Lisa A Gennetian
Biographic Data
| ID | 109843 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa A Gennetian |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa A |
| FAMILY NAME | Gennetian |
| SIGNATURE | GENNETIAN L A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4639-7547 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 473 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 61 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The Impact of Unconditional Cash on Parenting Behaviors Among 4‐Year‐Old Children From Families With Low Incomes in the US
Net Worth Poverty in Childhood: Duration, Timing, and Educational Outcomes
Net worth poverty (NWP) is the modal form of poverty for American children, but how it is experienced across childhood and its associations with human capital accumulation are unknown. Using data from the 1999‒2021 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on a cohort of children followed from birth to age 20, this study measures NWP exposure and duration across the child's life course and relates NWP exposure and duration to high school gradua…
Cash to carrots: Testing food environment mediation of cash transfer effects on children's diet in the Baby's First Years Study
A Research Note on Unconditional Cash Transfers and Fertility in the United States: New Causal Evidence
As cash transfer policies have gained traction in recent years, interest in how financial resources could impact fertility has also grown. Increasing an individual's purchasing power with additional economic resources, such as those provided in unconditional cash transfers, might better enable parents to meet their fertility and reproductive goals, whether those goals are to become pregnant and give birth or to avoid or terminate pregnancies. In …
A framework and policy case for black reparations to support child well-being in the USA
Child-directed speech in a large sample of U.S. mothers with low income
Research on early language input and socioeconomic status typically relies on correlations in small convenience samples. Using data from Baby's First Years, this paper assesses the causal impact of monthly, unconditional cash transfers on child-directed speech and child vocalizations among a large, racially diverse sample of low-income U.S. mothers and their 1-year-olds (N = 563; 48% girls; 2019–2020). The monthly, unconditional cash transfers di…
Poverty reduction and childhood opportunity moves: A randomized trial of cash transfers to low-income U.S. families with infants
Monthly unconditional income supplements starting at birth: Experiences among mothers of young children with low incomes in the U.S
Recently, U.S. advocates and funders have supported direct cash transfers for individuals and families as an efficient, immediate, and non-paternalistic path to poverty alleviation. Open questions remain, however, about their implementation. We address these using data from debit card transactions, customer service call-line logs, and in-depth interviews from a randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash gift delivered via debit card…
Unconditional Cash and Breastfeeding, Child Care, and Maternal Employment among Families with Young Children Residing in Poverty
Poverty interferes with parents' breastfeeding, child-care, and employment options and ability to meet their parenting goals. This study-the first randomized controlled trial of early childhood poverty reduction in the United States-investigates how increased economic resources affect 1,000 low-income US mothers' breastfeeding, child-care, and employment practices and the ability to meet their intentions for these practices in the first year of t…
The effect of unconditional cash transfers on maternal assessments of children’s early language and socioemotional development: Experimental evidence from U.S. families residing in poverty
Economic disadvantage has often been associated with poorer performance on measures of early childhood development. However, the causal impacts of income on child development remain unclear. The present study uses data from the Baby's First Years randomized control trial to identify the causal impact of unconditional cash transfers on maternal reports of early childhood development. One thousand racially and ethnically diverse mothers residing in…
Net worth poverty and child Well-being: Black–White differences
Effects of a monthly unconditional cash transfer starting at birth on family investments among US families with low income
Evaluating Contradictory Experimental and Nonexperimental Estimates of Neighborhood Effects on Economic Outcomes for Adults
Although non-experimental studies find robust neighborhood effects on adults, such findings have been challenged by results from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) residential mobility experiment. Using a within-study comparison design, this paper compares experimental and non-experimental estimates from MTO and a parallel analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Striking similarities were found between non-experimental estimates based…
The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Parents' Psychological Well-Being
Improving the psychological well-being of parents who received the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) was not an explicit focus of that benefit program, but psychological effects may have been felt, given the positive income shocks generated by the credit. This article reviews academic research that is available on the CTC's effect on parents' psychological well-being. Some studies have found that the CTC led to reductions in reported levels of…
