By Annie Harper | November 19, 2024
Baby Bonds are an increasingly popular bipartisan government policy in which every child born into poverty receives a publicly funded trust account at birth, providing them with “start-up capital” to pursue fulfilling, productive, prosperous, and self-directed lives. Follow our Baby Blogs series to learn about the vision, politics, and people behind Baby Bonds and their transformative impact on the lives of young people, their families, communities, and our economy.
In this installment of Baby Blogs, Annie Harper, assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine, discusses the connections between wealth and mental health, and how Baby Bonds offer a crucial first step toward addressing the upstream causes of health problems.
I research the intersections between poverty, finances and mental health, exploring issues that are deeply rooted in historical and ongoing structural classism, racism, and other forms of discrimination and oppression. My work examines the financial experiences of people who have serious mental illness, who struggle with substance use, homelessness, and repeated interactions with the carceral system. While I do my best in my research to identify and address the root causes of these experiences, too often the solutions that we propose and test do little more than address the symptoms at the individual level, without having the needed impact on upstream systemic and structural causes.
For example, we try to understand what types of financial management support will allow people with serious mental illness to achieve maximal financial autonomy and dignity without being exposed to excessive risk of financial disaster. We are having some success in developing interventions that provide appropriate support, but it gets harder moving upstream to create systems change that doesn’t depend on a person’s individual level support network; we have tried to encourage banks and credit unions to offer products that enable such support, but have not had much success.
It can be enormously frustrating as a researcher to do endless research that doesn’t seem to change much. It can often feel like we’re part of a “research industrial complex,” writing endless grants to keep our salaries paid, but otherwise not contributing much. While the social determinants of health approach has gone some way to helping health researchers identify more upstream causes of health problems, and thus propose more upstream solutions, too often we remain far too downstream. We endlessly debate and advocate for solutions that even if properly implemented do not, in my opinion, get at the real problems. In academia we talk a lot about radical solutions that we believe could make a difference, but they sometimes feel like pie in the sky—miles away from reality.
I first heard about Baby Bonds around 2016, and while I was immediately persuaded on reading about it, it too felt a bit pie in the sky. In fact, to be honest, it felt more unrealistic, in terms of political viability, than many of the other radical solutions out there. Transfer of significant wealth to the poorest families? It seemed unimaginable. I knew that various forms of guaranteed basic income were being seriously considered, but an effort to rebalance our terrible wealth inequity, which is far deeper than income inequity, and a far more significant factor shaping health inequities, seemed too out there. Then in late 2021 I heard that Baby Bonds could become a reality in Connecticut. Of course, I did my best to support it and submitted my testimony supporting the program’s implementation, but I was still doubtful that policymakers would find the political fortitude. Was it really possible that we could implement legislation that didn’t simply tweak bank policies or give people more money day to day, but actually begin to change one of the deepest structural causes of health inequity, impacting people of color most?
To our state’s benefit, it was possible. After passing the initial legislation in 2021, Connecticut leaders came together in 2023 to fully fund the CT Baby Bonds Trust, establishing the first state-level Baby Bonds program in the nation.
By addressing entrenched gaps in wealth, rather than income, Baby Bonds have the potential to introduce upstream, structural change into our interconnected wealth and health systems. While having a low income negatively affects health, having low wealth is even more significant, and such conditions impact children above all. Baby Bonds can help seed the growth of family wealth over time, cultivating wealthier and healthier people and communities.
To be sure, Baby Bonds are not a panacea. The wealth they offer will not come close to redressing centuries of policies that have denied people the opportunity to build wealth, particularly American descendants of enslaved people. And we must be attentive not only to the limits of the program, but also possible unintended consequences. The money must not just disappear into debt payments, college fees, or result in people losing benefits due to ridiculously outdated asset limits. Baby Bonds must not be used as justification for cutting other essential supports for struggling families, such as SNAP, Medicaid, or rental assistance, or for squashing other innovative programs that may be developed in the future, such as reparations, job guarantee or basic income programs, or policies that ensure housing for all.
But Baby Bonds are a crucial first step. Above all, the policy for me is proof that it is worth thinking big—that the American people are willing to question the prevailing political economic system that fails far too many people, and to support policies that refuse the assumption that all anyone needs to do is work hard to make it.
Annie Harper is assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine and has a PhD from Yale University in cultural anthropology. She conducts research on how vulnerable populations, particularly low income people with mental illness, cope with poverty and financial difficulties, and how to support them in this area. She is particularly interested in understanding how the financial services and retail industries could better serve low income people generally, and people with mental illness in particular. She is committed to combining rigorous research with practical work that makes a difference now, to which end she works closely with the City of New Haven and the broader community’s efforts to provide support to low income residents struggling with financial difficulties. She is originally from the UK, but has lived for many years in New Haven with her husband, who is originally from Pakistan, and their three children.
If you missed previous installments of our Baby Blogs series, read them here.
Learn more about Health and Wealth and Baby Bonds in Connecticut.
To share feedback on this blog, or for questions about Baby Bonds, email David Radcliffe at [email protected].
To learn more, explore our Baby Bonds resources.