RUNNING HEAD: Article Critique 1

Article Critique
Does Money Really Matter?

Stephanie Janzen
10098991
EDPS 650
Dr. Sheppard
Article Critique 2

The article chosen to critique is entitled Does money really matter? Estimating impacts of family
income on young childrens achievement by Morris, Duncan and Rodrigues (2004) printed in the journal
Developmental Psychology. This article was chosen as it represents one of the many facets of family
ecology, namely the socioeconomic circumstances in which a family resides. More specifically, it
analyzes how a familys income directly impacts the socialization and achievement of children, and how
even small changes in this resource can have large consequences.
The aim of this article is stated as being to determine whether an increase in income has any
affect upon early childhood achievement. This is a unique study it in that it utilizes research programs
already in place across North America and Canada. Therefore, although they collected and analyzed all
information as well as implemented controls for variables, they did not have to specifically create and
implement each welfare and antipoverty program that was included in this study (16 in all). Although
many studies have already concluded that even a modest increase in income has a positive impact on
early childhood achievement, social scientist do not necessarily agree on the size and nature of the impact.
The authors note that these studies are more evaluative in nature, therefore their research aims to utilize
an experimental framework in order to address the same topic and thus prove the findings based on
statistics. In this study, the independent variable is childhood achievement while the dependent variable
is income enhancement.
The premise of this study is based on a multitude of other works that address the topic of income
enhancement and its effects on children. For instance they touch on Elders work on the Great Depression
in which he theorized that income may have affected paternal stress and thereby change the parent-child
relationship (1974, 1979). They also mention work by Evans and colleagues who argue that poverty
contributes to a context of chaos that affects the childs physiology, and thus their development (Evans et
al 2005). Votruba-Drzal (2006) are also included as they hypothesized that early childhood income (but
not middle childhood income) has positive but small associations with academic outcomes. And Duncan
et al., (2010) claims that changes in income have stronger associations with outcomes for children in low-
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income compared with higher income families. They also mention the only large-scale intervention done
on this topic entitled the Negative Income Tax Experiment (Maynard and Murnane, 1079) whose object
was to identify the influence of guaranteed income on parents labor force participation. Their results too
corroborated the theory that elementary school children in the experimental group exhibited higher levels
of early academic achievement. Thus, Duncan Morris and Rodrigues were quite thorough in addressing
other relevant literature, and used it effectively to create a basis for their own study.
Although no theoretical framework is mentioned per se, they do state that they are striving for
causal effect rather than mere association which is critical for developmental theory. Casual effect is the
standard to be achieved with such a study as no conclusive evidence will prove the actual link between
income enhancement and childhood achievement. This is because poverty can be associated with many
factors such as low maternal education, being raised in a single parent family, physical ability etc. Thus
the aim of this study is to merely build on the theory that development is malleable and susceptible to
family influences during the preschool years.
The method of this study was to collect data from 10 welfare and antipoverty programs,
producing a total of 16 program/site combinations (such as Connecticuts Jobs First and the Canadian
Self-Sufficiency Project). All of these programs were aimed at increasing the self-sufficiency of low-
income parents. Each program can be characterized by components such as earning supplements, child
care assistance programs, education/training first etc. At each site, the participants were randomly
assigned to either the program or to a control group. All together these studies provide 18,677 child
observations taken from 1,237 children living in 9,113 single-parent homes. The childrens ages ranged
from 2 to 5 years at the time of assignment. This is a fairly substantial and representative sample as it was
taken from various programs across the United States and Canada, both rural and urban.
The advantages of this sample are that it consisted of those who were already enrolled in welfare
programs and thus did not rely on volunteers. Therefore, there is no bias among the sample which
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strengthens the validity of the results. The ethical concerns in this study are few though the separation
into experimental and control groups is troublesome as it concerns low-income families who would no
doubt appreciate the opportunity to be involved. And it may not be ethical to deny young children the
opportunity to improve their achievement levels, though this is not discussed in the paper.
The downside of using already implemented income enhancement programs is that the authors
cannot guarantee uniformity amongst programs. For instance, one program may be more effective in
