a child neglect investigation.
Paxson and Waldfogel (2003) examined the impacts of the 1996 welfare reform on child
maltreatment caseloads using data from 1990 to 1998. They found consistent evidence that more
generous benefits are associated with large reductions in the foster care caseload, as well as some
evidence that strict time limits and sanction policies are associated with greater rates of
maltreatment substantiation.
Finally, in an individual-level analysis of Delaware’s randomized welfare reform
experiment, in which families were assigned to either the AFDC program (unconditional cash
benefit for families with children) or the TANF-like welfare program that included work
requirements, a family cap, and a 24-month time limit on cash benefits, Fein and Lee (2003)
found that participants assigned to the TANF-like program were more likely to experience
sanctions, have their case closed due to sanctions, and reach the 24-month time limit. This group
also experienced a large increase (on the order of 50%) in substantiated child neglect reports.
Notably, however, this study did not directly examine the effect of income or benefit level on
child maltreatment.
Minimum wage policy

The committee identified two studies that examined the link between minimum wage
policy and child maltreatment. Raissian and Bullinger’s (2017) state-level regression analyses of
change over time in the state minimum wage and in child maltreatment rates found that a $1 per
hour increase in the state minimum wage (an increase of 16% on average) is associated with a
9% decrease in child maltreatment investigation rates (marginally significant at p<0.10) and a
significant decrease in neglect investigations of 10%. However, Schneider et al. (2022), using
survey data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and behaviorally approximated
measures of child maltreatment (parental physical aggression, psychological aggression, physical
neglect, supervisory neglect) to examine the effect of a $1 per hour increase in the local (city)
minimum wage, found inconsistent results in terms of magnitude, direction, and significance of
the estimates depending on model specification (lagged dependent variable, city fixed effects,

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individual fixed effects). While the two studies provide inconsistent evidence regarding the
relation between the minimum wage and child maltreatment, Raissian and Bullinger’s findings
employ a stronger and more representative approach and also analyze the impact of the minimum
wage on child maltreatment rates rather than solely on self-reported parental behaviors.
Employment conditions
Some rigorous evidence points to the importance of contextual economic factors in
driving maltreatment and child welfare involvement. For instance, Raissian (2015) used variation
in unemployment rates caused by the economic recessions and recoveries in the United States
between 2000 and 2010 to examine the effects of county-level unemployment on county-level
maltreatment and child welfare involvement rates. She found that a one percentage point higher
unemployment rate was associated with a reduction in child maltreatment reports of just over
four percent. She argues that these results may reflect unemployed parents’ increased ability to
invest time in caring for children and to the context and stress of low-wage work. Additionally,
Lindo and colleagues (2018) found differences in the relationships between county-level
employment factors, including employment rates and mass layoff rates, and child maltreatment
rates, suggesting that increased unemployment among men predicts greater child maltreatment
while increased unemployment among women predicts lower rates of child maltreatment. Some
data limitations, particularly around the sex of child maltreatment perpetrators, which is
frequently missing in available data, complicate the interpretation of such findings.
Early home visiting programs

As reviewed in the appendix to Chapter 4, early home visiting programs have gained
popularity as a possible means of family intervention. It is important to recognize, however, that
individual programs differ substantially in terms of target population, program quality and
intensity, staff qualifications, and curriculum. As such, home visiting should be viewed as a
catch-all category of intervention, and it is not possible to determine whether home visiting, in
general, serves to reduce child maltreatment. Rather the focus must be on the effects of specific
programs.
The Chapter 4 review reached mixed conclusion regarding the overall efficacy of these
programs. Here the focus is on their possible impacts on child maltreatment. Two recent reviews
of home visitation programs (Duffee et al., 2017; Sama-Miller et al., 2019) and three recent
meta-analyses (Casillas et al., 2016; Gubbels et al., 2021; van der Put, 2017) yield several
general conclusions. First, eight early home visiting programs have demonstrated meaningful
reductions in child maltreatment through a rigorous randomized evaluation in at least one
sample. These include Child First, Early Head Start Home Visiting, Early Start (New Zealand),
Health Access Nurturing Development Services (HANDS), Healthy Families America, Nurse-
Family Partnership, Parents as Teachers, and SafeCare Augmented. Second, average effect sizes
are relatively modest. The mean effect sizes estimated in recent meta-analyses are: 0.141
(Gubbels et al., 2021; program range: 0.01–0.68), 0.21 (van der Put, 2017; program range: 0.07–
0.34), and 0.22 (Castillas et al., 2016; no program range provided). Third, effects tend to be
1
If the rate of child maltreatment reports in the comparison group is 15%, then an effect size of 0.14 translates
into a 10% rate (a five percentage point reduction) for the group receiving home visitation services.

