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A new study has shown that when mothers received a monthly boost in income, their babies had improved brain functioning.

The mothers who participated in the Baby First Year’s study were divided into two groups: one group who received $333 a month and another that received $20 a month. Researchers found that the babies whose mothers received the $333 stipend displayed high-frequency brain activity, which is associated with better cognitive and social-emotional functioning as well as improved language. The participants in the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comprised of 1,000 mothers who were predominately Black and Hispanic from New York City, New Orleans, Omaha and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

“This is the first study to show that money, in and of itself, has a causal impact on brain development,”  Dr. Kimberly G. Noble, a physician and neuroscientist at Teachers College, Columbia University who lead the study, told the New York Times.

The mothers all reported incomes of just over $20,000 a year. Each participant in the “high cash group” received an approximate 20% increase in their annual income thanks to the study.

The mothers will receive their stipends until the children are four-years-old as the research continues.

“This is a big scientific finding,” Martha J. Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Times. “It’s proof that just giving the families more money, even a modest amount of more money, leads to better brain development.”

Noble and her fellow researchers are conducting further tests to understand why the extra funds led to such fast brain activity in the children.

“The present study provides evidence of neuroplasticity of the infant brain on a relatively brief time scale, following 1 [year] of an intervention designed to increase family economic resources,” the study read. “Because of the randomized design, any group differences in brain activity found here reflect neural adaptation to the associated environmental change. That is, in the context of greater economic resources, children’s experiences changed, and their brain activity adapted to those experiences. However, we do not yet know which experiences were involved in generating these impacts. Future work will examine potential mechanisms affected by the cash gifts, including household expenditures, maternal labor market participation, maternal parenting behaviors, and family stress, noting that pathways may operate in different ways across different children and families.”

Research like this plays a role in the passing of bills that provide low-income families with more financial aid, something President Joe Biden has been fighting for. The child tax credit program, where families received an extra $300 a month, that was began in 2021 recently ended.

 

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