Lisa A. Gennetian

Research Professor

Curriculum Vitae/Syllabi:

Gennetian.CV.January 2018.pdf

Dr. Gennetian's research portfolio straddles a variety of areas concerning American poverty from income security and stability, early care and education, and children’s development, with a lens toward causal mechanisms. Her work with Dr. Eldar Shafir “The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Economic Instability: A Behavioral Perspective,” describes a behavioral framework for poverty programs and policy. In 2015 Dr. Gennetian launched the beELL initiative; applying insights from behavioral economics to design strategies to support parent engagement in, and enhance the impacts of, early childhood interventions. She is co-PI on a large multi-site randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash transfer to low income mothers of infants, co-PI directing work on poverty and economic self-sufficiency at the National Center for Research on Hispanic Families and Children; and, has served as an Associate Editor of Child Development since 2012.

For more about Dr. Gennetian

For more about beELL.org, nudging children to a better start

Follow Dr. Gennetian on twitter @Gen_Pov

Education

Research

Applications of Behavioral Economic Insights to Poverty and Early Childhood Interventions

Today, policymakers and researchers are faced with a few seemingly intractable dilemmas: Why do income-poor individuals not take up programs and offerings that they are eligible for, such as health insurance, food stamps, childcare subsidies, and housing subsidies? Why are these policy stepping stones modestly successful and not more successful? Why are so many “marginally poor” unable to climb permanently out of poverty? I aim to re-conceptualize poverty — commonly characterized by financial struggle — as circumstances that create unique challenges for the human psyche, above and beyond budget woes. By focusing research on the roles of decision-making, will power, and attention (falling under the umbrella of the field of behavioral economics), this work proposes alternative reasons to explain why the income-poor seem to engage in what most theories may label as irrational behavior. The behavioral view does not propose wholesale solutions or panaceas but provides a framework for particularly examining issues related to take-up, engagement and follow-through that continue to permeate most programs, including in early childhood intervention. Through the framework of the context of decision-making, and the role of cognitive resources such as attention and self-control, these insights illuminate alternative hypotheses as to why the income-poor seem to engage in what most theories may label as irrational behavior. As such, this framework generates new approaches to re-design programs and has enormous potential influence for on the ground program and policy practice.

Gennetian, L. and E. Shafir (2015). The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Financial Instability: A Behavioral Perspective. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 34(4): 904-36.

This line of research includes applications of behaviorally informed approaches to support parent engagement, and subsequent impact of, early childhood interventions: beELL seeks to cultivate scholarly evidence, and develop a toolkit of best practices, to enhance our understanding and optimize the impact of parent-targeted early childhood interventions by harnessing the insights of behavioral economics. beELL officially launched in 2015 and currently has three projects based in New York City: beELL-Getting Ready for School, a preK play based curriculum; beELL-NYC, a collaboration with New York City’s Department of Mental Health and Hygiene’s Newborn Home Visiting Program; and, beELL-ParentCorps, a preK parenting support program.

Gennetian, L., M. Darling, & L. Aber (2015). Behavioral Economics and Developmental Theory: Implications for Early Childhood Interventions

The Economic Circumstances of Hispanic Children in the U.S.

Outside of indicators of overall economic or poverty status, very little is understood about the economic circumstances and dynamics of income among the growing population of income poor Hispanic children. Whereas Hispanic families have less in savings and fewer economic assets and more employment uncertainty that may put them at particular risk of unfavorable impacts from negative income shocks, they also have higher marital stability and family cohesion that can help buffer negative ramifications of income instability. I investigate these issues as the director of research in the Poverty and Economic Self-Sufficiency area of the National Center for Research on Hispanic Families and Children. Using national data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation I find that Hispanic children were more likely to live in poor households than their non-Hispanic peers, but that they also resided in less income volatile households than non-Hispanic children, even during the period of the Great Recession. I am now investigated ways in which time spent with children might vary by race/ethnicity and income using data from the American Time Use Survey.

Gennetian, LA, Hill HD, Morris PA, Rodrigues, C. Income instability in the lives of children in Hispanic households. 2015. National Center for Research on Hispanic Children and Families. Washington, DC: Child Trends.
Gennetian, LA., Hill HD, Morris PA, Rodrigues, C. Low and unstable income: Comparing incidence in Hispanic child households before and after the Great Recession. 2015. National Center for Research on Hispanic Children and Families. Washington, DC: Child Trends.
Alvira-Hammond, M. Gennetian LA. Hispanic Parents and Public Assistance: Perceptions of Need and Eligibility. 2015. National Center for Research on Hispanic Children and Families. Washington, DC: Child Trends.

Household Income volatility: Experiences and Implications for Children

Much of what is understood about the influence of poverty and income on children's development conceptualizes income as a static condition. My work looks deeply at the role of income instability, or income change, in the lives of children and their families, particularly among those households who are living in or near poverty. Conceptually, this work blends disciplinary frameworks from economics, human development, and psychology, and as such, considers frequency, magnitude and direction of income change. Estimates suggest that differences in monthly income instability between the highest and lowest income households with children have increased nearly five-fold from 1984 to 2010, with the lowest income households becoming more income unstable. Findings further suggest that unstable income can have particularly unfavorable influences on adolescent school suspensions or expulsions.

Hill H, Morris P, Gennetian LA, Wolf S, Tubbs C. On the consequences of income instability for children's well-being. Child Development Perspectives. 2013; 7(2):85-90.
Wolf S, Gennetian L, Morris P, Hill H. Patterns of income dynamics among low income families with children. Family Relations. 2014; 63(3).
Gennetian L, Wolf S, Morris P, Hill H. Intrayear household income dynamics and adolescent school behavior. Demography. 2015; 52(2):455-83.

Income and Children’s Early Brain Development

This collaboration of social scientists (co-PIs Greg Duncan, University of California at Irvine, Katherine Magnuson, University of Wisconsin Madison, and Hiro Yoshikawa, New York University) and neuroscientists (co-PI Kimberly Noble, Columbia University) is the first of its kind to design and test, in an experimental framework, the effects of a large unconditional cash payments (of $4000/year) to 1,000 eligible low income mothers at the birth of their child (across 4-5 sites) for each of the first three years of their child’s life. The proposed annual cash payment mimics the value of a diversity of existing federal and state supported safety net programs, most notably the Earned Income Tax Credit and, thus the study’s findings are not only designed to scientifically and cleanly answer open questions about the impact of income on early childhood brain development, but will also speak to the role of public policy to strategically target income support. Our aim is to launch the full random assignment study in four diverse sites—New York City, St. Paul Minnesota, Omaha Nebraska and New Orleans—in 2017.

NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

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Lisa A. Gennetian

Research Professor

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