Does Money Affect Children’s Outcomes? An update

Kerris Cooper and Kitty Stewart

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This report provides an update to Does Money Affect Children’s Outcomes?: A Systematic Review, published in October 2013. Using systematic search approaches, we review the literature examining the relationship between household financial resources and children’s outcomes, focusing on OECD countries and on the last fifty years. We include studies looking at children’s health, cognitive development and social, emotional and behavioural development, as well as studies on relevant intermediate outcomes, including the home environment and maternal mental health and health behaviours. Studies are only included if they use methods that allow us to reach conclusions about causal relationships: this includes randomised controlled experiments, quasi-experimental situations, and longitudinal studies tracking both financial resources and outcomes over time. The update adds 27 new studies to the 34 in the original review, and slightly expands the country coverage, although the evidence base remains heavily US-focused. The studies provide strong evidence that income has causal effects on a wide range of children’s outcomes, especially in households on low incomes to begin with. We conclude that reducing income poverty can be expected to have a significant impact on children’s environment and on their development.

Keywords: poverty; income; disadvantage; child development; children's outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 H53 I31 I32 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2017-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103494/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103494

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().