Net Worth Poverty and Child Development
The authors investigate whether net worth poverty (NWP) reduces children's well-being. NWP-having wealth (assets minus debts) less than one fourth of the federal poverty line-is both theoretically and empirically distinct from income poverty (IP) and is the modal form of poverty among children. Data come from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement on children ages 3 to 17 years observed between 2002 and 2019. The …
A Strength-Based Framework for Realizing Latino Young Children’s Potential
Hispanic children experience poverty at rates two to three times higher than white children. Latino households with children, in general, have high parental employment coupled with low levels of parental education and stagnant parental earnings relative to non-Latino peers. While many Latino children live in neighborhoods that do not have access to high-quality early education, Latino children, on average, are raised in a home environment that of…
Net Worth Poverty in Child Households by Race and Ethnicity, 1989–2019
OBJECTIVE: This study is the first to examine net worth poverty, and its intersection with income poverty, by race and ethnicity among child households in the United States. BACKGROUND: Scholarship on economic scarcity for children has largely concentrated on income deficits and thus leaves open important questions about wealth deficits. METHOD: Data come from the 1989-2019 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, on households with at least one…
Experiences of Hispanic Families with Social Services in the Racially Segregated Southeast: Views from Administrators and Workers in North Carolina
Light-touch design enhancements can boost parent engagement in math activities
Investing in Latino Children and Youth: Volume Introduction and Overview
Latino children; Latino youth; public policy; race and ethnicity; identity; public investment; social integration
Means-Tested Safety Net Programs and Hispanic Families: Evidence from Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC
Hispanic families have historically used means-tested assistance less than high-poverty peers, and one explanation for this may be that anti-immigrant politics and policies are a barrier to program participation. We document the participation of Hispanic children in three antipoverty programs by age and parental citizenship and the correlation of participation with state immigrant-based restrictions. Hispanic citizen children with citizen parents…
Mothers’ and Fathers’ Time Spent with Children in the U.S: Variations by Race/Ethnicity Within Income from 2003 to 2013
A housing mobility program's impacts on teen and young adult parenting
Reducing intergenerational teen births is important, especially among those facing economic, environmental, and health risks. Comprehensive programs addressing multiple social determinants of health are vital to reducing teen births
How Much of Children's Time in Nonparental Care Coincides with Their Parents' Time at Work
Nonparental care (NPC) for children before they enter kindergarten has had two primary purposes for American families since the start of the twentieth century: supporting parental employment and providing children developmentally enriching out-of-home experiences. Today's policy makers are increasingly expanding publicly funded opportunities for children in low-income families to experience center-based care. Yet parents' work commitments often o…
Income Level and Volatility by Children's Race and Hispanic Ethnicity
Objective: This study documents how income dynamics during childhood differ across racial/ethnic groups and among Hispanics by nativity, citizenship, and the English-language proficiency of households.Background: Income volatility has emerged as a distinct form of economic disadvantage that can impact family life and child well-being. Yet little is understood about how income volatility is stratified by race and ethnicity.Method: Using longitudin…
Structural and process features in three types of child care for children from high and low income families
From statistical associations to causation: What developmentalists can learn from instrumental variables techniques coupled with experimental data
In this article, the authors aim to make accessible the careful application of a method called instrumental variables (IV). Under the right analytic conditions, IV is one promising strategy for answering questions about the causal nature of associations and, in so doing, can advance developmental theory. The authors build on prior work combining the analytic approach of IV with the strengths of random assignment design, whether the experiment is …
One or two parents? Half or step siblings? The effect of family structure on young children's achievement
Family and individual predictors of child care use by low-income families in different policy contexts
The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Financial Instability: A Behavioral Perspective
We review recent findings regarding the psychology of decisionmaking in contexts of poverty, and consider their application to public policy. Of particular interest are the oft‐neglected psychological and behavioral consequences of economic scarcity coupled with financial instability. The novel framework highlights the psychological costs of low and unstable incomes, and how these can transform small and momentary financial hurdles into long‐last…
