Title

Do Public Expenditures Improve Child Outcomes In the U.S.: A Comparison Across Fifty States

Author(s)

Kristen Harknett Kristen Harknett (University of California, Berkeley)

Irwin Garfinkel Irwin Garfinkel (Columbia University)

Jay Bainbridge Jay Bainbridge (National Center for Children in Poverty)

Timothy Smeeding Timothy Smeeding (Syracuse University)

Nancy Folbre Nancy Folbre (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Abstract

Our paper utilizes variation across the fifty U.S. states to examine the relationship between public expenditures on children and child outcomes. We find that public expenditures on children are related to better child outcomes across a wide range of indicators including measures of child mortality, elementary-school test scores, and adolescent behavioral outcomes. States that spend more on children have better child outcomes even after taking into account potential confounding influences. Our results are robust to numerous variations in model specifications and to the inclusion of proxies for unobserved characteristics of states. Our sensitivity analyses suggest that the results we present may be conservative, yet our findings show that public investments in children yield broad short-term returns in the form of improved child outcomes.

Creation Date

2003-03

Section URL ID

CRCW

Paper Number

WP03-02-Harknett.pdf

URL

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1809890

File Function

Jel

I21

Keyword(s)

child outcomes, public expenditures, state policies, Medicaid, education

Suppress

false

Series

8