Intergenerational Persistence of Treatment Effects

项目总结 美国有1500万生活在贫困线以下家庭的儿童面临严重的 健康问题，从心血管疾病和糖尿病等慢性疾病到精神健康 抑郁和物质使用障碍等问题。许多儿童干预措施针对的是低收入者 以及高危儿童，有证据表明，一些早期干预措施改善了成年人的健康和福祉。 然而，关于儿童干预的益处是否以及如何传播，人们知之甚少。 跨越几代人。这项研究的问题是，从早期干预中受益的儿童是否会长大后成为 更好的父母，因此孩子经历更少的健康问题，教育挑战， 和情感问题。我们汇集了两项长期的、持续的、前瞻性的干预研究 跟随成群的儿童进入成年期。已发表的研究结果表明，每一次干预都对 一个孩子的适应，但不知道这种影响是否会传递给下一代。第一个是一个 一种准实验，即赌场开业带来的正收入冲击导致不劳而获的现金 转到美国印第安人儿童家庭。这些家庭已经参加了伟大的 烟雾山研究(GSMS)，一项加速的纵向队列研究，现已进入第四个十年， 干预前、干预后和成年后可采取的详细措施。第二个是速度 跟踪(FT)预防随机对照试验，随机分配891名有风险的幼儿园儿童 对于严重的行为问题要进行干预和控制条件。公布的调查结果表明是积极的 影响至少持续到26岁。这两项研究的参与者现在都在35岁左右，目前 完成或准备另一波评估，保持较高的学习保留率。我们会收集 对育儿风险、育儿环境和育儿行为的相同衡量标准和信息 这些研究成员的5000多名子女通过一项低成本的每日协调父母和子女调查 对育儿和儿童健康的虚拟评估，以及高质量的教育和出生记录。我们测试 无论是积极的收入冲击，还是随机分配给英国《金融时报》童年干预， 改善未来的育儿方式，进而改善子女的适应能力。对于GSMS，我们进行了一项创新的 扩大到全人口范围，包括生活在收入冲击县的所有8至18岁的儿童 发生了。我们测试关于哪些亚组(例如，风险最高的女性，那些表现出最大初始风险的亚组)的假设 影响)最有可能将干预的好处传递给自己的孩子，并且 机制对干预影响起到中介作用。我们的发现将通过测试是否，对于 人力资本干预的影响由谁以及如何代代相传。我们的发现 直接谈到当代公共政策的成本和收益，因为这两种干预都反映了 目前服务于美国数百万高危儿童和家庭的政策和计划。

PROJECT SUMMARY The 15 million children in the United States who live in families below the poverty line are at risk for serious health problems ranging from chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes to mental health problems such as depression and substance use disorders. Many childhood interventions target low-income and high-risk children, with evidence that some early interventions improve adult health and wellbeing. However, little is known about whether, and how, the benefits of childhood interventions get transmitted across generations. This study asks whether children who benefit from early interventions grow up to become better parents and, subsequently, have children who experience fewer health problems, educational challenges, and emotional problems. We bring together two longstanding, ongoing, prospective intervention studies that follow panels of children into adulthood. Published findings show that each intervention has positive impact on a child’s adjustment, but it is not known whether this impact transfers to the next generation. The first is a quasi-experiment in which a positive income shock due to a casino opening resulted in an unearned cash transfer to American Indian children’s families. These families had already been participating in the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS), an accelerated longitudinal cohort study now entering its fourth decade, with detailed measures available pre-intervention, post-intervention, and into adulthood. The second is the Fast Track (FT) Prevention Randomized Controlled Trial that randomly assigned 891 kindergarten children at risk for serious behavior problems to intervention and control conditions. Published findings indicate positive impact at least through age 26. Participants from both studies are now in their mid-30s and are currently completing or preparing for another wave of assessments with high rates of study retention. We will collect identical measures of risks to parenting, parenting environments, and parenting behaviors and information on the over 5000 offspring of these study members via a harmonized parent and offspring survey, a low-cost daily virtual assessment of parenting and child wellbeing, and high quality educational and birth records. We test whether the positive income shock, or separately, random assignment to the FT intervention in childhood, improves future parenting and, subsequently, offspring adjustment. For GSMS, we conduct an innovative population-wide extension to include all children aged 8 to 18 living in the counties where the income shock occurred. We test hypotheses about which subgroups (e.g., highest risk, females, those showing maximal initial impact) are most likely to likely to pass on benefits of the intervention to their own children, and which mechanisms mediate intervention impact. Our findings will inform prevention science by testing whether, for whom, and how, the effects of human capital interventions are transmitted across generations. Our findings speak directly to the costs and benefits of contemporary public policy as both interventions reflect features of policies and programs that currently serve millions of high-risk children and families in the United States.