New NBER WP alert! In this paper, we: 🔸Estimate heterogeneous effects of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on parental investments in Latino & Black families 🔸 Leverage data from the Baby's First Years (BFY) study, a US-based RCT https://t.co/grs4aZQJYt

Looking forward to seeing you all at #2025APPAM You can find me presenting in panels on Thursday and Saturday! Message me if you'd like to meet up😀

Heading to Seattle for #2025APPAM next week? Be sure to check out presentations from CALDER experts @RoddyTheobald, @brbackes, & @CEDR_US. Click here to learn more about the conference: https://t.co/n8uJPVs5IH

See my website for details, including a correction procedure to account for selection into college transcript data My research portfolio includes several working papers spanning K-12, higher ed, poverty alleviation & family economics Hire me! https://t.co/emcdflt6x2 (10/10)

My work bridges literature on teacher value added & predictors of college enrollment/persistence 2 main contributions: 1️⃣ First link between K-12 teacher value added & college performance 2️⃣ First estimates of teacher value added on college admissions test scores (9/10)

I show that teachers high value added teachers boost college performance ⬆️ college GPA ⬇️ remedial course-taking ⬇️ college dropout ⬆️ college completion Suggesting that high value added teachers help students develop college-relevant skills (8/10)

Enrollment impacts are too large to be explained by the signal value of a higher ACT score Suggesting that increases in enrollment are partly driven by increases in skills ... Question 3️⃣: Are high value added teachers developing skills relevant to college performance? (7/10)

I show that impacts on selective college enrollment are largest among high achievers A 1σ increase in teacher value added increases flagship university enrollment by over 3 percentage points among students in the top ventile of lagged achievement! (6/10)

I model college enrollment using a nested logit model, allowing for the effects of value added to vary across students with different lagged achievement levels (5/10)

2️⃣: When high school teachers boost students’ ACT scores, what happens to college enrollment? I show that teachers who boost ACT scores ("high value added teachers") lead to ⬆️ 4-year college enrollment (& selective college enrollment) ⬇️ 2-year college enrollment (4/10)

1️⃣: How do high school teachers impact students’ ACT scores? ("ACT Score Value Added") I leverage universal ACT testing in NC & show that teachers matter for ACT scores Assignment to a teacher with value added 1σ above the mean increases ACT scores by ~0.5 points/36 (3/10)

I use novel admin data from North Carolina linking K-12 public school records with enrollment & transcript records from public 4-year universities to answer 3 main questions (2/10)

I'm on the job market! My JMP studies the role of high school teachers in preparing students for college success I find significant positive effects of high school teachers on 🔹College admissions test scores 🔹College enrollment 🔹College performance 🧵(1/10)

Effects of an unconditional monthly cash transfer on money and time investments in children differed by race and ethnicity, from @shahh_hema, @Gen_Pov, @profkmag, @hiroyoshikawaNY, Laura R. Stilwell, @kimberlygnoble, and Greg Duncan https://t.co/WthsAfGzw4

w/ @Gen_Pov, Katherine Magnuson, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, @laurarstil, @KimberlyGNoble, and Greg Duncan Feedback welcome!

What does this mean? 🔸Latino families’ responses suggest signals regarding intended use of income influence spending decisions 🔸Differential impacts on monetary & time investments suggest unconditional cash can enable families to respond to diverse circumstances & constraints

Effects on child development are so far inconclusive, with 1 exception. An objective assessment of child executive functioning at age 4 shows: 🔸⬆️among Latino children (who experienced large infusions of monetary investments) 🔸null effect among Black children

We compliment treatment effect estimates with MPC estimates, using the control group. We find: 🔸Among Latino families: higher marginal propensity to consume child-specific goods from government income than from maternal income 🔸Among Black families: the opposite!

We find: 🔸Similar effects on net household income across Latino & Black families 🔸Different effects on monetary & time investments in children: 🔸Among Latino families: ⬆️child-focused expenditures 🔸Among Black families: ⬇️maternal work hours, ⬆️time spent with children

🔸Responses to cash depend on preferences, norms, & structural factors which vary by race/ethnicity 🔸Key challenge: distinguishing between differential take-up & differential responses to cash 🔸That's where the BFY RCT comes in: no differences in take-up by race/ethnicity!