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larger for programs that serve a larger proportion of racial and ethnic minority families (Gubbels
et al., 2021). Fourth, replication is relatively uncommon: many programs have demonstrated
positive effects in some sites or samples that have not been replicated in other sites or samples
(Sama-Miller et al., 2019). Note, also, that in addition to the programs included in these reviews,
a recent randomized evaluation of the Family Connects universal (communitywide) nurse home
visiting program for newborns in Durham County, North Carolina, using a sample of
approximately 5,000 families randomized at birth to program eligibility or a status quo control
group, found that treatment-group children had 39% fewer child welfare investigations than
control-group children (Goodman et al., 2021).
These optimistic findings are not consistent with those from the rigorous U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness
(HOMVEE) review of the effects of early home visiting models. The HOMVEE review focuses
on substantiated reports of child maltreatment (in contrast with other evaluations that have a
lower bar for maltreatment measures), child welfare measures such as custody loss and
placement outside the home, health care encounters that may occur specifically as a result of
child maltreatment, such as treatment for injuries or ingestions, and indicators of child
maltreatment on the Conflict Tactics Scale-Parent Child measure.2 Of particular note,
unsubstantiated child maltreatment investigations were excluded as a potential outcome.
Evaluations from 10 of the program models provided information on impacts of at least some of
these elements of child maltreatment.3
In contrast to results from the published reviews and meta-analyses cited above, the
HOMVEE review found more favorable than null effects in only two of the ten cases—Early
Start (New Zealand) and the Health Access Nurturing Development Services (HANDS)
Program. For the most frequently evaluated programs, the number of favorable and null results
were 20/188 for Healthy Families America (HFA)® and 7/19 for the Nurse-Family Partnership
(NFP)® program.
Early childhood education and care programs

A relatively small literature has rigorously examined whether early childhood education
and care program participation—including childcare subsidies, prekindergarten programs, Early
Head Start, and Head Start—may serve to reduce child maltreatment.4 Such programs have the
potential to reduce maltreatment by providing access to consistent childcare when parents may
2
For more information see:
https://homvee.acf.hhs.gov/outcomes/reductions%20in%20child%20maltreatment/In%20Brief
3
The programs were: Early Head Start Home-Based Option, Early Start (New Zealand), Health Access
Nurturing Development Services (HANDS) Program, Healthy Families America (HFA)®, Healthy Steps (National
Evaluation 1996 Protocol), Maternal Infant Health Program (MIHP), Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP)®, Parents as
Teachers (PAT)®, Promoting First Relationships® - Home Visiting Intervention Model, and SafeCare Augmented.
4
There are also a handful of descriptive studies in this area. For example, Maguire-Jack et al. (2019) found an
association of childcare subsidy receipt with decreased supervisory (but not other forms of) neglect. Klein et al.,
(2017), using a sample of child welfare-involved children, find that whereas participation in an early childhood
education and care program, in general, was not associated with the probability of a subsequent foster care
placement, Head Start participating children were 93% less likely to be placed in foster care, and children
experiencing multiple types of childcare were 7 times more likely to be placed in foster care, than children who were
not participating in an early childhood education and care program. Ha et al. (2015) find associations of unstable
childcare arrangements with self-reported measures of maltreatment.

