Why It Is Important

It has long been known that relative to non-poor children, children who grow up in poverty are at a substantially higher risk of experiencing poverty, chronic health problems, and psychological distress in adulthood. Understanding the full range of mechanisms that underlie the inter-generational transmission of poverty and its consequences is key to the development of policies that successfully help children achieve their long-term potential, and to reducing the cycle of poverty.

Our Approach

Our goal is to bring together expert faculty and graduate students from the departments of Psychology, Economics, and Human Ecology, to produce a comprehensive research program that focuses on understanding the full range of impacts experienced by children whose families experience economic hardship and chronic disadvantage. Moreover, we aim to understand how these effects ultimately translate into adult well-being.  Regular discussions, informal seminars, and graduate training sessions aid in disciplinary translation and in building a richer interdisciplinary understanding of the myriad of ways that economic hardship affects children’s life chances.

Goals

• Produce research that contributes to the development of effective social policy
• Create a network of researchers on campus who are able to more fully incorporate relevant knowledge/approaches coming out of other disciplines into their own discipline centered research
• Create a new generation of scholars who are immersed in the full range of approaches, and the intellectual richness that is associated with an interdisciplinary community

Impacts and Highlights

Produced papers and published articles on topics that include:

• The differential impact of mothers’ and fathers’ labor market opportunities on child health (including mental health)
• The impact of the safety net across multiple generations’ health
• Stress responses and social buffering
• The adolescent brain in a sociocultural context

Research has been presented at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Southern California, as well as at a number of other prestigious institutions including the Brookings Institution, the Society of Labor Economists, and the Biennial Meeting for the Society of Research in Adolescence.

Team members have taken to legislative and other policy related outreach. Marianne Page met with Congressional Representative, John Garamendi’s staff to discuss research on the importance of child health and nutrition programs. Page also presented an overview of child poverty on research and policy for the Center for Poverty Research “Policy Research and Policy Summit” in April 2016. Marianne Bitler presented “Lessons on the Safety Net” for the Center for Poverty Research “Poverty Research and Policy Summit” in April 2016. Ross Thompson gave an invited presentation, “New Perspectives on the Science of Early Childhood Development”, to the Early Childhood Working Group of the American Enterprise Institute in 2016. Ross Thompson also presented “Origins and Impacts of Disparities in Early Childhood” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Grand Rounds.

Team

Marianne Page	Professor of Economics
Katherine Conger	Professor of Human Ecology
Amanda Guyer	Associate Professor of Human Ecology and of the Center for Mind & Brain
Paul Hastings	Professor and Chair of Psychology and of the Center for Mind & Brain
Ann Stevens	Professor of Economics, and Interim Dean of the Graduate School of Management
Ross Thompson	Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Jessica Harold	Program Coordinator of the Center for Poverty Research
Lupe Sanchez	Center Manager of the Center for Poverty Research
Jonah Cox	Graduate Student of Human Ecology
Kristina Gelardi	Graduate Student of Human Ecology
Natalie Troxel	Graduate Student of Psychology
Megan Waechter	Graduate Student of Human Ecology
LillyBelle Deer	Graduate Student of Psychology
Gaetano Basso	Graduate Student of Economics
Chloe East	Graduate Student of Economics
Ariel Marek	Graduate Student of Economics
Na’ama Shenav	Graduate Student of Economics
David Weissman	Graduate Student of Psychology
Siobhan O’Keefe	Graduate Student of Economics
Matthew Naven	Graduate Student of Economics
Georges Han	Graduate Student of Psychology
Abby Lavine	Graduate Student of Psychology
Natalia Orlova	Graduate Student of Economics
Sarah Kahle	Graduate Student of Psychology
Jonas Miller	Graduate Student of Psychology
Brianna Balis	Graduate Student of Economics
John Blanchette	Graduate Student of Economics
Michel Grosz	Graduate Student of Economics
Chuan He	Graduate Student of Economics
Annie Hines	Graduate Student of Economics
Ersa Kose	Graduate Student of Economics
Katherine Kramer	Graduate Student of Economics
Zhi Li	Graduate Student of Human Development
Ariel Pihl	Graduate Student of Economics
Zachary Psick	Graduate Student of Sociology
Monica Rodriguez	Graduate Student of Economics
Cynthia van de werf Cuadros	Graduate Student of Economics

For more information on this program, please contact Christine Parks at ceparks@ucdavis.edu.