Reducing Intergenerational Poverty (2024) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 87-112
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From page 87... ...
Earnings from work have been crucial in allowing past generations of families to avoid intergenerational poverty, and that will remain true in the future. Over the last 50 years, earned income consistently lifted the non-work-related incomes of between 70% and 75% of families above the Supplemental Poverty Measure–based poverty line (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [National Academies]
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From page 88... ...
Fortunately, recent educational research and evaluation work points to promising ways to increase the chances that children growing up in lowincome families will enter the labor market with the skills needed to keep their family incomes well above the poverty threshold. This chapter begins by reviewing evidence on the importance of education for children's eventual economic success.
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From page 89... ...
Decades of rigorous labor economics research demonstrate that these earnings advantages are not simply reflections of other differences between graduates and nongraduates. Instead, they largely reflect the labor market rewards generated by the knowledge and skills that students gain as they complete more schooling (Card & Giuliano, 1999)
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From page 90... ...
This appears to be partly because technological change and globalization have increased the productivity of highly educated or highly skilled workers, and partly because of the rising monopoly power of employers in the labor market and the weakening of institutions (such as unions and minimum wage statutes) that traditionally protect workers from such power.
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From page 91... ...
colleges, whether or not they are for-credit programs; and in high-quality sector-based training programs, as noted below.1 ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTAINMENT DIFFERENCES ACROSS RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS Given the importance of achievement and years of completed schooling for reducing intergenerational poverty, it is alarming to see large gaps on those measures between income, racial, and ethnic groups. Looking at the reading and math scores of children who entered kindergarten in 2010, Reardon and Portilla (2016)
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From page 92... ...
https://www. nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE students and for Black, Latino, and Native American/Alaska Native students.
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From page 93... ...
Conclusion 4-1: By imparting skills and other capacities valued by employers, the education system is a key driver of upward intergenera tional mobility for low-income children. Large gaps in school achieve ment and completed schooling persist across socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic subgroups, pose a key challenge for policy makers seeking to reduce intergenerational poverty, and underscore the importance of education-related interventions.
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From page 94... ...
SOURCE: Graduation rates are for 2019 and are taken from the Digest of Education Statistics, 2019, Table 104.20. Enrollment rates are for 18-24-year-olds in 2015 and are taken from Musu-Gillette et al.
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From page 95... ...
. Similarly, home-visiting programs promote infant and child health, foster educational development, and help prevent child abuse and neglect by arranging for trained professionals or paraprofessionals to pay regular visits to parents, typically mothers, and to provide coaching on parenting issues (Duncan et al., 2023)
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From page 96... ...
Because of the ambiguity of the evidence, the committee was unable to identify the best ways to expand early childhood education and home visitation programs in order to reduce intergenerational poverty. While it is certainly possible that expanding or reforming our current patchwork of early childhood and home visitation programs would reduce intergenerational poverty, we do not know enough about how to do so in a manner that is very likely to generate long-run benefits.
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From page 97... ...
. Specifically, each additional year after court-ordered desegregation led to a 1.8-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of high school graduation, and the average effects of 5 years of exposure to courtordered school desegregation led to about a 15% increase in wages.
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From page 98... ...
than conventional public schools. However, a subset of charter schools known as "no excuses" schools have been found to have substantial positive effects on students' test scores and 4-year college enrollment, relative to traditional public-school alternatives (Angrist et al., 2016)
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From page 99... ...
Thus, Figure 4-4 points to a key challenge in seeking to reduce intergenerational poverty through postsecondary education: Many of those who enroll fail to graduate with 4-year degrees. An important factor underlying differences in enrollment rates is success in secondary school.
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From page 100... ...
offer culturally relevant support and encouragement, and there is evidence that they are more successful than non-MSIs at facilitating upward mobility for low-income students of color (Espinosa et al., 2018; National Academies, 2019b)
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From page 101... ...