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be working, reducing the time children spend with (potentially maltreating) parents (both of
which may reduce parental stress) and, in some cases, intervening directly with parents around
developmentally appropriate expectations and parenting strategies. At the same time, however,
teachers and childcare providers are mandatory child maltreatment reporters, such that exposure
thereto has the potential to increase reporting.
On the whole, findings from studies examining the impact of such programs on child
maltreatment have been inconsistent. Pac (2021), for example, in a state-level study leveraging
exogenous variation across states and over time in access to early childhood education and care
programs (childcare subsidies, Head Start, Early Head Start, state prekindergarten programs) on
child welfare investigations, found little evidence of the effects of these programs on
investigations overall or for abuse or neglect. Nevertheless, correlational studies of several
specific programs have yielded promising results. Zhai and colleagues (2013), for instance, used
data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and propensity score matching to
compare child maltreatment outcomes for children participating in Head Start with those for
otherwise similar children. They found that Head Start-participating children were 45% less
likely than those in parental care to be investigated for child maltreatment by age 5 but that the
likelihood of investigation did not differ between children enrolled in Head Start and those
enrolled in other (nonparental) forms of care.
The most rigorous evidence to date comes from evaluations of Early Head Start and the
Chicago Parent-Child Centers early education programs. Green and colleagues (2014) linked
child-level data on a subsample of children participating in the randomized Early Head Start
Evaluation (those in 7 of 17 sites) to state child welfare administrative data. Initial analyses
found that, between ages 5 and 9, Early Head Start participants were approximately 36% less
likely than control group members to have been involved with the child welfare system and had
38% fewer total child welfare system encounters. These differences were largely driven by
reductions in physical and sexual abuse investigations, whereas neglect investigations were more
likely among the treatment than control group. Effects were uneven across sites, however,
perhaps reflecting differences in program structure or geographic factors. Moreover, follow-up
analyses at age 15 found no treatment-control group differences in child welfare investigations,
substantiations, or foster care placements, perhaps reflecting fade-out of the initial effects.
The randomized evaluation of the Chicago Parent-Child Centers program (Reynolds &
Robertson, 2003) demonstrated long-term reductions in child welfare involvement. The Parent
Child Centers provide both preschool and comprehensive family support to low-income families
for up to six years. The evaluation found that between birth and age 17, participants were about
50% less likely to experience a child maltreatment investigation or substantiation than control
group members, with similar effects for abuse and neglect. The study authors note that key
elements of the program’s effectiveness include a focus on literacy, intensive parental
involvement and well-trained staff. Notably, some 93% of the sample in the Chicago Parent-
Child Center evaluation were Black children.

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RESEARCH AND DATA NEEDS FOR UNDERSTANDING AND AMELIORATING
This appendix includes the following: (1) a listing of all of the committee’s conclusions
about drivers of intergenerational poverty in Chapters 2-10, organized by chapter; (2) a listing of
the committee’s conclusions about research and data needs in Chapter 11; Table C-11-1, which
lists tax return data available to the Census Bureau and not available but needed for linkage for
statistical purposes, including research; and (3) Table C-11-2, which lists program records of
nontaxable benefits for accurate measurement of family income over time available to the
Census Bureau and not available but needed. The committee’s list of program and policy ideas,
supported by direct evidence, for interventions to reduce intergenerational poverty is provided in
Table 11-1 in the body of Chapter 11.
Report Conclusions About Drivers of Intergenerational Poverty
Chapter 2: A Demographic Portrait of Intergenerational Poverty

