Will Giving a Child $4,000 Make Them Smarter?

We now know that poverty not only reduces cognitive bandwidth and encourages short-term thinking; it's also bad for brain development in children. But what if the opposite is also true? Would giving a kid straight cash make him smarter? Could it really be that simple?

For economist Greg Duncan, that’s the million dollar question. Thanks to a research prize from the Jacobs Foundation in Switzerland, he now has exactly one million Swiss francs (about $1.09 million) to find an answer.

The University of California Irvine professor will use the money to provide a randomized group of a thousand low-income single mothers with newborns $4,000 annually for three years. A control group will receive a smaller amount.

While the amount of money is by no means life-altering, it’s enough to make a material difference. Any reduction of stress, such as having clean diapers or better access to nutrition, could have compounding effects at a pivotal period of a child’s growth when “the architecture of the brain” is established. There is always the risk that the child's parents misuse the money. In an unstable household, or if drug use is present, the funds could even make things worse. Finding out what exactly will happen is the whole point.

Duncan, an expert in child poverty, hopes to analyze the effects of that no-strings-attached stimulus on early neurological development. Could there be a direct link between poverty reduction and brain development in young children? Upward mobility is a fundamental tenet of the American Dream, but Duncan’s previous work indicates a developmental gap for the poor that becomes entrenched by the age of five. Once a child falls behind, it’s unlikely they will ever catch up.

“Low-income children enter kindergarten far behind high-income children in terms of concrete literacy and math skills, and they have more difficulty paying attention in class,” the UCI economics professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences said in an announcement. “My research seeks a better understanding of why this is the case.”

The experiment, which will enlist the help of neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, and economists, is set to launch in 2015, arriving at a time when public education is under intense scrutiny and inequality relentlessly widens.

“We’ve discovered a widening gap in the school attainments of children over the past 40 years, with test scores and college graduation rates rising sharply for high-income children but changing very little for lower-income children,” Duncan said. “America has lost its leadership among high-income countries in educating children. With time, this threatens America’s economic prosperity.”

Education is one thing, though it’s still the best barometer of a child’s future success. Learning is another. Duncan hopes to determine whether or not a timely cash injection can improve a child’s capacity to be educated, before it’s too late.

@sfnuop