Child Development, July/August 2008, Volume 79, Number 4, Pages 1065 – 1085 Family Resources and Parenting Quality: Links to Children’s Cognitive Development Across the First 3 Years Julieta Lugo-Gil and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda New York University Reciprocal associations among measures of family resources, parenting quality, and child cognitive performance were investigated in an ethnically diverse, low-income sample of 2,089 children and families. Family resources and parenting quality uniquely contributed to children’s cognitive performance at 14, 24, and 36 months, and parenting quality mediated the effects of family resources on children’s performance at all ages. Parenting quali continued to relate to children’s cognitive performance at 24 and 36 months after controlling for earlier measure of parenting quality, family resources, and child performance. Similarly, children’s early cognitive performance related to later parenting quality aboveother measuresin the model. Findings merge economicand developmental theories by highlighting reciprocal influences among children’s performance, parenting,and family resources over time. Economists and developmental psychologists have long been concerned with the factors that promote positive developmental outcomes in children (see Foster,2002;Haveman & Wolfe,1995,for reviews). However, the lenses of these disciplines differin significant ways.Economists investigate the effects of parents’ skills and monetary and time resources on their children’s educational attainment, health, consum- ption, and ultimate wealth (Aiyagari, Greenwood, & Seshadri, 1999; Becker, 1964, 1991; Ermisch & Francesconi,2000).In comparison,developmental psychologistsemphasizesocial capital, especially parenting quality, as a core influence on children’s development(Bornstein,2002;Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein,2000;Landry, Smith,& Swank, 2006).To date,few studies have integrated economic and developmental perspectives (Guo & Harris, 2000) and few do rarely document Julieta Lugo-Gil is now at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., Princeton, NJ This work was conducted at New York University’s Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education (funded by the Nat Science Foundation, Grant BCS 021859). The findings reported here are based on research conducted as part of the national EHS Res Evaluation Project funded by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Servi under contract 105-95-1936 to Mathematica Policy Research Inc., Princeton, NJ, and Columbia University’s Center for Children and Fa Teachers College, in conjunction with the EHS Research Consortium. The Consortium consists of representatives from 17 programs participating in the evaluation, 15 local research teams, the evaluation contractors, and ACYF. Research institutions in the Consortium principal researchers) include ACYF (Rachel Chazan Cohen,Judith Jerald,Esther Kresh,Helen Raikes,and Louisa Tarullo);Catholic University of America (Michaela Farber, Lynn Milgram Mayer, Harriet Liebow, Christine Sabatino, Nancy Taylor, Elizabeth Timberlake, Shavaun Wall); Columbia University (Lisa Berlin, Christy Brady-Smith, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Allison Sidle Fuligni); Harvard Univers (Catherine Ayoub, Barbara Alexander Pan, and Catherine Snow); Iowa State University (Dee Draper, Gayle Luze, Susan McBride, and Peterson); Mathematica Policy Research Inc. (Kimberly Boller,Ellen Eliason Kisker, John M. Love,Diane Paulsell,Christine Ross, Peter Schochet, Cheri Vogel, and Welmoet van Kammen); Medical University of South Carolina (Richard Faldowski, Gui-Young Hong, and Su Pickrel); Michigan State University (Hiram Fitzgerald, Tom Reischl, and Rachel Schiffman); New York University (Mark Spellmann and T.); University of Arkansas (Robert Bradley, Mark Swanson, and Leanne Whiteside-Mansell); University of California, Los Angeles (Caro Howes and Claire Hamilton); University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (Robert Emde, Jon Korfmacher, JoAnn Robinson, Paul Spic and Norman Watt); University of Kansas (Jane Atwater, Judith Carta, and Jean Ann Summers); University of Missouri-Columbia (Mark F Jean Ispa, and Kathy Thornburg); University of Pittsburgh (Beth Green, Carol McAllister, and Robert McCall); University of Washington School of Education (Eduardo Armijo and Joseph Stowitschek); University of Washington School of Nursing (Kathryn Barnard and Susa Spieker); and Utah State University (Lisa Boyce, Gina Cook, Catherine Callow-Heusser, and Lori Roggman). We thank Eileen T. Rodrig Mark Spellmann, Gigliana Melzi, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa for feedback and support. We acknowledge seminar participants at New Yor University and The Urban Institute for helpful discussions and comments on previous versions of this article.We also thank three anonymous reviewersfor helpful commentson earlier versions of this manuscript.Any opinions, findings, and conclusionsor recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the NationalScience Foundation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julieta Lugo-Gil, Mathematica Policy Research Inc., P.O. Box 2393, Princeton, NJ 08543, or to Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, 239 Greene Street, Floor, New York, NY 10003. Electronic mail may be sent to jlugo-gil@mathematica-mpr.com or to catherine.tamis-lemonda@nyu.edu. # 2008, Copyright the Author(s) Journal Compilation # 2008, Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2008/7904-0017