CONCLUSION 2-1: As measured by household income, rates of intergenerational
persistence in low-income status in the United States differ starkly by race/ethnicity. The
lowest rates are found for Asian children, followed by White and Latino children. In
contrast, persistence rates are very high for Black and Native American children. When
adult economic success is measured using individual earnings rather than household
income, mobility patterns are generally similar. Black women who grew up in low-
income households are an exception; their earnings in adulthood are just as high, on
average, as those of White women who grew up in similar economic circumstances. This
reflects the greater likelihood that they are the primary earners in their families.
CONCLUSION 2-2: Racial and ethnic disparities are an enduring feature of the
intergenerational trajectories of children, with Black and Native American children
experiencing much less upward mobility than White children growing up in the same
economic circumstances.
CONCLUSION 2-3: Children of immigrants from almost every country of origin—rich

and poor nations alike—experience greater intergenerational mobility than children of
U.S.-born parents. This immigrant advantage is larger for children from lower-income
households, and to a large extent it reflects the fact that immigrants are more likely to
settle in areas that offer their children better opportunities for upward mobility.
CONCLUSION 2-4: Children’s chances of growing up and escaping low-income status

vary substantially depending on where they live. At both a broad regional level and
within community boundaries, there are areas where low-income children tend to grow
up and join the middle class, as well as areas where generations are more likely to remain
mired in poverty. The spatial patterns of economic mobility vary by racial and ethnic

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group; nonetheless, disparities in economic mobility between Black and White children
persist even within neighborhoods.
CONCLUSION 2-5: After declining over the past 75 years, the fraction of children
doing better than their parents is now lower in the United States than in most other
industrialized countries. The most likely cause is that gains from economic growth have
been disproportionately enjoyed by higher-income families, which has made it even more
difficult for those at the bottom rungs of the income distribution to work their way up.
Chapter 3: Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Poverty
CONCLUSION 3-1: The challenges that Black and Native American families
face in propelling their children into socioeconomic security result from
contemporary and historical disparities, discrimination, and structural racism.
Behaviors and choices can also have major causal impacts on intergenerational
mobility. Many factors influence the behaviors and choices of Black and Native
Americans, including the experiences of historical violence, oppression, and
marginalization manifested through mechanisms of contemporary structural
racism. These factors are crucial in shaping the relevant determinants of poverty
over generations.
Chapter 4: Children’s Education
CONCLUSION 4-1: By imparting skills and other capacities valued by employers, the
education system is a key driver of upward intergenerational mobility for low-income
children. Large gaps in school achievement and completed schooling persist across
socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic subgroups, pose a key challenge for policy makers
seeking to reduce intergenerational poverty, and underscore the importance of education-
related interventions.
CONCLUSION 4-2: The vast U.S. education system is a potentially important factor in
enabling individuals to escape from poverty. However, it fails to equalize educational
opportunities for students across socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups. Research points
to many possible ways to improve the quality of educational experiences offered to
students in K–12 and post-secondary school settings, to create high-quality job training
programs, and to prepare young people for the labor market.
Chapter 5: Child and Maternal Health

CONCLUSION 5-1: Improving the health of children experiencing poverty has been
shown to improve economic status in adulthood as measured by future educational
attainment, employment, earnings, and reduced reliance on public assistance. Two
important mechanisms include access to family planning services and health insurance
coverage in pregnancy and childhood, both of which are key to improving the short- and
long-term health and economic outcomes of children. Yet many low-income families are
still without health insurance coverage or access to family planning services. This is due
in part to administrative barriers that reduce child Medicaid enrollment, the fact that

