Researchers increasingly point out the importance of a child’s early years for the development of skills that will help them succeed later in life. Much of this scholarship focuses on the importance of cognitive skills, such as reading, but the development of non-cognitive skills, such as motivation and interpersonal skills, is also critical. These five researchers will look at how inequality across home environments affects the development of these non-cognitive skills. This channel could have major consequences for the life prospects of children, as economic inequality across families may be magnified for the next generation. Understanding these differences is vital to improving the prospects for disadvantaged children and the growth prospects for our economy.

Low-income students disproportionately attend for-profit colleges and universities where low graduation rates and high levels of student debt are common. This research will utilize administrative data to test whether new rules that require graduation and debt standards change matriculation at for-profit schools.

Women’s participation in the formal economy increased for decades after the 1960s but stalled in the late 1990s. Researchers aren’t sure why this happened, but professors Cohen and Kleykamp propose one possible answer: rising inequality. As income inequality has increased, the pay-off to investing in children has increased as well, making it more attractive to have one parent stay at home—usually the mother. Rising work hours among women has had a large effect on economic growth. U.S. gross domestic product in 2012 would have been 11 percent lower if not for the rising working hours of women. If Cohen and Kleykamp’s hypothesis is right, then rising inequality has held back women’s entrance into the labor market and significantly slowed down American economic growth.

Improving school quality is a well-established way to improve student learning. But one specific approach is understudied: school finance reform. This project will examine state-level school finance reforms, intended to increase funding for schools serving poor children, over the past several decades. If school financing matters, then reforms that equalize funding will also tend to equalize student achievement across districts. This researcher will study the effects of these reforms on the absolute and relative test scores of students in low-income school districts. Policymakers can then understand if these reforms boost overall scores as well as reduce the inequality of outcomes.