Asset Building and Child Development: A Policy Model for Inclusive Child Development Accounts

Extreme wealth inequality imposes significant constraints on financially vulnerable families, especially the development of children in those families. Child Development Accounts (CDAs)—investment accounts offering financial access, subsidies, and incentives to provide assets for children—are designed reduce over time promote human development. We review existing evidence from a test CDA policy population sample. Findings show that, addition stimulating account holding asset building, universal automatic CDAs postsecondary education have positive effects outlooks behaviors parents children. This long-running experiment suggests ten design elements universal, progressive, potentially lifelong policy. Informed by findings this experiment, seven states adopted some version model. These innovations illustrate potential pathways reducing improving child