Research project co-led by Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan shows
​poverty reduction impacts infant brain activity

IRVINE, Calif. (Jan. 24, 2022) — Principal investigators of an unprecedented research project, including UCI School of Education Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan, released a study demonstrating that after one year of monthly cash support for low-income families, one-year-olds exhibited brain activity patterns associated with the development of higher cognitive skills.
 
The research project – known as “Baby’s First Years” – is the first clinical trial in the United States to assess the impact of poverty reduction on family life and infant and toddlers’ cognitive, emotional and brain development. The study – published today in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored by Duncan – presents the project’s initial findings.
 
“This study provides the first causal impact of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on child brain development for the infants of low-income women,” Duncan said. “Most of us on the team were expecting to see impacts after several years of the payments, but not necessarily as soon as one year ­­– it is very exciting to detect differences in brain functioning so quickly.”

Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan

Under the direction of its lead neuroscientist, Kimberly Noble, Professor of Neuroscience & Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, the study measured brain activity among a sample of 435 one-year-old children who are participating in the “Baby’s First Years” project. The project enlisted 1,000 mothers with low incomes from postpartum wards in a dozen hospitals in four U.S. metropolitan areas: New Orleans, New York City, Omaha, and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
 
Shortly after they gave birth, participating mothers were randomized to receive either a cash gift of $333/month or a cash gift of $20/month. The gifts were disbursed on debit cards, and the mothers, most of whom are Black or Latina, were free to spend the cash gifts in whatever way they chose, no strings attached. The study found that infants whose mothers received $333/month had more high-frequency brain activity compared with infants whose mothers received $20/month.
 
“I hope that these findings help to promote a realization that poverty reduction can provide tangible and potentially important benefits for children’s healthy development,” Duncan said. “That knowledge should factor into policy discussions of the wisdom of programs that increase economic resources for low-income families.”

​The new study reports the initial findings on infant brain activity after the first 12 months of the poverty reduction intervention. The mothers will continue to receive the cash gifts, funded by charitable foundations, until their children are at least four years old.
 
Moving forward, Duncan said the research team will study whether the differences in brain development persist through age four and also lead to differences in children’s more general cognitive and behavioral development. Additionally, they plan to study which experiences were involved in generating the impacts on brain development – for example, how the mothers spent the money, or how the additional money might have changed parenting behaviors, family relationships or stress.

"I hope that these findings help to promote a realization that poverty reduction can provide tangible and potentially important benefits for children’s healthy development. That knowledge should factor into policy discussions of the wisdom of programs that increase economic resources for low-income families.”

- Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan

The team is currently drafting proposals to extend the work so that they can observe the children transition into traditional schooling at age 6, and to assess whether older siblings benefit from the cash payments as well. If impacts persist, Duncan said, they would like to follow the children into adulthood.
 
The interdisciplinary team – which, in addition to Duncan, includes professors from Duke University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Maryland and University of Wisconsin – began meeting weekly to plan the project in 2011.
 
More than two dozen organizations provide support for the project, totaling more than $20 million. This includes the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which, in 2016, awarded Duncan a $7.8 million grant to UCI for the work.
 
“I have very much enjoyed working with our interdisciplinary team of PIs as we have confronted and solved problems of pulling this study off,” Duncan said. “We began planning and meeting weekly in 2011, so it is wonderful to see our efforts bear fruit.”
 
To read the entirety of the newly released study, click here. To review a press release announcing the study’s findings, click here.

An economist by training, Duncan’s interest, he said, has always been children’s development and learning, and ways to make trajectories more positive, especially for kids with disadvantaged backgrounds. His other recent work focuses on how school-entry skills and behaviors influence children’s later school achievement and attainment and how increasing income inequality over the past several decades have affected schools and influence children’s life chances.
 
In 2015, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – at the direction of U.S. Congress – began a comprehensive study of child poverty, looking to identify evidence-based programs and policies that would reduce the number of children living in poverty in the U.S. by half within 10 years. The National Academies asked Duncan to lead the study’s committee. In its 2019 report, the Committee identified as promising a policy that would convert the existing Child Tax Credit into the kind of child allowance used in the Baby’s First Years experiment.
 
Duncan is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, Duncan received the Society for Research in Child Development Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy and Practice in Child Development. In 2014, he was named the Kenneth Boulding Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan speaks to The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019.