Summary:Marriage between two parents, compared with other family living arrangements, appears, on average, to enhance children’s wellbeing and development. Some of the positive association between marriage and children’s wellbeing comes from positive associations between marriage and other things that also contribute to children’s wellbeing. David Ribar first sets up a standard economic rational-choice model to show that, all else equal, marriage should produce advantages that can improve children’s wellbeing, such as better coordination between parents and economies of scale that make limited resources go further.Digging more deeply, he then examines specific mechanisms through which marriage may operate to improve children’s lives. Some of these have been well studied, including income, fathers’ involvement, parents’ physical and mental health, parenting quality, social supports, health insurance, home ownership, parents’ relationships, bargaining power, and family stability. Others have received less attention, including net wealth, borrowing constraints, and informal insurance through social networks. Many of these mechanisms could be bolstered by public policy; that is, when they are lacking in children’s lives, public policy could potentially provide substitutes—greater cash assistance, more generous health insurance, better housing, more help for caregivers, etc.Yet studies of child wellbeing that control for the indirect effects of these mechanisms typically find that direct positive associations remain between children’s wellbeing and marriage, strongly suggesting that marriage is more than the sum of these particular parts. Thus, Ribar argues, the advantages of marriage for children’s wellbeing are likely to be hard to replicate through policy interventions other than those that bolster marriage itself.
{"title":"Why Marriage Matters for Child Wellbeing","authors":"D. Ribar","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:Marriage between two parents, compared with other family living arrangements, appears, on average, to enhance children’s wellbeing and development. Some of the positive association between marriage and children’s wellbeing comes from positive associations between marriage and other things that also contribute to children’s wellbeing. David Ribar first sets up a standard economic rational-choice model to show that, all else equal, marriage should produce advantages that can improve children’s wellbeing, such as better coordination between parents and economies of scale that make limited resources go further.Digging more deeply, he then examines specific mechanisms through which marriage may operate to improve children’s lives. Some of these have been well studied, including income, fathers’ involvement, parents’ physical and mental health, parenting quality, social supports, health insurance, home ownership, parents’ relationships, bargaining power, and family stability. Others have received less attention, including net wealth, borrowing constraints, and informal insurance through social networks. Many of these mechanisms could be bolstered by public policy; that is, when they are lacking in children’s lives, public policy could potentially provide substitutes—greater cash assistance, more generous health insurance, better housing, more help for caregivers, etc.Yet studies of child wellbeing that control for the indirect effects of these mechanisms typically find that direct positive associations remain between children’s wellbeing and marriage, strongly suggesting that marriage is more than the sum of these particular parts. Thus, Ribar argues, the advantages of marriage for children’s wellbeing are likely to be hard to replicate through policy interventions other than those that bolster marriage itself.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"11 1","pages":"11 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary: Childhood is a particularly sensitive time when it comes to pollution exposure. Allison Larr and Matthew Neidell focus on two atmospheric pollutants—ozone and particulate matter—that can harm children’s health in many ways. Ozone irritates the lungs, causing various respiratory symptoms; it can also damage the lung lining or aggravate lung diseases such as asthma. Particulate matter affects both the lungs and the heart; like ozone, it can cause respiratory symptoms and aggravate asthma, but it can also induce heart attacks or irregular heartbeat. Beyond those immediate effects, childhood exposure to ozone and particulate matter can do long-term damage to children’s health and reduce their ability to accumulate human capital. For example, frequent asthma attacks can cut into school attendance and academic performance, ultimately detracting from children’s ability to earn a good living as adults. Fossil fuel-burning power plants, which are a major source of carbon emissions that cause climate change, also emit high levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, which play a role in forming ozone and particulate matter. We might assume, then, that policies to reduce climate change by cutting back on carbon emissions from power plants would automatically cut back on these other types of pollution. But it’s not quite that simple—atmospheric concentrations of ozone and particulate matter are linked to heat and other climatic variables through complex, nonlinear relationships. Taking those complex relationships into account and examining a variety of ways to model future air quality, Larr and Neidell project that policies to mitigate the emissions that produce climate change would indeed significantly reduce atmospheric ozone and particulate matter—at least in the United States, which has the most-complete data available to make such calculations. The drop in pollution would in turn produce significant improvements in child wellbeing. Children would be more likely to survive into adulthood, experience healthier childhoods, have more human capital, and be more productive as adults.
