Search results

The overall goal of the Baby's First Years study is to assess the causal role played by household income in affecting children's early cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development. Recent advances in developmental neuroscience suggest that experiences early in life have profound and enduring impacts on the developing brain. Family economic resources shape the nature of many of these experiences, yet the extent to which they affect children's development is unknown. The Baby's First Years project is the first randomized controlled trial to provide estimates of the causal impacts of unconditional cash gifts on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development of infants and young children in low-income U.S. families.

Specifically, 1,000 recruited mothers of infants with incomes below the federal poverty line from four diverse U.S. communities are receiving monthly cash gift payments by debit card. Mothers were initially told the gifts would last for the first 40 months of their child's life, but we have secured funding to continue the payments for three additional years (i.e., for a total of 76 months). Parents in the high cash gift group (n=400 in the study sample) are receiving a cash gift of $333 per month ($4,000 per year), while parents in the low cash gift group (n=600) are receiving a nominal monthly gift payment of $20 ($240 per year), also for 76 months.

In order to measure the impacts of the unconditional cash gift income on children's cognitive and behavioral development, we are assessing high and low cash gift group differences at ages 4, 6, and 8 (and, for a subset of measures, we capture interim development at ages 1, 2, and 3) in measures of cognitive, language, memory, self-regulation, and socio-emotional development. In order to understand the processes by which child impacts emerge, we are measuring a host of family process measures summarized in our pre-registration chart. Our data collection points are referred to as: "baseline", "age 1", "age 2," "age 3", "age 4", "age 6", and "age 8".

Additional information on the project, survey design, sample, variables, and COVID-19 pandemic adjustments are available from:

• The User Guides for Baseline, Age 1, Age 2, Age 3, and Age 4, which are included under the "Data and Documentation" tab
• The project's website: babysfirstyears.com

The researchers request that all peer-reviewed papers using BFY Data:

• be submitted to PubMed https://publicaccess.nih.gov immediately upon acceptance for publication
• include the following citation to the data in their bibliography:

Citation

Magnuson, Katherine A., Kimberly Noble, Greg J. Duncan, Nathan A. Fox, Lisa A. Gennetian, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Sarah Halpern-Meekin. Baby's First Years (BFY), New York City, New Orleans, Omaha, and Twin Cities, 2018-2023. ICPSR37871-v8. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], YYYY-MM-DD. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37871.v8

• and include the following in their acknowledgements:

Acknowledgement

This research uses data from the Baby's First Years study. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD087384 and 2R01HD087384. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This research was additionally supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation; Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research-Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health; Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund; Annie E. Casey Foundation; Arnold Ventures; Arrow Impact; BCBS of Louisiana Foundation; Bezos Family Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill Hammack and Janice Parmelee, Brady Education Fund; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Silicon Valley Community Foundation); Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies; Child Welfare Fund; Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund; Ford Foundation; Greater New Orleans Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; Holland Foundation; Jacobs Foundation; JPB Foundation; J-PAL North America; Lozier Foundation; New York City Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity; Perigee Fund; Robin Hood Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Russell Sage Foundation; Sherwood Foundation; Valhalla Foundation; Weitz Family Foundation; W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and three anonymous donors.

Principal Investigators

Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison, lead PI social and behavioral science

Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University, lead PI neuroscience

In alphabetical order:

Greg Duncan, PhD; University of California, Irvine

Nathan A. Fox, PhD; University of Maryland

Lisa A. Gennetian, PhD; Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy

Hirokazu Yoshikawa, PhD; New York University

Principal Investigators of Qualitative Substudy

Sarah Halpern-Meekin, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Study Management

Lauren Meyer, Teachers College, Columbia University; National Project Director

Andrea Karsh, University of California, Irvine; Administrative Director

Matthew Maury, Duke University, Production and Retention Management

Study Co-Investigators

Sarah Black, PhD; University of New Orleans

William Fifer, PhD; Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Columbia University Medical Center

Michael Georgieff, MD; University of Minnesota

Joseph Isler, PhD; Columbia University Medical Center

Debra Karhson, PhD; University of New Orleans

Alicia Kunin-Batson, PhD, University of Minnesota

Connie Lamm, PhD; University of Arkansas

Dennis Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Victoria Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Jennifer Mize Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Timothy Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Sonya Troller-Renfree, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University

Study Data Collectors

The Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is responsible for recruitment and baseline, age-1, age-2, and age-3 data collection waves. Starting at age-4 through age-8, SRC is responsible for tracking families and assisting site-based staff in locating families. SRC data collection operations are overseen by: Stephanie Chardoul, Director of Survey Research Operations and Piotr Dworak, Senior Survey Specialist, Survey Research Operations.

