@article{819,
  keywords = {Intergenerational patterns/relations, Child behavior, Brain and cognitive development},
  author = {Louis Donnelly and Irwin Garfinkel and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Brandon Wagner and Sarah James and Sara McLanahan},
  title = {Geography of intergenerational mobility and child development},
  abstract = {<p>Recent research by Chetty and colleagues finds that children{\textquoteright}s chances of upward mobility are affected by the communities in which they grow up [Chetty R, Hendren N (2016) Working paper 23002]. However, the developmental pathways through which communities of origin translate into future economic gain are not well understood. In this paper we examine the association between Chetty and Hendren{\textquoteright}s county-level measure of intergenerational mobility and children{\textquoteright}s cognitive and behavioral development. Focusing on children from low-income families, we find that growing up in a county with high upward mobility is associated with fewer externalizing behavioral problems by age 3 years and with substantial gains in cognitive test scores between ages 3 and 9 years. Growing up in a county with 1 SD better intergenerational mobility accounts for \~{}20\% of the gap in developmental outcomes between children from low- and high-income families. Collectively, our findings suggest that the developmental processes through which residential contexts promote upward mobility begin early in childhood and involve the enrichment of both cognitive and social-emotional development.</p>
},
  year = {2017},
  journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
  volume = {114},
  number = {35},
  pages = {9320-9325},
  url = {http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/08/14/1700945114.abstract},
}