Family Incomein the family.^2 The prime issue now, as in the next five chap-
ters, is how this affects children, all else held constant. It is im-
portant to ask the question this way. For policy makers want
to know what they could achieve by directly addressing the
problem— in this case the problem of child poverty. What
could they achieve by raising financial support for children?
To answer this question, we need to hold other things con-
stant, including father’s unemployment, mother’s work,
parenting style, parental separation, family conflict, moth-
er’s mental health, father’s mental health, and primary and
secondary school effects, as well as prebirth variables, like
parents’ education, mother’s age at birth, gender, ethnicity,
birth order, birth weight, and being born prematurely.
The Effect of Family Income on
Emotional Well- BeingSo what does ALSPAC tell us about the effects of child
poverty? As we shall see, it confirms the well- known fact
that income affects children’s academic performance. But
ALSPAC also shows that the effect on children’s emotional
well- being and behavior is much less.
In Table 10.1 the first column shows the β- coefficients—
estimates of the explanatory power of income. This suggests
that family income explains under 1% of the variance in
children’s emotional well- being.^3
However, policy makers would ask a different question,
namely: How much happier would our children be if we in-
creased their family’s income by say 10%? The second column
of the table addresses that question. It shows that, if a child’s
income were increased by 10% throughout childhood, that