324

Medicaid coverage for pregnancy often ends two months post-partem, an Indian Health
Service that serves only half the eligible population, and declines in funding for Title X
over time. For access to mental health, additional barriers include lack of providers.
CONCLUSION 5-2: A child’s environment (pollution, stress, and violence) exerts a

strong influence on child health and development, with long-term economic
consequences. Federal regulation of pollution has led to significant improvements in
infant and child health and, ultimately, adult income. Due in large part to federal action,
disparities in exposure to pollution by income, race, and ethnicity have declined
significantly over time. While child mortality has been falling over time, firearm-related
violence is on the rise and is now the leading cause of death among all children in the
United States, with significant disparities by income, race, and ethnicity. Direct exposure
to violence or victimization resulting in premature death and disability, as well as indirect
exposure resulting in increased stress, anxiety, and depression with long-term
consequences, both contribute to the intergenerational persistence of poverty.
CONCLUSION 5-3: Today, children living in poverty are still more likely to reside in
households that experience food and nutrition insecurity than their better-off
counterparts. Evidence from the introduction of the SNAP program in the 1960s and
1970s suggests that food supplements for children in low-income families, both in utero
and during childhood, can contribute to intergenerational mobility, improving child
health and ultimately future adult health and earnings. Evidence on the impact of SNAP
from a more recent period shows similar effects on child health, at least in the short to
medium term, suggesting that long-term outcomes of enhancing child nutrition today may
be similarly effective in promoting intergenerational mobility. Barriers to take-up in WIC
and reduced eligibility among immigrant families limit the ability of children in the
United States to benefit from federal nutrition programs.
Chapter 6: Children’s Family Income, Wealth, and Parental Employment

CONCLUSION 6-1: When tax credits, SNAP benefits, and other noncash
sources are counted as part of income, the family incomes of children on the
bottom rungs of the income distribution have nearly doubled over the past 40
years, and rates of child poverty have been cut in half. The family incomes of
children on the middle rungs have grown a bit faster, while those of children on
the top rungs have grown much faster. Child poverty in the United States is
considerably higher than in other Anglophone countries when poverty is
measured by relative income position.
CONCLUSION 6-2: Low wages among less-educated workers (including lower-

skilled workers who are parents) over the last several decades in the United States
can be attributed largely to three factors: competitive market forces, such as
technological change and globalization, which have increased skill requirements
for middle-class jobs; structural problems, as limited information for employees
and the costs associated with changing jobs have strengthened the bargaining
power of employers and reduced the power of employees; and weakening laws
and institutions, such as federal minimum wages and unionization.

325

CONCLUSION 6-3: Earnings and employment gaps by gender, especially among less-
educated women, can probably be attributed in part to difficulties securing affordable and
high-quality child care. Gaps by race, especially between Black and other groups of men,
reflect differences in skill and experience, but also reflect discrimination and other
barriers to employment. Discriminatory barriers appear to be especially severe for
previously incarcerated men, particularly Black men.
CONCLUSION 6-4: Evidence suggests that income transfer programs during childhood
and adolescence have the potential to improve children’s educational and labor market
attainment, as well as their physical health, in adulthood. Studies examining policy
changes over the past 30 years provide the strongest evidence for intergenerational
impacts of expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which increases both
employment and income.
CONCLUSION 6-5: Higher parental earnings and employment among low-

income families can potentially reduce intergenerational poverty by raising family
income, increasing access to the EITC and other safety-net benefits, and—at both
the family and neighborhood levels—providing positive role models and access to
good jobs through social networks. Interventions such as the EITC that promote
employment and increase income improve children’s long-run outcomes;
interventions that promote employment in the absence of increased income do not
appear to improve child outcomes; and evidence on whether income
supplementation alone improves long-term child outcomes is inconclusive, with
some studies showing positive effects and others showing no improvement.
CONCLUSION 6-6: Controlling for income, family wealth is strongly correlated with
children’s adult outcomes. There is mixed evidence on the causal impact of wealth
transfers on children’s long-run outcomes. Black families, having significantly less
wealth than White families, are more likely to be both income- and wealth-poor, and
more likely to experience downward intergenerational wealth mobility. No causal studies
have examined differential wealth impacts by race.
Chapter 7: Children’s Family Structure

CONCLUSION 7-1: Single-parent families have become much more prevalent over the
past 50 years, though largely among parents who lack community college or four-year
college degrees. Rising rates of incarceration account for some but not most of these
trends. There is a strong association between growing up in a single-parent family and
low-income status in adulthood. Evidence on causal links between growing up in a
single-parent family and being poor as an adult is strongly suggestive.
CONCLUSION 7-2: While it appears that married, two-parent family structures may, in
fact, reduce intergenerational poverty, we lack direct evidence of policies and programs
that are capable of promoting such structures.

