Kimberly Noble, associate professor of Neuroscience and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, is conducting research on how socioeconomic inequality affects children’s cognitive and brain development.
Kimberly Noble, associate professor of Neuroscience and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, is conducting research on how socioeconomic inequality affects children’s cognitive and brain development. She recently discussed her research in a TED talk.
“The brain is not destiny,” Noble said. “And if a child’s brain can be changed, then anything is possible.”
Noble’s current research project, which is a randomized controlled trial funded largely by $16 million from philanthropic organizations and about $500,000 from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Office of Economic Opportunity in New York City, will recruit 1,000 mothers, both married and single, who live in New York City and three other urban areas who live “under the poverty line.” They will be recruited from hospitals shortly after giving birth.
Four hundred of the mothers will receive $333 a month on a debit card for 40 months. Six hundred, the control group, will receive $20 monthly.
Each year, at ages 1, 2 and 3, the children will be evaluated on vocabulary, memory, self-regulation, socio-emotional development and brain activity. The mothers will also answer detailed questions about housing, parenting routines, child care, intimate relationships and stress.
To date, about 860 women have signed up for the study and on average report a yearly income of about $18,000 before the study.
Noble told the Wall Street Journal, “There clearly is some genetic basis to cognitive development. There’s also good evidence to suggest that experience plays a role in cognitive, intellectual development. We are manipulating that experience.”
Matthew Klein, executive director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, made it clear that the $500,000 grant would cover research expenses, not the cash transfers. “I understand the concern would be, ‘Is the city interested in policies where you just hand out free money?’” he told WSJ. “The response to that is, ‘The city is interested in human capital and opportunities.’”
Earlier research co-written by Noble found that in children whose parents earned less than $25,000 per year, their brains had 6% less cortical surface area on average than those children whose parents earned $150,000 or more. That part of the brain oversees reasoning, language and focus. The poor children also had slightly lower scores on several cognitive tests, on average.
Noble notes that there are many factors that could play a role, including the low-income families’ ability to get high-quality medical care and nutritious food.
With such a high-profile study, even conducted by well-regarded researchers, there has already been criticism and scrutiny of the study. Aparna Mathur, a researcher with the American Enterprise Institute who studies income inequality, questions whether $333 per month is enough to have an impact. She argues that instead of just giving them additional money whose actual use isn’t tracked, the funds should be used on child-related expenses. “I hope it makes a huge difference in the lives of these families, but other programs could work better,” she told WSJ. “How would we scale it up, and where would the money come from?”
Those would seem to be policy-related criticisms, rather than scientific, however. Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies families in poverty, thinks the study is important, but sees several challenges, including that the women who are willing to enroll may not truly represent poor mothers and—a situation common to all research—being monitored might affect their behavior.
Preliminary data is expected by the summer of 2021.