Intrayear Household Income Dynamics and Adolescent School Behavior
Economic life for most American households is quite dynamic. Such income instability is an understudied aspect of households’ economic contexts that may have distinct consequences for children. We examine the empirical relationship between household income instability, as measured by intrayear income change, and adolescent school behavior outcomes using a nationally representative sample of households with adolescents from the Survey of Income an…
Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families
Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child…
How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies
Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐…
Identifying the Effects of Income on Children's Development Using Experimental Data
Prior research suggests that poverty can be detrimental to low-income children's development. Is this relation capturing the effects of poverty or the effects of other characteristics of low-income families associated with poverty? Can low-income children benefit from increases in income? In this paper, an instrumental variables estimation strategy is used with data on nearly 900 children from a random assignment evaluation of a pilot welfare ref…
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Benefit Cycles and Student Disciplinary Infractions
Does the timing and frequency of program benefits influence student school outcomes? The poor may be especially vulnerable to income scarcity at the end of welfare program benefit cycles. Such scarcity may strain other aspects of family life and exacerbate children’s behavior problems. We use data from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and school disciplinary records to compare the incidence of disciplinary infractions at the b…
A tale of two methods: Comparing regression and instrumental variables estimates of the effects of preschool child care type on the subsequent externalizing behavior of children in low-income families
We apply instrumental variables (IV) techniques to a pooled data set of employment-focused experiments to examine the relation between type of preschool childcare and subsequent externalizing problem behavior for a large sample of low-income children. To assess the potential usefulness of this approach for addressing biases that can confound causal inferences in child care research, we compare instrumental variables results with those obtained us…
Means-Tested Safety Net Programs and Hispanic Families: Evidence from Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC
Hispanic families have historically used means-tested assistance less than high-poverty peers, and one explanation for this may be that anti-immigrant politics and policies are a barrier to program participation. We document the participation of Hispanic children in three antipoverty programs by age and parental citizenship and the correlation of participation with state immigrant-based restrictions. Hispanic citizen children with citizen parents…
Employment and the Risk of Domestic Abuse Among Low-Income Women
This paper uses data from 2 randomized evaluations of welfare-to-work programs-the Minnesota Family Investment Program and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies-to estimate the effect of employment on domestic abuse among low-income single mothers. Unique to our analysis is the application of a 2-stage least squares method, in which random assignment enables us to control for omitted characteristics that might otherwise confound t…
Maternal work hours and adolescents’ School outcomes among low-income families in four urban counties
We examine how changes in maternal work hours affect adolescent children’s school participation and performance outcomes using data from interviews in 1998 and 2001 with approximately 1,700 women who, in May 1995, were welfare-reliant, single mothers of adolescents living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty in Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia counties. Analyses control for a broad array of mothers’ characterist…
Patterns and Determinants of Paternal Child Care During a Child's First Three Years of Life
This paper uses retrospective child care data from the NLSY79 to examine the patterns and determinants of paternal child care during a child's first three years of life. We focus on two-parent families with children whose mothers worked sometime between the child's birth date and the child's third birthday. We find that father care is a fairly stable form of care; the average number of months that father care is used during a year is similar to t…
Income Level and Volatility by Children's Race and Hispanic Ethnicity
Objective: This study documents how income dynamics during childhood differ across racial/ethnic groups and among Hispanics by nativity, citizenship, and the English-language proficiency of households.Background: Income volatility has emerged as a distinct form of economic disadvantage that can impact family life and child well-being. Yet little is understood about how income volatility is stratified by race and ethnicity.Method: Using longitudin…
Paternal child care and children's development
The Effects of Time Limits and Make-Work-Pay Strategies on the Well-Being of Children: Experimental Evidence from Two Welfare Reform Programs
How an earnings supplement can affect union formation among low-income single mothers