326

Chapter 8: Children’s Housing and Neighborhood Environments

CONCLUSION 8-1: The evidence on the effects of housing on intergenerational
poverty is nearly all correlational or drawn from longitudinal panel surveys. The
most consistent correlational evidence is on the effects of housing quality on
children’s short-term outcomes, with the strongest evidence on the long-term
effects of lead exposure. There is also correlational evidence on the negative
effects of homelessness, overcrowding, residential mobility, and very low or high
housing costs on children’s short and long-term outcomes.
CONCLUSION 8-2: Strong evidence shows improvements in low-income

children’s long-term economic, educational, and health outcomes when they
move to less disadvantaged neighborhoods. Less is known regarding which
characteristics of neighborhoods foster upward mobility.
Chapter 9: Neighborhood Crime and the Criminal Justice System

CONCLUSION 9-1: Crime victimization and exposure have negative consequences for
children’s development and long-term economic outcomes. Gun violence is now the
leading cause of death among American children. Low-income, Black, and Native
American youth are more likely to have these exposures. Rigorous research shows that
neighborhood violent crime can be reduced through community investments and
engagement, certain kinds of policing, and gun safety regulations.
CONCLUSION 9-2: While reductions in crime and victimization clearly benefit

children, some efforts to reduce crime also have the potential to harm them. Aggressive
policing has been linked to worse educational outcomes for youth, especially Black and
Latino youth. Juvenile detention lowers the rate of high school completion and increases
the likelihood of incarceration in adulthood. Declines in juvenile offending, stemming in
part from increased investment in children’s education and health, have lowered juvenile
detention rates, although significant disparities by race and income remain. Finally, the
rise in adult incarceration has increased the number of poor children with
parents/caregivers under supervision, reducing household earnings and increasing
household debt. As a result, fewer resources are available to invest in children.
Chapter 10: Child Maltreatment

CONCLUSION 10-1: Children who have been maltreated and (or) involved with child
welfare are at elevated risk of intergenerational poverty. However, high quality research
provides mixed evidence on the effects of foster care (occurring in only 3% of all child
welfare cases) on subsequent outcomes in adolescence and adulthood and almost no
evidence regarding the impact of child protective services more generally.
CONCLUSION 10-2: Causal evidence on factors leading to maltreatment and

child welfare involvement is limited, although most evidence points to household
economic hardship as elevating the risk of child welfare involvement and to
income support and income-support policies reducing risk for child welfare

327

involvement. Evidence on the likely favorable impacts of Medicaid and food and
nutrition program eligibility is also relatively strong.
Chapter 11: Research and Data Needs for Understanding and Ameliorating Intergenerational
Poverty
CONCLUSION 11-1: In many domains, such as education, there is a lack of strong
causal evidence about the effects of policies and programs on intergenerational poverty at
the needed scale. Sometimes this is because careful research has failed to establish long-
term effects. More often, the issue is a lack of data that would support estimates of long-
run program impacts.
CONCLUSION 11-2: For many reasons, it is difficult to conduct research on

