Findings from two studies indicate that the nature of Canadian children's environments within their families, schools, neighborhoods, and communities has very strong effects on children's development and the prevalence of childhood vulnerability. Rather than stemming primarily from poverty, childhood vulnerability may arise from the environments…

The Carnegie Corporation's mission is to continue Andrew Carnegie's philanthropic preoccupations with promoting education and world peace. In this essay, retiring Carnegie Corporation President David A. Hamburg provides a detailed accounting of his stewardship of the foundation since 1983, when he set forth new program directions in the context of…

This study examined the lifestyle of children from a sedentary grouping of 20 homeless families living under a viaduct in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The study particularly focused on issues related to this lifestyle, including dimensions of housing and cultural variations in housing related to child development and child rearing. The lifestyle of the…

Describes early childhood developmental deficits associated with long-term poverty as indicated by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Suggests substantial disadvantages in cognitive development among young children in chronically poor families. Deficits appear in a variety of indices of cognitive or socioemotional development,…

Examined the impact of individual environmental and biological risks on the home environment of three-year olds in a sample of low birth weight, premature infants. Suggests that compared to nonpoor families, poor families experienced more multiple risk factors. Poverty clearly had a negative effect on the provision of learning experiences,…

Community mapping is a relatively new technique using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and scientific software to generate visual representations of community characteristics. In North York (Ontario), community mapping provided information about the influence of community resources, including educational, recreational, cultural, health, and…

The aim of this study is to introduce a goal programming based on a holistic approach for the evaluation of "early childhood development support project", which was applied in some cities in Turkey. Like in many other areas, statistical methods are widely used in research on pre-school education. According to the literature, very few…

Early deprivation causes serious disruption in the development of brain architecture and in the behaviors related to the affected brain functions. Some brain structures, and the broad categories of development that depend on them, show more "plasticity," or sensitivity to disruption and intervention for longer periods of time, than…

A study was conducted to critically assess the developmental conditions of 187 children (ages 1 month to 6 years) in eight creches (day nurseries) located in and around Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. Data were collected through informal interviews of day care staff and from 20 hours of direct observations of day care units. Findings indicated inadequate…

Describes obstacles presented by poverty in the fulfillment of the basic needs of children. Individually addresses Maslow's five basic needs with regard to children reared in poverty: (1) physiological needs; (2) safety needs; (3) belonging and love needs; (4) self-esteem needs; and (5) self-actualization needs. (Author/SD)

An overview of some major current issues in maternal and paternal deprivation is presented. Parts I and II focus on (1) single parents and issues in paternal deprivation and (2) sex stereotyping and issues in maternal deprivation, respectively. More particularly, Part I discusses the effects of divorce and death on children and the problem of…

The main outcomes of the Prague (Czechoslovakia) longitudinal studies following over 1,000 children for almost 30 years are summarized. The children were either born from unwanted pregnancies, with alcoholic fathers, born out-of-wedlock, or in divorced families. A theory of psychological subdeprivation is offered and applied to children with…

This study used longitudinal data from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) to examine three issues regarding effects of economic deprivation on child development: (1) the effects on children's developmental outcomes of poverty and such poverty correlates as single parenthood, ethnicity, and maternal education; (2) the developmental…

This report describes the development, implementation and evaluation of a pilot early intervention program for parents and their infants 1 to 36 months old. Parents were trained by paraprofessionals (under the direction of professionals) to increase their psychomotor areas. The pilot project included 90 families with children under three years of…

Volumes have been written on the socially disadvantaged. Two theories related to the disadvantaged have evolved: the first is the "deprivation theory" which stresses the importance of an enriched environment, during the early years, on the cognitive and emotional development of the child; the second is "the cumulative intellectual deficit theory,"…