In 2012, the United States Agency for International Development allocated $137 million to fund seven universities to create "development labs" to advance social/economic progress and reduce poverty. International economic development has become a booming field and industry but is also highly contested. The function of the university as a…

This paper focuses on a project developed in Texas that utilizes community organizing strategies to advance childhood food security. With a dual focus on organizing policymakers and local communities, The Texas Hunger Initiative provides an example of an organizing project with the goal of ending childhood food insecurity in Texas.

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to examine the effects of geographically targeted business incentives on local labor markets. Unlike elsewhere in the United States, enterprise zone (EZ) designations in Texas are determined in part by a cutoff rule based on census block group poverty rates. Exploiting this discontinuity as a…

Although the children in Texas face health and welfare issues common to other states, such as changing family structures, poverty, expanding immigrant populations, and tight budgets, there are unique aspects to Texas that must be factored in. These include having 254 counties, the largest rural population of any state, and a 46 percent increase in…

This Kids Count fact book describes services that are designed to protect the health, education, and safety of children in each county in Texas. It begins with a brief overview of each service program, describing the services, giving eligibility requirements, and analyzing regional differences in service provision across the state. The overview is…

The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), with support from The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education through its Inter-Institutional Program Development Project, has prepared this report as phase 2 of a three-phase project designed to improve the educational approach to disadvantaged children. This report reveals…