intergenerational poverty and effective policies and programs to reduce it. Owing to the
scale of effort required, it is suggested that funding organizations (public and private)
consider joint grantmaking and the adoption of the following funding principles and
research best practices to maximize the likelihood of achieving valid results:
Funding principles: (1) prioritize strong research designs that provide causal estimates
of program impacts, (2) set aside funding, not only for rigorous, small-scale experiments,
but also for replications and long-term follow-ups of promising programs and (3) fund
research arms for specific communities that are at highest risk of intergenerational
poverty (e.g., American Indians on tribal lands, rural Black people).
Evaluation research can often be enhanced by: (1) the use of mixed research methods
(qualitative, quantitative including rigorous controlled experiments) to ensure to the
extent possible that all relevant attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes are addressed; (2)
multidisciplinary and diverse research and implementation teams to facilitate
communication with the communities being studied and ensure that experiments include
important control variables; and (3) the incorporation of community input through long-
term, two-way dialogue to gain informed participation of community members
throughout the life of a study and to tailor the research design for maximum effectiveness
in the particular setting.
CONCLUSION 11-3: Existing census, survey, and administrative data linked for
families over time and across subject domains—income, wealth, demographics, health,
education, and others—can facilitate cost-effective research and evidence building on
intergenerational poverty and socioeconomic mobility, looking both backward and
forward in time. The research and policy analysis community needs timely, cost-efficient
access to linked datasets with appropriate confidentiality protection.
CONCLUSION 11-4: At present, data for studying intergenerational poverty and related
topics are controlled by a variety of federal and state agencies and are difficult to link or
use for research or policy evaluation. Recent developments designed to ameliorate this
situation include: the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018, which
presumes access to federal data by statistical agencies for evidence-building and calls for
a streamlined process for researcher access to such data; supportive reports of the

328

Commission on Evidence-based Policymaking and other organizations; and innovative

projects at the Census Bureau and other agencies aimed at building linked datasets.
CONCLUSION 11-5: Significant challenges remain for access to linked datasets for
analysis of intergenerational poverty and related topics. They include technical issues
related to constructing and evaluating linked datasets; technical and policy issues
regarding new methods of privacy protection and their effects on data accuracy; making
access feasible in terms of cost, timeliness, and adequate budgets for the agencies linking
the data; and legal barriers (e.g., research and evaluation must be justified in terms of
agency benefits).
TABLE C-11-1: IRS/SSA Income Tax Data for Accurate Measurement of Family Income Over Time:
Items Available to the Census Bureau and Additional Items Needed for Data Linkage
IRS or SSA Form/ Items Currently Available to Census Additional Data Elements Needed
Years Covered Bureau
IRS W-2 Forms Wages, tips and other compensation; Information back to 1999 (from
(feed into SSA Social Security wages; IRS) and 1978 (from SSA);
DER—see below), Deferred wages—2005 to present employee deductions (e.g., for
1999–present health insurance); employer
contributions to health
insurance; other employer
benefits (e.g., moving expenses)
SSA Detailed Wages and salaries, including deferred Information needed for the CPS
Earnings Record wage contributions to 401(k), 403(b), ASEC for 1980, 1992, 1993, 1995;
(DER), 1978– 408(k), 457(b), and 501(c) plans for the ACS for 2005–2018; for the
present Self-employment earnings (sole SIPP for 1985–1989; for the
proprietor/ independent contractor, decennial census for 1980–2020
covered earnings only)
IRS 1040 Form, Marital status Rental expenses

1999–present Number/type of exemptions Unemployment compensation
Wage and salary income (taxable) Pensions and annuities
Dividend income Capital gains/losses
Interest income Deductions
Gross rent and royalty income (no Credits
expenses) Total tax owed
Total of wages, interest, dividends, Occupation (text field)
alimony, business income, pensions
and annuities, rents and royalties,
farm income, unemployment
compensation, and total Social
Security benefits
Adjusted gross income
Number of EITC-qualifying children

