Long-Term Effects of Local-Area New Deal Work Relief in Childhood on Educational, Economic, and Health Outcomes Over the Life Course: Evidence From the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

The eco-nomic char-ac-ter-is-tics of one's child-hood neigh-bor-hood have been found to deter-mine long-term well-being. Policies enacted dur-ing child-hood may change neigh-bor-hood tra-jec-to-ries and thus impact long-term out-comes for chil-dren. We use indi-vid-ual- level data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to exam-ine the enduring con-se-quences of child-hood expo-sure to local-area New Deal emer-gency employment work-relief activ-ity. Our out-comes include ado-les-cent cog-ni-tion, edu-ca-tional attain-ment, mid-life income, health behav-iors, late-life cog-ni-tion, and mor-tal-ity. We find that chil-dren (ages 0-3) liv-ing in neigh-bor-hoods with mod-er-ate work-relief activ-ity in 1940 had higher ado-les-cent IQ scores, had higher class rank, and were more likely to obtain at least a bach-e-lor's degree. We find endur-ing ben-e-fits for mid-life income and late-life cog-ni-tion for males who grew up in areas with a mod-er-ate amount of work relief. We find mixed results for males who grew up in the most dis-ad-van-taged areas with the highest levels of work-relief activ-ity. These chil-dren had sim-i-lar edu-ca-tional out-comes as those in the most advan-taged dis-tricts with the low-est work-relief activ-ity but had higher adult smok-ing rates. Our find-ings pro-vide some of the first evi-dence of the long-term con-se-quences of New Deal pol-i-cies on chil-dren's long-term life course out-comes.