Placing students from disadvantaged backgrounds into these jobs can help to reduce the likelihood that they will remain mired in persistent intergenerational poverty. So too can educational opportunities aimed at enabling adults to participate in retraining for these jobs in mid-career.
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From page 102... ...
Racial disparities are relevant for virtually any intervention aimed at reducing intergenerational poverty, so the committee looked for evidence about types of programs specifically designed to reduce them. It found three related to K–12 schooling that passed the committee's direct evidence test: • Increase teacher workforce diversity, based on strong evidence of the positive effects of Black teachers on the high school graduation and college enrollment of Black students.
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From page 103... ...
That said, the committee felt that the strength of the direct evidence supporting these policies warranted bringing them to the attention of policymakers. K–12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence A complementary approach to improving K–12 education outcomes is to focus on specific educational practices and policies that school districts could adopt, given additional resources, to achieve their educational goals.
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From page 104... ...
Nevertheless, this is an important issue, and the committee believes that continued experimentation in this area (e.g., via changes in local school assignment processes) might yield evidence that could lead to meaningful reductions in intergenerational poverty.
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From page 105... ...
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence Other approaches to help achieve the three broad goals defined above -- but with less rigorous research support to date -- could include these: • Increase maximum Pell awards, with limits imposed on states or institutions regarding offsetting these increases with other cuts in aid; • Provide matching federal funds for state higher education alloca tions, conditional on a maximum tuition threshold and a minimum level of low-SES enrollment; • Expand support for MSIs, which currently raise attainment of col lege degrees but to a lesser degree earnings; • Simplify financial aid applications, which are intrusive and difficult for students and their parents to complete, by limiting the informa tion required to that already collected by the IRS; • Adjust federal aid formulas and the Integrated Postsecondary Edu cation Data System data on specific colleges and programs to provide more information to students applying for admission (for instance, on their "expected family contributions" before they ap ply to college and on required grade point averages in specific institutions if they wish to major in certain fields) ; • Target aid to programs with high labor market value -- through grants to institutions that provide such programs; and • Expand "Gainful Employment" regulations to limit the eligibility for receiving federal student financial aid to attend institutions or programs that show poor outcomes in their graduates' post program earnings and debt-to-income ratios.
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From page 106... ...
In the interest of reducing intergenerational poverty, the committee discussed scaling up sectoral programs that have proven impacts for youth:
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From page 107... ...
: • Offer sectoral training for low-income parents. Each year, offer scaled-up versions of Project Quest, Per Scholas, and other proven sectoral training programs to one million low-income adults with children, which would indirectly reduce intergenerational poverty by raising the incomes of parents and households.
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From page 109... ...
However, the United States continues to be characterized by higher child mortality rates than other high-income countries, and the income-based gaps in child health, although smaller than they used to be, remain large, suggesting scope for additional investments. In its investigation of the role child health plays in intergenerational poverty and whether further public investments in child health can effectively increase intergenerational mobility, this chapter begins with a discussion of differences in child health across incomes and racial/ethnic groups.
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From page 110... ...
The rate of preterm and low-birthweight births is 50% higher among Black families relative to White families and 30% higher for Native American families (Figure 5-3)
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From page 111... ...
is consistent with racial/ethnic differences in the prevalence and severity of this condition but also in access to care. One measure along which Black children fare better than White or Latino youth, and much better than Native American youth, is suicide, as discussed later, though rates of suicide among Black youth have recently grown more quickly.1 These racial/ethnic differences in child health translate into adult disparities in health, with significant labor market consequences.
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From page 112... ...
Child health insurance coverage does not differ appreciably for Black and White children, largely because of the Medicaid program. Rates of uninsurance are much higher for the Native American and Latino population.2 Other important sources of disparate access to medical care include differences in geographic access, distrust of the medical system based on past injustices, and racial discordance between patient and provider (Alsan & Wannamkaer, 2018; Alsan et al., 2019)
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