American Economic Review Vol. 108 No. 3 2018

How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?

Randall Akee¹; William Copeland²; E. Jane Costello²; Emilia Simeonova³

¹ UCLA Department of Public Policy, 3250 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (email: ) · ² Center for Developmental Epidemiology, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Box 3454, Durham, NC 27710 (email: ) · ³ The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, 100 International Drive, Baltimore, MD 21202 (email: )

Abstract

We examine the effects of a quasi-experimental unconditional household income transfer on child emotional and behavioral health and personality traits. Using longitudinal data, we find that there are large beneficial effects on children's emotional and behavioral health and personality traits during adolescence. We find evidence that these effects are most pronounced for children who start out with the lowest initial endowments. The income intervention also results in improvements in parental relationships which we interpret as a potential mechanism behind our findings.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20160133

Volume

108

Issue

3

Pages

775-827

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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