The United States accomplished an impressive feat in 2020-21: enacting federal policy reforms that halved child poverty and uplifted low-income families amidst a global pandemic. Many of the reforms, though temporary, were unprecedented in U.S. history, representing a sea change in U.S. policy toward young children. This paper first discusses the…

Many welfare programs give greater benefits to unmarried individuals than to a married couple of otherwise identical income. The resulting marriage penalty discourages marriage and rewards single parenthood. Combined marriage penalties across federal and state welfare programs can reach tens of thousands of dollars per year for a given family. One…

Early care and education in the United States is in crisis. The period between birth and kindergarten is a crucial time for a child's development. Yet vast racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities that begin early in children's lives contribute to starkly different long-term outcomes for adults. Compared to other advanced economies, child…

The core challenge our proposal seeks to address is how to ensure that every American family and child has access to high-quality, affordable early childhood care and education (ECE) services in a critical period of human development, breaking a shortage of investment in young children. America's status quo asks the most of parents when they have…

Microfinance has been recognized globally as a poverty alleviating strategy and particularly as a gender equality enhancing approach. There have been immense, intense and nuanced debates in the field of international development, feminist studies and comparative social policy regarding the role of microfinance in addressing gendered poverty. This…

The Annie E. Casey Foundation launched Family-Centered Community Change (FCCC) in 2012 to support three local partnerships seeking to help parents and children in high-poverty neighborhoods succeed together. These partnerships, located in Buffalo, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and San Antonio, Texas, are each developing a more integrated set of…

All countries in the EU Neighbourhood and Central Asia have been hit by the COVID-19 outbreak to a greater or lesser extent, with overall lower infection numbers compared to some of the EU Member States, although issues of under-reporting may impact on the reliability of data. All countries, apart from Belarus and Turkmenistan, made similar…

Led by Newark Opportunity Youth Network (Newark OYN) in New Jersey, key public and private organizations in Newark came together to focus efforts on supporting disconnected youth and transforming how they are educated and prepared for life, postsecondary learning, and careers. This report describes how Newark OYN emerged and is charting its path…

To be sure, there is a lot the Bloomberg administration has not accomplished in the social policy arena. City funding for a number of vital social programs--from child care to summer jobs for young adults--has been cut or flat-lined even as demand for these services has increased. Many of those interviewed say that the administration moved away…

This policy plan offers an approach to early childhood policies that get to the roots of racial equity. It describes how to promote social, economic, health, and educational equity by broadening the current early childhood public policy focus in Minnesota on early education and service programs to also include funding efforts that promote positive…

The challenges of resolving the oral health disparities among children and other vulnerable populations requires a well-organized community safety net, along with a sincere commitment to prioritize the elimination of this common, but preventable, dental disease. Adequate funding for basic health needs, while incorporating oral health care into a…

This article is a brief personal reflection on the state of research into the relation between education and social mobility. Quantitative methods are both essential and advancing in this field. Sociologists seek scientific solutions but achieve ethical neutrality only with difficulty because all are tempted to bias from social and political…

In this article, Dyrness and Sepúlveda argue that in El Salvador, young people are participants in a diasporic social imaginary that connects them with Salvadorans and other Latinos in the United States--before they have ever left the country. The authors explore how this transnational relationship manifests in two school communities in San…

Policymakers, elected officials, educators, parents and advocates are currently engaged in long-overdue dialogue about how to improve our nation's public schools. Unfortunately, when it comes to school funding, the conversation is framed by recurring, but outmoded, adages: "Does money matter?" or "Can we do more with less?" or "Our state already…

States require a measure of poverty that captures all family resources net of taxes and nondiscretionary expenses and uses thresholds reflecting current needs in the state to assess the well-being of families under current and alternative policies. This paper describes the implementation of a poverty measure for the State of Connecticut based on…