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We examine U.S. and Canadian children with symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the most common child mental health problem. ADHD increases the probability of delinquency and grade repetition, reduces future reading and mathematics scores, and increases the probability of special education. The estimated effects are remarkably similar in the two countries, and are robust to many specification changes.Moreover, even moderate symptoms have large negative effects relative to the effects of poor physical health. The probability of treatment increases with income in the U.S., but not in Canada. However, in models of outcomes, interactions between income and ADHD scores are statistically insignificant in the U.S. (except for delinquency), while in Canada these interactions indicate that higher income is protective. The U.S. results are consistent with a growing psychological literature which suggests that conventional treatments for ADHD improve behavior, but have inconsistent effects on cognitive performance.

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A vast literature has examined the impact of family income on the health and development outcomes of children. One channel through which increased income may operate is an improvement in a family's ability to provide food, shelter, clothing, books, and other expenditure-related inputs to a child's development. In addition to this channel, many scholars have investigated the relationship between income and the psychological wellbeing of the family. By reducing stress and conflict, more income helps to foster an environment more conducive to healthy child development. In this paper, we exploit changes in child benefits in Canada to study these questions. Importantly, our approach allows us to make stronger causal inferences than has been possible with the existing, mostly correlational, evidence. Using variation in child benefits across province, time, and family type, we study outcomes spanning test scores, mental health, physical health, and deprivation measures. The findings suggest that child benefit programs in Canada had significant positive effects on test scores, as has been featured in the existing literature. However, we also find that several measures of both child and maternal mental health and well-being show marked improvement with higher child benefits. We find strong and interesting differences in the effects of benefits by sex of the child: benefits have stronger effects on educational outcomes and physical health for boys, and on mental health outcomes for girls.

We use administrative data on a sample of births between 1978 and 1985 to investigate the short, medium and long-term consequences of poor infant health. Our findings offer several advances to the existing literature on the effects of early infant health on subsequent health, education, and labor force attachment. First, we use a large sample of both siblings and twins, second we use a variety of measures of infant health, and finally we track children through their schooling years and into the labor force. Our findings suggest that poor infant health is a strong predictor of educational and labor force outcomes. In particular, infant health is found to predict both high school completion and social assistance (welfare) take-up and length.