Baby's First Years (BFY), New York City, New Orleans, Omaha, and Twin Cities, 2018-2021

Résumé 0

The overall goal of the Baby's First Years study is to assess the causal role played by household income in affecting children's early cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development. Recent advances in developmental neuroscience suggest that experiences early in life have profound and enduring impacts on the developing brain. Family economic resources shape the nature of many of these experiences, yet the extent to which they affect children's development is unknown. The Baby's First Years project is the first randomized controlled trial to provide estimates of the causal impacts of unconditional cash gifts on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development of infants and young children in low-income U.S. families. Specifically, 1,000 recruited mothers of infants with incomes below the federal poverty line from four diverse U.S. communities are receiving monthly cash gift payments by debit card. Mothers were initially told the gifts would last for the first 40 months of their child's life, but we have secured funding to continue the payments for three additional years (i.e., for a total of 76 months). Parents in the high cash gift group (n=400 in the study sample) are receiving a cash gift of $333 per month ($4,000 per year), while parents in the low cash gift group (n=600) are receiving a nominal monthly gift payment of $20 ($240 per year), also for 76 months. In order to measure the impacts of the unconditional cash gift income on children's cognitive and behavioral development, we are assessing high and low cash gift group differences at ages 3 or 4 (and, for a subset of measures, we capture interim development at ages 1 and 2) in measures of cognitive, language, memory, self-regulation, and socio-emotional development. In order to understand the processes by which child impacts emerge, we are measuring a host of family process measures summarized in our pre-registration chart. Our four data collection points are referred to as: "baseline", "age 1", "age 2," "age 3" and "age 4." Additional information on the project, survey design, sample, variables, and Covid-19 pandemic adjustments are available from: The User Guides for Baseline, Age 1, and Age 2, which are included under the "Data and Documentation" tab The project's website: babysfirstyears.com The researchers request that all peer-reviewed papers using BFY Data: be submitted to PubMed https://publicaccess.nih.gov immediately upon acceptance for publication include the following citation to the data in their bibliography: Citation Magnuson, Katherine A., Noble, Kimberly, Duncan, Greg J., Fox, Nathan A., Gennetian, Lisa A., Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, and Halpern-Meekin, Sarah. Baby's First Years (BFY), New York City, New Orleans, Omaha, and Twin Cities, 2018-2021. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-25. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37871.v4 and include the following in their acknowledgements: Acknowledgement This research uses data from the Baby's First Years study. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD087384. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This research was additionally supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation; Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund; Annie E. Casey Foundation; Arnold Ventures; Arrow Impact; BCBS of Louisiana Foundation; Bezos Family Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill Hammack and Janice Parmelee, Brady Education Fund; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Silicon Valley Community Foundation); Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies; Child Welfare Fund; Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund; Ford Foundation; Greater New Orleans Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; Holland Foundation; Jacobs Foundation; JPB Foundation; J-PAL North America; Lozier Foundation; New York City Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity; Perigee Fund; Robin Hood Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Russell Sage Foundation; Sherwood Foundation; Valhalla Foundation; Weitz Family Foundation; W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and three anonymous donors. Principal Investigators Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison, lead PI social and behavioral science Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University, lead PI neuroscience In alphabetical order: Greg Duncan, PhD; University of California, Irvine Nathan A. Fox, PhD; University of Maryland Lisa A. Gennetian, PhD; Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy Hirokazu Yoshikawa, PhD; New York University Principal Investigators of Qualitative Substudy Sarah Halpern-Meekin, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison Study Management Lauren Meyer, Teachers College, Columbia University; National Project Director Andrea Karsh, University of California, Irvine; Administrative Director Study Co-Investigators Sarah Black, PhD; University of New Orleans William Fifer, PhD; Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Columbia University Medical Center Michael Georgieff, MD; University of Minnesota Joseph Isler, PhD; Columbia University Medical Center Connie Lamm, PhD; University of Arkansas Dennis Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln Victoria Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln Jennifer Mize Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln Timothy Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln Sonya Troller-Renfree, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University Study Data Collectors Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under a contract from the University of California, Irvine, running from September 2017 through July 2023. SRC data collection operations are overseen by: Stephanie Chardoul, Director of Survey Research Operations and Piotr Dworak, Senior Survey Specialist, Survey Research Operations. Contact To contact the study investigators, email them at info@babysfirstyears.com Website: babysfirstyears.com