ReviewAnnual review of psychology2017
Moving Beyond Correlations in Assessing the Consequences of Poverty.
Review in Annual review of psychology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 108 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
108 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The association between socioeconomic disadvantage and children's working memory abilities: A systematic review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2021Pooled it
- Algorithmic bias in social research: A meta-analysis.PloS one · 2020Pooled it
- Improving the education and wellbeing of student parents.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Trial
- Longitudinal changes in quality of life and psychosocial problems of primary school children in a deprived urban neighborhood over the course of a school-based integrated approach.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2023Trial
- Income-driven socioeconomic status and presenting illness severity in children with acute respiratory failure.Research in nursing & health · 2021Trial
- Psychosocial deprivation and receptive language ability: a two-sample study.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2020Trial
- Penny for your thoughts: A review and proposed model of socioeconomic status, working memory and worry.The British journal of developmental psychology · 2026Review
- Individual and Interactive Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Household Income on Adolescent Depression and Anxiety Symptoms.Research in nursing & health · 2026Article
- Effects of a randomized controlled trial of unconditional cash transfers on epigenetic measures of ageing and cognition in children and mothers.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic factors, error positivity, and performance monitoring in children.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Social Vulnerability and Structural Determinants of Child and Adolescent Well-Being in Europe: A Longitudinal Cross-National Analysis Using Eurostat Data (2017-2023).Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Attentional control as a double-edged sword: Distractor processing and its potential benefits in individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Caregiver discomfort in response to children's emotion displays.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Maternal caregiving burdens and child well-being in an urban informal settlement: an intersectional study of marginalized caste mothers in Chennai, India.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2026Article
- "When I Can Make Them Smile": Cash Transfers and the Joys of Mothering in the Context of Poverty.Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management] · 2026Article
- Social Determinants of Health, the developing brain, and risk and resilience for psychopathology.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Child Health Research Using linked Multi-domain Canadian Administrative Data: A Scoping Review.International journal of population data science · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic and maternal mental health factors associated with the parenting and development of children in an early childhood promotion program: analysis via structural equation modeling.BMC public health · 2025Article
- A systematic review of stress-adapted skills and hidden talents in individuals who faced early adversity.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Effect of family socio-economic status on subjective well-being among Norwegian adolescents: Mediation and moderation effects by general self-efficacy from a gendered perspective.BMC public health · 2025Article
48 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In the United States, does growing up in a poor household cause negative developmental outcomes for children? Hundreds of studies have documented statistical associations between family income in childhood and a host of outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Many of these studies have used correlational evidence to draw policy conclusions regarding the benefits of added family income for children, in particular children in families with incomes below the poverty line. Are these conclusions warranted? After a review of possible mechanisms linking poverty to negative childhood outcomes, we summarize the evidence for income's effects on children, paying particular attention to the strength of the evidence and the timing of economic deprivation. We demonstrate that, in contrast to the nearly universal associations between poverty and children's outcomes in the correlational literature, impacts estimated from social experiments and quasi-experiments are more selective. In particular, these stronger studies have linked increases in family income to increased school achievement in middle childhood and to greater educational attainment in adolescence and early adulthood. There is no experimental or quasi-experimental evidence in the United States that links child outcomes to economic deprivation in the first several years of life. Understanding the nature of socioeconomic influences, as well as their potential use in evidence-based policy recommendations, requires greater attention to identifying causal effects.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.