Does Money Affect Children's Outcomes? An update
Does money affect children's outcomes? A systematic review
Dr Kitty Stewart talks about the results of a recent systematic review funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which examines the evidence on whether household financial resources have a causal effect on children's health, cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Watch the video...
It is well-known that children from lower income households tend to have worse
outcomes than their better-off peers, however it is often difficult to determine
whether these inequalities are due to the effects of low income itself or
whether they are explained by other associated factors such as parental
education. This is an important question to inform which policy solutions are
likely to be effective in narrowing inequalities in childhood and increasing
social mobility.
This report, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, reviews the causal evidence on whether or not money itself
matters for children’s development. It provides an update with the most recent
high quality evidence to the
original review published in 2013. Since then the evidence has
almost doubled, now including 61 studies from OECD and EU countries.
These studies use randomised controlled trials, quasi-experiments and
longitudinal data to isolate the effect of income itself. The findings from this
report provide further strong evidence that money
itself is important for children’s cognitive development, physical
health and social and behavioural development. Money is also important for
children’s home environment and mothers’ mental health, both of which are
significant for child development.
The appendices from the paper are available to download (PDF files) separately at the following links:
Appendix Table 2: List of all studies, grouped by
‘case’ or dataset, with overall classification of results.
Appendix 3: Summary tables of studies by outcome
Table A1:
Studies examining the effect of
income on children’s cognitive and educational outcomes
Table A2:
Studies examining the effect of
income on children’s social, emotional and behavioural outcomes
Table A3:
Studies examining the effect of
income on children’s physical health
Table A4:
Studies examining the effect of
income on intermediate outcomes (potential mechanisms)