Chapter 10child would be only 0.012 of one standard deviation hap-
pier at each age.
Other studies have come to similar conclusions. For ex-
ample in their book on American children, Consequences
of Growing Up Poor, published in 1999, Greg Duncan and
Jeanne Brooks- Gunn conclude that noncognitive outcomes,
such as mental health, physical health, and behavior are less
sensitive to family income than are cognitive outcomes.^4
And some studies have even concluded that there is no di-
rect effect at all of family income on children’s behavior or
emotional health, with the only effect being indirect.^5 Sim-
ilarly when it comes to the children’s physical health, this
has been found to be unrelated to the family’s income in
the ALSPAC sample (holding constant the mother’s mental
and physical health).^6
The Effect of Family Income on Behavior
If we turn to behavior in Table 10.2, the findings are very sim-
ilar. Even the gross correlations (i.e., those that do not control
for any other variables) are not high between the family’s
financial circumstances and the behavior of their children.^7
Table 10.1. How children’s emotional well- being is affected by log
family income (ALSPAC)Effect on standardized
emotional well- being at β- coefficient
Log income
unstandardized16 0.07 (.02) 0.12 (.04)
11 0.04 (.02) 0.06 (.03)
5 0.10 (.01) 0.17 (.02)