Using data from an experimental evaluation in two Canadian provinces, we found that offering an earnings supplement to single mothers in place of welfare altered rates of marriage and cohabitation, but that the direction of the effects varied by province. Our findings suggest that research on the relationship between women’s economic well-being and marital decisions at the national level is likely to mask important variation at the local level. A…
Net Worth Poverty and Child Development
The authors investigate whether net worth poverty (NWP) reduces children's well-being. NWP-having wealth (assets minus debts) less than one fourth of the federal poverty line-is both theoretically and empirically distinct from income poverty (IP) and is the modal form of poverty among children. Data come from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement on children ages 3 to 17 years observed between 2002 and 2019. The …
Meeting the basic needs of children: Does income matter
Welfare Policies and Domestic Abuse among Single Mothers: Experimental Evidence from Minnesota
This article examines the effects on domestic abuse of a pilot welfare program that took place in urban and rural counties of Minnesota from 1994 to 1998. Like many other random assignment evaluations of welfare programs, this pilot program was not designed to explicitly test the effects of special provisions on victims of domestic abuse. Yet in urban counties, the Minnesota program increased employment and reduced domestic abuse among single-mot…
Monthly unconditional income supplements starting at birth: Experiences among mothers of young children with low incomes in the U.S
Recently, U.S. advocates and funders have supported direct cash transfers for individuals and families as an efficient, immediate, and non-paternalistic path to poverty alleviation. Open questions remain, however, about their implementation. We address these using data from debit card transactions, customer service call-line logs, and in-depth interviews from a randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash gift delivered via debit card…
Effects of a monthly unconditional cash transfer starting at birth on family investments among US families with low income
The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Parents' Psychological Well-Being
Improving the psychological well-being of parents who received the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) was not an explicit focus of that benefit program, but psychological effects may have been felt, given the positive income shocks generated by the credit. This article reviews academic research that is available on the CTC's effect on parents' psychological well-being. Some studies have found that the CTC led to reductions in reported levels of…
Succeeding Generations: On the Effects of Investments in Children
Child Poverty and Deprivation in the Industrialized Countries, 1945-1995
The authors in this volume utilize a common analytical framework to evaluate how economic, family structure, and public policy changes affected the well-being of children in the industrialized countries in the West and the East from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1990s. Throughout the industrialized world, the living standards and social well-being of children improved remarkably over these five decades. But the quarter-century 'golde…
Patterns and Determinants of Paternal Child Care During a Child's First Three Years of Life
This paper uses retrospective child care data from the NLSY79 to examine the patterns and determinants of paternal child care during a child's first three years of life. We focus on two-parent families with children whose mothers worked sometime between the child's birth date and the child's third birthday. We find that father care is a fairly stable form of care; the average number of months that father care is used during a year is similar to t…
Family and individual predictors of child care use by low-income families in different policy contexts
Welfare Policies and Domestic Abuse among Single Mothers: Experimental Evidence from Minnesota
This article examines the effects on domestic abuse of a pilot welfare program that took place in urban and rural counties of Minnesota from 1994 to 1998. Like many other random assignment evaluations of welfare programs, this pilot program was not designed to explicitly test the effects of special provisions on victims of domestic abuse. Yet in urban counties, the Minnesota program increased employment and reduced domestic abuse among single-mot…
The Effects of Time Limits and Make-Work-Pay Strategies on the Well-Being of Children: Experimental Evidence from Two Welfare Reform Programs
How an earnings supplement can affect union formation among low-income single mothers
Using data from an experimental evaluation in two Canadian provinces, we found that offering an earnings supplement to single mothers in place of welfare altered rates of marriage and cohabitation, but that the direction of the effects varied by province. Our findings suggest that research on the relationship between women’s economic well-being and marital decisions at the national level is likely to mask important variation at the local level. A…
How an Earnings Supplement Can Affect Union Formation among Low-Income Single Mothers
Using data from an experimental evaluation in two Canadian provinces, we found that offering an earnings supplement to single mothers in place of welfare altered rates of marriage and cohabitation, but that the direction of the effects varied by province. Our findings suggest that research on the relationship between women's economic well-being and marital decisions at the national level is likely to mask important variation at the local level. A…
