In the nation today, 4.6 million young adults ages 16 to 24 are out of school and unemployed. More than one-third live in poverty. For these young people, commonly referred to as opportunity youth, building skills and gaining work experience are key to upward mobility. However, they face significant barriers to entering the labor market.…

The paper analyzes how street-level bureaucrats construct and activate the intersectoral network induced by the implementation of the "Bolsa Família" Program (BFP) in a region of extreme poverty in Brazil. BFP is a federal cash transfer program with conditionalities, benefiting 13.8 million families. Based on the educational…

"The demographics of families in poverty around the globe may be diverse, but parents' dreams for their children are similar everywhere: good health, a good education, economic stability, and a better future." This new report from the Bernard van Leer Foundation and Ascend at The Aspen Institute develops a "two generation"…

Single mothers have the lowest rates of degree completion of any demographic group when they pursue higher education as a path out of poverty. This article explores the obstacles student mothers face when they pursue higher education. The lived experiences of participants add context to data about low rates of degree completion. Findings are based…

We examined effects on child development of a group-based parenting support program ("Educación Inicial" - EI) when combined with Mexico's conditional cash transfer (CCT) program ("Prospera," originally 'Oportunidades" and "Progresa"). This cluster-randomized trial included 204 communities (n = 1,113 children in…

Each year, effective federal programs give parents the power to provide their children with affordable healthcare, nutritious food, stable housing, and early childhood education. These programs lift millions of children out of poverty, but also have long-term benefits--children in families who accessed these programs have higher educational…

In 2007, New York City launched the first test of a conditional cash transfer program in the United States. Called Family Rewards, the program sought to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by offering cash assistance to poor families to reduce immediate hardship, but conditioned this assistance on families' efforts to improve their…

This article focuses on the quantitative phase of a multiphase mixed methods study investigating adults' and families' access to government food assistance. The research evaluates participants' comprehension of, and ability to, adequately complete authentic complex texts--national food assistance application documents. Summative usability testing…

This study seeks to describe the socio-educational afterschool intervention programme run by a drop-in centre to fight poverty, strengthen and build resilience in families and school microsystems. Indigenous psychology is used as a theoretical lens to understand the school, family and community response to contextual challenges and how resilience…

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children's education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in…

Through a year-long study of welfare-to-work students in the community college CalWORKs program, we investigated what self-authorship development looks like by examining developmental progress, and whether there are patterns in development along the three dimensions of self-authorship. Findings demonstrate progress toward self-authorship, but…

This article examines the impacts of Opportunity New York City-Family Rewards, the first holistic conditional cash transfer (CCT) program evaluated in the United States, on parental financial investments in children, and high school students' academic time use, motivations and self-beliefs, and achievement outcomes. Family Rewards, launched by the…

Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards, an experimental, privately funded, conditional cash transfer (CCT) program to help families break the cycle of poverty, was the first comprehensive CCT program in a developed country. Launched in 2007 by New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), Family Rewards offered cash assistance to low-income…

Families who live in poverty face disadvantages that can hinder their children's development in many ways, write Greg Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal. As they struggle to get by economically, and as they cope with substandard housing, unsafe neighborhoods, and inadequate schools, poor families experience more stress in…

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves as the foundation of America's national nutrition safety net. It is the nation's first line of defense against food insecurity and offers a powerful tool to improve nutrition among low-income individuals. SNAP is the largest of the 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs…