A cluster randomized trial estimated the effects of a supplemental vocabulary program, Elements of Reading[R]: vocabulary on student vocabulary and passage comprehension in moderate- to high-poverty elementary schools. Forty-four schools participated over a period spanning 2 consecutive school years. At baseline, 1,057 teachers and 16,471 students…

Most poor children achieve less, exhibit more problem behaviors and are less healthy than children reared in more affluent families. We look beyond correlations such as these to a recent set of studies that attempt to assess the causal impact of childhood poverty on adult well-being. We pay particular attention to the potentially harmful effects…

Youth-sensitive policies are gradually gaining recognition in Africa. The release of the recent publication "Children in Ghana" by the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) and UNICEF-Ghana attests to the value the country places on young people's perspectives. Guided by Richardson's conceptual framework on sexual citizenship,…

Southern African Development Community (SADC) nations in principle endorse lifelong learning (LLL) as a useful framework for sustainable development. However, in spite of the rhetoric, only a few member states such as South Africa, Botswana and Namibia have officially endorsed LLL in their educational policies. The sub-region is plagued by social…

Gender equality in education has become a highly embedded norm in global development policy, as well as within the poverty reduction and national development policies of aid recipient countries. Despite such progress, however, we know little about the significance of competing gender equality and education policy orientations (e.g., human capital,…

Early exposure to the multiple risk factors associated with poverty is related to an elevated risk for academic difficulty. Therefore, it is important to promote academic resilience as early as possible and to identify factors that support resilience. Given the positive relation between early language skills and later academic outcomes, examining…

Parental communication and support is associated with improved developmental, health and behavioral outcomes in adolescence. This study explores the quality of mother-daughter communication about sexual maturation, abstinence and unintended pregnancy in Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. We use data from 14 focus group…

For more than 20 years, Advocates for Children of New Jersey has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on the state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, food insecurity,…

Rural schools, have the hardest time retaining qualified teachers. As a result, under-qualified teachers or those with emergency licenses work disproportionately in high-poverty and urban schools (U.S. Department of Education, 1998) Students in high-poverty schools are less likely to be taught by a qualified teacher (Ingersoll, 1999); they may be…

Background: Understanding how financial well-being changes through the life course of caregiving parents of children with developmental disabilities is critically important. Methods: We analyse SIPP (U.S. Census Bureau) data to describe income poverty, asset poverty, income, net worth, and liquid assets of US parents (N = 753) of children with…

As a bilingual teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools, this author has seen many students deal with deportation. In this article, she shares a story of Elena, whose father was deported, that casts light on a growing crisis. She is using Elena as an example because this is "not" a unique story. It has many similarities to the experiences of…

Peter Bachrach had a remarkable impact on those who encountered him in person and on generations of readers. Judith Baer vividly captures, among other things, his inspiring, emboldening influence on his students and the sheer fun it was to be with him. My recollections are of exciting, forward moving, intense, and probing arguments, in private and…

Individual battered women have reported experiencing housing discrimination, but the extent of this problem has not been examined. This research used two experiments and a survey to determine if landlord discrimination could keep women from accessing rental units. In Study 1, a confederate asked 181 landlords about the availability of a rental…

The purpose of this article is to compare four different levels of aggregation to assess their utility as areal units in child maltreatment research. The units examined are county, zip code, tract, and block group levels. Each of the four levels is analyzed to determine which show the strongest effects in modeling the correlation between poverty…

A recent English study found that children from poor families who did well in cognitive tests at age three are expected to be overtaken in the cognitive test by the age of seven by children from rich families who did poorly in cognitive tests at age three. The conclusion was that family background seems to have a dominant influence on a child's…