Public Investments, Private Investments and Class Gaps in Child Development

Margot Jackson , Brown University
Daniel Schneider, University of California, Berkeley

There are large class gaps in “parental investments” of money and time in children. Public investments in children/families may reduce class inequality among children and families by affecting parents’ behavior and practices. However, our understanding of the state-level spending context within the U.S. is limited. This paper will use newly assembled administrative data over a 25 year period, linked to household-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, in order to ask whether state-level public spending on children/families is associated with reductions in class inequality in parents' expenditures on children.

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 Presented in Session 199. Families and Inequality