<story><title>New Findings from War on Poverty: Just Give Cash</title><url>http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-09/new-findings-from-war-on-poverty-just-give-cash</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>scholia</author><text>Did anybody actually read the story?&lt;p&gt;The key observation is that a study published in Nature &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;found a correlation between child brain structure and family income. Simply put, family income is correlated with children’s brain surface area, especially among poor children. More money, bigger-brained kids.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is supported by the Cherokee study: when the families became a bit better off ($4,000 a year) the kids did better when they grew up.&lt;p&gt;So it&amp;#x27;s missing the point to argue about how grown-ups might (or might not) &amp;quot;waste&amp;quot; money and whether cash is better than other forms of welfare. The point is that bringing up children in poverty creates a worse outcome for society as a whole.&lt;p&gt;The fact is that $4,000 a year for 20 years is a very small amount compared with the cost of US police, courts, and prisons. If a poor kid grows up, gets a job and pays taxes, that&amp;#x27;s a massive win &lt;i&gt;for society&lt;/i&gt; compared with the same kid growing up in the sort of deprivation that leads to a life of crime and jail.</text></comment>
<story><title>New Findings from War on Poverty: Just Give Cash</title><url>http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-09/new-findings-from-war-on-poverty-just-give-cash</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zerebubuth</author><text>Many of these studies appear to be variations on the form &amp;quot;We selected some people, gave them some money and told them we&amp;#x27;d be back to check up on how they were doing.&amp;quot; I wonder if there&amp;#x27;s a significant effect from the expectation that being part of the study will improve one&amp;#x27;s life. Perhaps receiving attention from authority figures (PhD or MD), and potentially their judgement, might alter behaviour in similar ways to the &amp;quot;honesty box&amp;quot; experiment [1].&lt;p&gt;It seems like there might also be some bias in selection - presumably one has to consent (in writing) to be part of a long-term study. Perhaps this encourages participants to think of the future and might influences decision-making away from short-term goals and towards &amp;quot;investment&amp;quot; uses of the money rather than ephemeral ones.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to seeing the results of their differential experiment, and whether there&amp;#x27;s as much difference between the $333 and $20 groups as there is between the $20 group and the &amp;quot;$0 group&amp;quot; of the general population.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;412&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;412&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>