finding people work than another, or perhaps another might provide more options for childcare than a
similar program in another state. That being said, these studies are location specific and are more
representative of what an actual federal income enhancement program might actually look like if
implemented on a nation-wide scale. The amount of income distributed also varied, though it did
consistently range from $800 to $2,200 per year.
In terms of data collection, the information compiled included demographics, welfare receipts,
employment, program payments (prior to assignment and during the follow-up period) as well as a parent
surveys. In terms of the participation rate, parents could opt to not respond to the evaluation surveys but
the response rates in all studies were very high, between 71% to 90%. They also conducted a
nonresponse bias analysis which confirmed the equivalence of program and control groups in these
respondent samples, though a further discussion on the issue would have been informative and
appreciated. Up to date information was gathered at every quarter following the random assignment
when the authors computed the average quarterly average income based on the sum of earnings as well as
temporary assistance, income assistance and food stamp payments. The length of the study lasted five
years which is when child development data was once again collected and compared to the baseline data.
In order to measure child achievement, their cognitive performance was measured using parent or
teacher report or test scores. Most of the teacher reports were based on the Social Skills Rating System
which rated their reading skills, math skill, intellectual functioning, motivation, oral communication,
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classroom behavior and parental encouragement. They also collected scores from the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test, the Canadian Achievement Tests, the Bracken Basic Concept Scale and the Math and
Reading index scores from the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho Educational Battery. Although using teacher
reports might impact the validity of the results due to variability among teacher onions and ratings scale,
the use of standardized tests ensure that the result will be valid.
In the discussion section the authors state that their results were consistent with the
developmental theory about the malleability of childhood development. This conclusion was well-
grounded in their findings as their data showed that a mere $1,000 increase in annual income can boost a
childs achievement by 6% of a standard deviation. Although this study only confirms what had already
been hypothesized, the actually figures regarding income and cognitive increases may do much to aid
public policy in the future. The question then is whether such programs would be worth it? Are these
effect sizes policy-relevant? The authors argue that yes they are as the benefits to participants and to tax
payers outweighed the costs of these programs, although I suspect that different parties may not
necessarily agree with this conclusion.
One limitation of this study is that although there is a connection between income and
achievement, the research data cannot explain why this connection exists. Although we assume that it
involves factors such as the reduction of parental stress and improved parenting, better child care, better
health care, more time with children etc., these remain casual inferences rather than fact. Furthermore,
this study assumes that income affects children the same away across the programs, when in fact there
could be large varieties between urban Detroit and Winnipeg for example. That being said, the
consistency of results across programs does demonstrate an effect on childhood development regardless
of the specific environment under which the income was received. Lastly, this study focused on low-
income, single-parent families, therefore results cannot be generalized to other family types and
socioeconomic levels. And although one might assume that income enhancement above and beyond the
Article Critique 6

stipulated $2,200 would create even greater childhood achievement affects, it is important to be cautious
about extrapolating findings beyond their results.
Because this was such a broad-based study that required government support and organization, it
presented a challenge to researchers. Many variables existed between programs, and so they had to rely
on statistical manipulation to provide as much control as possible. Though much of the explanation and
discussion of statistical analyses for control was out of my depth, it is evident that the authors did as much
as possible to make this study valid and reliable so that it might be considered for policy decision making.
Lastly, because of the nature of this study, it would be impossible to replicate unless the same programs
have continued or are reintroduced in exactly the same way. Therefore although this study is important in
terms of public policy and how government might have the ability to improve childhood achievement, the
large scale nature of the study itself limits opportunities for replication and application.

Article Critique 7


Reference
Duncan, G. J., Morris, P. A., & Rodrigues, C. (2011). Does money really matter? Estimating impacts of
family income on young childrens achievement with data from random-assignment experiments.
Developmental psychology, 47(5), 1263-1279.