The Promise of Early Interventions for Improving Socioeconomic Outcomes of Black Men

This brief uses the Social Genome Model to assess the potential impact of various childhood and adolescent interventions on long-term outcomes for black men. In particular, we see that increasing parental emotional support and cognitive stimulation during early childhood and raising reading ability levels in mid-childhood have the greatest impact on later life educational attainment and income. The overall effects of successful interventions are modest for the entire population of black men but are somewhat larger for individuals that would be directly affected by the interventions. Our findings suggest that making substantial progress in improving the outcomes of black men will likely require many different interventions that reinforce one another throughout the life course.

Reference Information

Author: 

Gregory Acs,
Steven Martin
Publisher: 
The Urban Institute
Publication Date: 
February 2015