Identifying the Effects of Income on Children's Development Using Experimental Data
Prior research suggests that poverty can be detrimental to low-income children's development. Is this relation capturing the effects of poverty or the effects of other characteristics of low-income families associated with poverty? Can low-income children benefit from increases in income? In this paper, an instrumental variables estimation strategy is used with data on nearly 900 children from a random assignment evaluation of a pilot welfare ref…
How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies
Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐…
Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families
Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child…
The effects of a Minnesota Welfare Reform Program on marital stability six years later
Child Care Assistance Policies Can Affect the Use of Center-Based Care for Children in Low-Income Families
This article examines the effects of 13 experimental welfare and employment programs on single parents' use of different types of child care for toddlers, preschool-age, and young school-age children. Policies designed to increase employment (e.g., earnings supplements and mandated participation) did so, and consequently increased parents' use of nonmaternal child care. This study finds that only programs with policies designed to increase famili…
One or two parents? Half or step siblings? The effect of family structure on young children's achievement
Paternal child care and children's development
Special Reviewers
Employment and the Risk of Domestic Abuse Among Low-Income Women
This paper uses data from 2 randomized evaluations of welfare-to-work programs-the Minnesota Family Investment Program and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies-to estimate the effect of employment on domestic abuse among low-income single mothers. Unique to our analysis is the application of a 2-stage least squares method, in which random assignment enables us to control for omitted characteristics that might otherwise confound t…
Child Care Subsidies and Employment Behavior Among Very‐Low‐Income Populations in Three States
Using merged administrative data from welfare reform evaluations in three states, we estimate the effects of child care subsidy use on the length of time it takes for a welfare applicant to move into substantial employment. Findings show that the use of a child care subsidy during an unemployed or marginally employed spell of welfare receipt is associated with between a 0.6 and 1.7 quarter (or 11% to 34%) reduction in the time to substantial empl…
Structural and process features in three types of child care for children from high and low income families
Maternal work hours and adolescents’ School outcomes among low-income families in four urban counties
We examine how changes in maternal work hours affect adolescent children’s school participation and performance outcomes using data from interviews in 1998 and 2001 with approximately 1,700 women who, in May 1995, were welfare-reliant, single mothers of adolescents living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty in Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia counties. Analyses control for a broad array of mothers’ characterist…
Effects of Employment‐Based Programs on Families by Prior Levels of Disadvantage
This study examines how welfare and employment policies affect subpopulations of low-income families that have different levels of initial disadvantage. Education, prior earnings, and welfare receipt are used to measure disadvantage. The analysis of data from experiments suggests that employment-based programs have no effects on economic well-being among the least-disadvantaged low-income, single-parent families, but they have positive effects on…
From statistical associations to causation: What developmentalists can learn from instrumental variables techniques coupled with experimental data
In this article, the authors aim to make accessible the careful application of a method called instrumental variables (IV). Under the right analytic conditions, IV is one promising strategy for answering questions about the causal nature of associations and, in so doing, can advance developmental theory. The authors build on prior work combining the analytic approach of IV with the strengths of random assignment design, whether the experiment is …
Racial/Ethnic Differences in Effects of Welfare Policies on Early School Readiness and Later Achievement
This study examined whether the effects of employment-based policies on children's math and reading achievement differed for African American, Latino and Caucasian children of welfare receiving parents, and if so, why. Two kinds of employment policies were examined: education-first programs with an emphasis on adult education and job training; and work-first programs with an emphasis on immediate employment. With data from two- and five-year foll…
Meeting children's basic needs: Introduction
Meeting the basic needs of children: Does income matter
Psychology (44 works) · Economics (43 works) · Economic growth (28 works) · Demographic economics (26 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (25 works) · Medicine (23 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Political science (20 works) · Developmental psychology (19 works)