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Do Public Expenditures Improve Child Outcomes in the U.S.? A Comparison Across Fifty StatesKristen HarknettUniversity of California, Berkeley - Department of Health Policy and Management Jay BainbridgeColumbia University - National Center for Children in Poverty Timothy M. SmeedingUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison, Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs Nancy FolbreUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst - College of Social and Behavioral Sciences - Department of Economics Sara McLanahanPrinceton University - Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Irwin GarfinkelColumbia University - School of Social Work March 1, 2003 Center for Policy Research Working Paper No. 53 Abstract: Our paper utilizes variation across the 50 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.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 36 JEL Classification: J13, I38 working papers seriesDate posted: April 16, 2011Suggested CitationContact Information
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