Parenting Promotes Social Mobility Within and Across Generations

This article compares early childhood enrichment programs that promote social mobility for disadvantaged children within and across generations. Instead of conducting a standard meta-analysis, we present a harmonized primary data analysis of programs that shape current policy. Our analysis is a temp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnnual review of economics Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 349 - 388
Main Authors García, Jorge Luis, Heckman, James J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Annual Reviews 01.01.2023
Annual Reviews, Inc
Subjects
Caregivers
Children
Crime
Data analysis
Disadvantaged
Earnings
human development
inequality
Intergenerational mobility
JEL D13
JEL J13
JEL J18
JEL J24
JEL J31
Marital stability
Parents & parenting
Program implementation
Skills
Social mobility
Social programs
Upward mobility
J18
skills
inequality
social mobility
human development
D13
J31
J13
J24
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Summary:This article compares early childhood enrichment programs that promote social mobility for disadvantaged children within and across generations. Instead of conducting a standard meta-analysis, we present a harmonized primary data analysis of programs that shape current policy. Our analysis is a template for rigorous syntheses and comparisons across programs. We analyze new long-run life-cycle data collected for iconic programs when participants are middle-aged and their children are in their twenties. The iconic programs are omnibus in nature and offer many services to children and their parents. We compare them with relatively low-cost, more focused home-visiting programs. Participants in programs that enrich home environments grow up with better skills, jobs, earnings, marital stability, and health, as well as reduced participation in crime. The long-run monetized gains are substantially greater than the costs of the iconic programs. A study of focused home-visiting programs that target parents enables us to isolate a crucial component of successful programs: They activate and promote the parenting skills of child caregivers. The home-visiting programs we analyze produce outcomes comparable to those of the iconic omnibus programs. National implementation of the programs with long-run follow-up that we analyze would substantially shrink the overall Black-White earnings gap in the United States.
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ISSN:1941-1383
1941-1391
DOI:10.1146/annurev-economics-021423-031905