329

Whether filed Schedules, A, C, D, E, F, or

SE or Form 8814 (children’s
income)—2000-present)
IRS 1040 Form, Net earnings from farming
Schedule SE (self- Net earnings from nonfarming activities
employment), Taxable self-employment
1999–present
IRS 1099 Forms, Retirement, disability, survivors (except Capital gains (1099-B)
1999 (or year form Social Security, VA) (1099-R)— Dividends (1099-DIV)
initiated)–present limited information Government payments (e.g., state
Miscellaneous—receipt but not amounts tax refunds) (1099-G)
Interest (1099-INT)
Credit card and 3rd party network
transactions (1099-K)
Miscellaneous (1099-MISC)
Tax-deferred educational accounts
spending (529, Coverdell)
(1099-Q)
Retirement, disability, survivors
(1099-R)—additional
information
Unemployment compensation
(1099-U)
1098-T (educational financial aid)
IRS—Other Not available Form 1098 (mortgage interest
Common Forms payments)
Form 5498 (IRA contributions)
SSA Payment Social Security Payments (for use in CPS Approval for use in all surveys and
History Update ASEC and SIPP only) linkage projects
System (PHUS)
SSA Supplemental SSI payments (for use in CPS ASEC and Approval for use in all surveys and
Security Income SIPP only—not taxable, so not on any linkage projects
(SSI) Record IRS form)
SOURCE: Bee and Rothbaum (2019, Table 1) for items available to the Census Bureau (see also
Code of Federal Regulations, Title 26, Chapter F, Section 301.6103(j)(1)); the committee
determined the need for additional items.
TABLE C-11-2: Nontaxable Benefit Records for Accurate Measurement of Family Income Over Time:
Records Available to the Census Bureau and Additional Records Needed for Data Linkage
Program—Custodian Currently Available to Census Additional Records Needed

Bureau
Public Assistance (TANF)— Some states, some cash All states, all types of cash
States assistance assistance
Veteran’s Benefits—VA Some benefit data available for All benefit data for all approved
limited uses linkage projects

330

Supplemental Nutrition Available for some states for All states, all years
Assistance Program (SNAP)— some years
States
Women, Infant, and Children Available for some states for All states, all years
Supplemental Nutrition Program some years
(WIC)—States
National School Lunch Program Not available All states, all years
(NSLP)—States
Low Income Home Energy 1 state for some years All states, all years
Assistance Program
(LIHEAP)—States
Medicare/Medicaid— Available
DHHS/CMS
Housing Assistance—HUD Some housing programs All programs
available
Educational Loans— Not available National Student Loan Data
Department of Education System information
SOURCE: Bee and Rothbaum (2019, Table 1) for records available to the Census Bureau; the committee
determined the need for additional records.

331

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Reducing Intergenerational Poverty

FIND RELATED TITLES SUGGESTED CITATION

Greg J. Duncan, Jennifer Appleton

Committee on Policies and Programs to

Board on Children, Youth, and Families

Committee on National Statistics

Division of Behavioral and Social

Consensus Study Report

NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001

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Copyright 2023 by the National Academy of Sciences. National Academies of Sciences,

Printed in the United States of America.

Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023.

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Proceedings published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Rapid Expert Consultations published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,

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COMMITTEE ON POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO REDUCE

GREG J. DUNCAN (Chair), University of California, Irvine

RITA HAMAD (Consultant), James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine /

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BOARD ON CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND FAMILIES

JONATHAN TODRES (Chair), Georgia State University College of Law

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RICHARD V. BURKHAUSER, Cornell University

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Greg J. Duncan, Chair

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2 A Demographic Portrait of Intergenerational Child Poverty 32

3 Racial Disparities in Intergenerational Poverty 49

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Elementary and Secondary Education

5 Child and Maternal Health 87

6 Children’s Family Income, Wealth, and Parental Employment 113

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Wealth and Intergenerational Poverty

7 Children’s Family Structure 137

8 Children’s Housing and Neighborhood Environments 144

9 Neighborhood Crime and the Criminal Justice System 159

10 Child Maltreatment 174

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Consequences of Involvement with Child Protective Services

11 Research and Data Needs for Understanding and Ameliorating Intergenerational

APPENDIX A: Biosketches of Committee Members 204

APPENDIX B: Perspectives on Intergenerational Poverty 211

APPENDIX C: Appendices to Chapters 217