What is it about?
Dozens of studies show family income is correlated with lots of personal and family resources. Is this correlation due to income *causing* these resources, or are perhaps these resources causing income? This study look at changes over time (10 years in study 1, six years in study 2) to see which is more likely to be the causal agent. Surprisingly, it wasn't income. In fact, the data show that personal and family resources are driving changes over time in income!
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Why is it important?
So many programs and policies intended to help families and children work under the assumption that increasing family income will help improve these family resources. We all learn as undergraduates that correlation is not causation, yet the literature showing *correlations* between income and family resources has been offered as evidence in support of these programs for decades. This study is important because it shows that when we conduct the kind of test that ought to be applied (longitudinal reciprocal prediction to change), the foundation for these programs and policies is revealed as erroneous. Skill-building will help grow family resources, income vouchers do not.
Perspectives
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so" W. Rogers Like every field, family science has its share of blind spots. Assumptions so prevalent they are rarely tested, and never tested rigorously. If this paper nudges the field of family science slightly in the direction of more critical assessment of our longstanding biases, it will be worth the page space the Editor and Reviewers at the Journal of Family Psychology so graciously granted.
Thomas Schofield
University of California Riverside Foundation
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Family health and income: A two-sample replication., Journal of Family Psychology, August 2018, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/fam0000424.
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