Publicly funded adult health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had positive effects on low-income adults. We examine whether the ACA's Medicaid expansions influenced child development and family functioning in low-income households. We use a difference-in-differences framework that exploits cross-state policy variation and focus…

Purpose: We sought to identify factors predictive of or associated with receipt of speech/language services during early childhood. We did so by analyzing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; Andreassen & Fletcher, 2005), a nationally representative dataset maintained by the U.S. Department of Education. We…

Presents findings from a new study that will follow a nationally representative sample of 1998-1999 kindergartners through fifth grade. Describes differences in first-time kindergartners' skills, health, and approaches to learning. Demonstrates that differences exist in children's skills and knowledge in relation to their characteristics,…

The greatest benefit of this study is that it provides the first-ever look at a nationally representative sample of the kindergarten population on school entry. Data suggest that most children are better prepared to enter school than many had thought. (SLD)

The profile of school readiness in this report is important both for understanding children's levels of readiness to enter school and for advancing how the concept of readiness is conceptualized. (SLD)