Contact

To contact the study investigators, email them at [email protected]

Website: babysfirstyears.com

The Displaced New Orleans Residents Pilot Study was designed to examine the current location, well-being, and plans of people who lived in the city of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005. The study is based on a representative sample of pre-Katrina dwellings in New Orleans. Fieldwork focused on tracking respondents wherever they currently resided, including back to New Orleans. Respondents were administered a short paper-and-pencil interview by mail, by telephone, or in person. The pilot study was fielded in the fall of 2006, approximately one year after Hurricane Katrina. The goal of DNORPS was to assess the feasibility of the study design and thereby to lay the groundwork for launching a major longitudinal study of displaced New Orleans residents.

ICPSR only holds the public data for the pilot study. The main study (DNORS) was carried out 2009-2010. These data are not yet publicly available, but for more information, visit the RAND Corporation website.

The NIH-funded Katrina@10 Program consists of an interrelated set of three primary data collection projects that focus on specific sub-populations who were uniquely affected by Hurricane Katrina: households along Louisiana and Mississippi's Gulf Coast, low-income parents from New Orleans, and Vietnamese families living in New Orleans. In addition, the program contains two secondary analyses of data that are more broadly representative of the overall affected population, and three cores (Administrative, Data Collection, Data Management and Dissemination) to support the set of research projects. The following research questions represent the studies together as a whole:

• How well does the socio-ecological model of disaster recovery developed by the research team (Abramson et al. 2010) predict recovery across the three cohort studies?
• How do trajectories of long-term recovery differ among and within these sub-populations?
• How do the trajectories of recovery compare to those of mainstream populations?
• How do the effects of predisposing factors (such as poverty) and degree-of-impact (such as flooding depth) vary among the three sub-populations?
• How do interpretations of the disaster, resilience, and recovery differ among respondents?
• What are the determinants of long-term recovery in domains such as mental and physical health, socio-economic status, and community and social roles? How are these domains related to each other across individuals and across sub-populations?

The Katrina Impacts on Vietnamese Americans in New Orleans (KATIVA NOLA) study was a longitudinal study interested in measuring the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Vietnamese-Americans living in New Orleans. The original sample was taken in summer 2005 and was followed by three rounds of short and medium-term data collection in the 5 years following Katrina. This study measured a variety of outcomes, including physical and mental health, economic stability, housing stability, and social ties, to examine the long-term recovery trajectories of participants.

The data in this collection are from an additional, long-term follow-up survey conducted between 2017 and 2019. A public-use version (DS1) and restricted-use version (DS2) are available. Open-ended responses, continuous respondent age, continuous total household income, and a variable indicating exposure to specific flood events have been masked in the public-use version. These items are available in the restricted-use version.

The NIH-funded KATRINA@10 Program consists of an interrelated set of three primary data collection projects that focus on specific sub-populations who were uniquely affected by Hurricane Katrina: households along Louisiana and Mississippi's Gulf Coast, low-income parents from New Orleans, and Vietnamese families living in New Orleans. In addition, the program contains two secondary analyses of data that are more broadly representative of the overall affected population, and three cores (Administrative, Data Collection, Data Management and Dissemination) to support the set of research projects. The following research questions represent the studies together as a whole:

• How well does the socio-ecological model of disaster recovery developed by the research team (Abramson et al. 2010) predict recovery across the three cohort studies?
• How do trajectories of long-term recovery differ among and within these sub-populations?
• How do the trajectories of recovery compare to those of mainstream populations?
• How do the effects of predisposing factors (such as poverty) and degree-of-impact (such as flooding depth) vary among the three sub-populations?
• How do interpretations of the disaster, resilience, and recovery differ among respondents?
• What are the determinants of long-term recovery in domains such as mental and physical health, socio-economic status, and community and social roles? How are these domains related to each other across individuals and across sub-populations?

This collection contains data from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project, which was a longitudinal study of low-income parents who lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina (August 2005). The initial study design was intended to increase educational attainment among college students, measuring economic status, social ties, and mental and physical health starting in 2003 (initial cohort n=1,019). However, with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the research design evolved to study the consequences of a disaster for the lives of vulnerable individuals and their families. Follow-up surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with participants at one year and five years post-Katrina, regardless of where participants lived.

The data in this collection is from the most recent survey follow-up with RISK Project participants (n=716), conducted between 2016 and 2018. A public-use version (DS1) and restricted-use version (DS2) are available. Open-ended responses and continuous variables for respondent age and total household income have been masked in the public-use version; these items are available in the restricted-use version.