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The question of whether cash assistance helps or harms children is central to social policy. Progressives argue that poor children need an income base, citing research showing that even short periods of childhood can lead to lower adult earnings and worse health. Conservatives say unconditional payments erode work and marriage and increase poverty in the long run.

President Bill Clinton changed the stance of the Democratic Party a quarter of a century ago by removing benefits guarantees and shifting benefits to working parents. While child poverty later fell to record levels, the reasons for this are disputed, and rising inequality and volatility have rekindled Democrats’ support for subsidies. Many other wealthy countries offer large unconditional child allowances.

temporary expanding the child tax credit, passed last year, offered subsidies costing more than $100 billion a year to everyone but the wealthiest parents. Washington Democratic Representative Suzan DelBene said the study strengthens the case for aid by showing “the incredible long-term benefits of investing in our children.”

Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine and one of the nine co-authors of the study, said he hopes the research will refocus the debate, which he says is “almost always about the risks to which parents are exposed.” Work less on the question “whether the payments are good for kids” or use the money pointlessly”.

But Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative welfare critic, argued that the study justified strict welfare laws, which he believed reduced child poverty by encouraging parents to find and continue working.

“If you really believe that child poverty has these negative effects, you shouldn’t be trying to get unconditional cash benefits back,” he said. “You definitely don’t want to get into the business of reversing welfare reform.”

Economists and psychologists once dominated studies of poor children, but neuroscientists to have more and more weighed. In the last 15 years, on average, poor children differs from others in brain structure and functionwith the greatest inequalities for the poorest children.