A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) of...

Unconditional Cash Transfers to Low-income, New Mothers in the US (the Baby’s First Years Study)

Reviewed

Early Childhood ,  Poverty Reduction
Accurately reported

NBER (May 2025) posted new findings from the Baby’s First Years RCT, studying the effects of providing unconditional cash transfers to low-income, new mothers in the US. This high-quality RCT found no impacts on any of the study’s primary child development outcomes at the four-year follow-up.

Developmental differences between children growing up in poverty and their higher-income peers are frequently reported. However, the extent to which such differences are caused by differences in family income is unclear. To study the causal role of income on children’s development, the Baby’s First Years randomized control trial provided families with monthly unconditional cash transfers. One thousand racially and ethnically diverse mothers with incomes below the U.S. federal poverty line were recruited from postpartum wards in 2018-19, and randomized to receive either $333/month or $20/month for the first several years of their children’s lives.  After the first four years of the intervention (n=891), we find no statistically significant impacts of the cash transfers on four preregistered primary outcomes (language, executive function, social-emotional problems, and high-frequency brain activity) nor on three secondary outcomes (visual processing/spatial perception, pre-literacy, maternal reports of developmental diagnoses).  Possible explanations for these results are discussed.

Full Study Report

We have no suggested revisions to the study abstract.

No-Spin’s Study Overview

The Baby’s First Years study – a high-quality RCT examining the effects of providing unconditional cash transfers to low-income, new mothers in the US – finds no impacts on any of its primary child development outcomes at the four-year follow-up.

Program and Study Design:

  • The study randomly assigned 1,003 mothers with newborn children in four US cities to (i) a treatment group that received a large unconditional cash gift of $333 per month, or $4,000 per year, for approximately six years; or (ii) a control group that received a much smaller cash transfer of $20 per month, or $240 per year, over the same time period.
  • The treatment group’s annual gift amounted to 18% of the average household’s yearly income at study entry ($21,800).
  • Mothers in the sample averaged 27 years of age and 12 years of education. 42% were Black, 41% were Hispanic, and 38% reported living with the baby’s biological father at the time of birth.
  • Based on careful review, this was a high-quality RCT (e.g., baseline balance, preregistered analyses, use of well-established tests of child development outcomes, moderate attrition for all primary outcomes except one – brain activity)

Findings:

  • The study found no discernible impacts on any of the study’s four primary child development outcomes, measured four years after program entry (i.e., child age 4): language, executive function, social-emotional development, and resting high-frequency brain activity. The effect sizes were close to zero.
  • The study earlier reported no discernible impacts on four other primary outcomes, measured after three years: child overall health and sleep (link) and maternal concern for language delay and behavioral and social-emotional problems (link).

Comment:

  • The study is ongoing and will report on longer-term child and family outcomes in the future.
  • Disclosure: Arnold Ventures, which funds No-Spin Evidence Review, helped fund this study.

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