The U.S. federal government has played a growing role in setting nationwide education policy since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. This Act, along with the 'Equality of Educational Opportunity' report commissioned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, led the U.S. Office of Education to pursue a policy agenda…

Higher education is essential to accessing high-demand jobs with family-supporting wages and improving family financial wellbeing. This was true before the COVID-19 pandemic and is especially true now as the nation continues the process of recovering from one of the worst public health, economic, and social crises in modern U.S. history. To…

Governments all over the world have been improving their educational sector through funding programs aimed at reducing the financial burden on parents, increasing access and quality to education. The government of Ghana in 2017 switched policy to a free senior high school policy to reduce poverty by finally eliminating the financial burdens…

Safety net programs emerging from the War on Poverty and later antipoverty efforts such as Head Start, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among others have reduced poverty, and strengthened longer-term outcomes for poor children, leading to better health and greater economic…

As immigration has reached historic numbers in the United States, immigrant children have become an integral part of the national tapestry. While immigration has grown across all post-industrial nations, inequality has risen at a steep rate on a variety of indicators, including income distribution, child poverty, residential segregation, and…

The Federal Work-Study program was introduced as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, with the goal of enabling low-income students to work their way through college. It is thus one of the earliest forms of federal financial aid for college, pre-dating both Pell Grants and Stafford Loans. Since its inception, FWS has provided institutions…

This brief is the third in a series documenting the implementation of an economic mobility initiative supported by New York City's Change Capital Fund (CCF). CCF is a consortium of New York City donors formed to invest in local nonprofits that undertake data-driven antipoverty strategies integrating housing, education, and employment services. CCF…

The study examined the linkages between Education and poverty and the possibility of poverty reduction through access to education and better employment opportunities. The paper also stressed that poverty acts as both cause and effect on lack of education. In particular the paper examined whether education is contributing to poverty reduction…

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were agreed at United Nations General Assembly Millennium Summit in 2000, address challenges in poverty reduction, hunger, health, gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability, an ambitious set of development targets aimed at reducing poverty and improving the lives of people all…

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have spread worldwide as a new form of social assistance for the poor. Previous evaluations of CCT programs focus mainly on rural settings, and little is known about their effects in urban areas. This paper studies the short-term (1- and 2-year) effects of the Mexican "Oportunidades" CCT program…

This paper explores understandings of gender equality and education and the nature of global goal and target setting, drawing on empirical data collected in central and local government departments in Kenya and South Africa reflecting on their implementation of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, concerned with poverty, MDG 2, concerned with…

Access to education lies at the core of poverty reduction and is part of the definition of development. An expanded vision of access moves policy dialogue beyond discourse based on enrolment rates. Unpacking access into seven zones of exclusion helps reshape the dialogue, as does recognising the interactions between schools, local authorities,…

This report describes how children bear the brunt of poverty and explains why they are central to poverty reduction in developing nations. The report also illustrates UNICEF's support for the process of improving access to, and quality of, health care, education, water and sanitation, and child protection. It describes how the participation of the…

Commentary on gender equality in education as a global issue often assesses what makes policy work or why certain emphases in policy are selected. The article recasts this division by looking not so much at the separation between policy and its enactment, but at the forms of mobility entailed in the movement between these different poles. It…

This report reviews progress in implementation of the World Bank's poverty reduction strategy during fiscal 1996-97. Chapter 1, "The World Bank's Poverty Reduction Strategy and Future Directions," outlines elements in the poverty reduction strategy: policies to promote broad-based labor-demanding growth and increase the productivity and…