The Build Back Better bill has stalled. On one point, we agree with Senator Joe Manchin that it is time for Congress to start with a “clean sheet of paper” by evaluating how each policy in the legislation betters American society. In this context, the portions in the bill targeting children and families are an imperative. They offer a particularly strong return on investment and just released data underscore this point. A little cash goes a long way to support children’s short- and potentially long-term outcomes.

A research paper was released yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) from the Baby’s First Years study. In an ongoing randomized controlled trial, 1,000 mothers from disadvantaged backgrounds are assigned to either a high-cash gift group ($333 per month) or a low-cash gift group ($20 per month). Participants receive this support in the form of a debit card and may spend the funds however they choose. Mothers live in cities across the U.S.—the Twin Cities, New Orleans, Omaha, and New York City.

After mothers received just 12 months of cash gifts funded by charitable foundations, lead author Dr. Sonya Troller-Renfree and her team measured infants’ brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). What they found is game changing: Babies whose mothers were assigned to the high-cash gift group had more high-frequency brain activity compared to children in the low-cash group.

Previous research links this high-frequency activity to the development of thinking and learning. According to the team’s lead neuroscientist, Dr. Kimberly Noble, less than $4,000 a year “must have changed children’s experiences or environments, and their brains adapted to those changed circumstances.” In short, this is the first causal link between poverty and brain activity. There are numerous pathways through which the cash might be impacting children’s brains, and research is currently seeking to understand the mechanisms. And this is just the beginning—the cash payments are ongoing, with plans to directly assess children’s development at age 4.

A separate facet of the Build Back Better bill aims to invest in education by addressing educator recruitment and retention. Again, the science shows that investments positively impact children’s development and that teacher turnover and retention directly relate to child outcomes.

Read the full article about investment in early childhood development by Molly Scott, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek at Brookings.