{"title":"Pollution and Climate Change","authors":"Allison S. Larr, Matthew Neidell","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2016.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2016.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Summary: Childhood is a particularly sensitive time when it comes to pollution exposure. Allison Larr and Matthew Neidell focus on two atmospheric pollutants—ozone and particulate matter—that can harm children’s health in many ways. Ozone irritates the lungs, causing various respiratory symptoms; it can also damage the lung lining or aggravate lung diseases such as asthma. Particulate matter affects both the lungs and the heart; like ozone, it can cause respiratory symptoms and aggravate asthma, but it can also induce heart attacks or irregular heartbeat. Beyond those immediate effects, childhood exposure to ozone and particulate matter can do long-term damage to children’s health and reduce their ability to accumulate human capital. For example, frequent asthma attacks can cut into school attendance and academic performance, ultimately detracting from children’s ability to earn a good living as adults. Fossil fuel-burning power plants, which are a major source of carbon emissions that cause climate change, also emit high levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, which play a role in forming ozone and particulate matter. We might assume, then, that policies to reduce climate change by cutting back on carbon emissions from power plants would automatically cut back on these other types of pollution. But it’s not quite that simple—atmospheric concentrations of ozone and particulate matter are linked to heat and other climatic variables through complex, nonlinear relationships. Taking those complex relationships into account and examining a variety of ways to model future air quality, Larr and Neidell project that policies to mitigate the emissions that produce climate change would indeed significantly reduce atmospheric ozone and particulate matter—at least in the United States, which has the most-complete data available to make such calculations. The drop in pollution would in turn produce significant improvements in child wellbeing. Children would be more likely to survive into adulthood, experience healthier childhoods, have more human capital, and be more productive as adults.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"26 1","pages":"113 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2016.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66361320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:The past four decades have seen a rapid decline in marriage rates and a rapid increase in nonmarital births. These changes have had at least three worrisome effects on children. Scholars disagree about the magnitude of these effects, but surveys and other research evidence appear to definitively establish that the nation has more poverty, more income inequality, and less salutary child development, especially as a result of the rise in nonmarital births and single-parent families.Ron Haskins examines whether and how government policies could do something to reverse these trends, or deal with their consequences if they can’t be reversed. He finds evidence that some policies could produce enough impacts to be worth pursuing further, at the very least by developing and testing pilot programs.First, writes Haskins, we might encourage marriage by reducing marriage penalties in means-tested benefits programs and expanding programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit to supplement the incomes of poorly educated men. Second, we have strong evidence that offering long-acting, reversible contraception and other forms of birth control to low-income women can reduce nonmarital births. Third, although the couples relationship programs piloted by the Bush administration in an effort to encourage marriage produced few positive results, there are some bright spots that could form the basis for designing and testing a new generation of such programs. Fourth, we could create more opportunities for disadvantaged young men to prepare for employment, and we could reduce their rates of incarceration. And, finally, we could do more to help single mothers raise their children, for example, by expanding child care subsidies.
摘要:在过去的四十年里，结婚率迅速下降，非婚生育迅速增加。这些变化至少给孩子们带来了三个令人担忧的影响。学者们对这些影响的程度意见不一，但调查和其他研究证据似乎明确表明，这个国家的贫困程度更高，收入差距更大，有益的儿童发展更少，尤其是由于非婚生育和单亲家庭的增加。罗恩·哈斯金斯(Ron Haskins)研究了政府的政策是否以及如何能够扭转这些趋势，或者在无法逆转的情况下处理它们的后果。他发现有证据表明，一些政策可以产生足够的影响，值得进一步推行，至少可以通过开发和测试试点项目来实现。哈斯金斯写道，首先，我们可以通过在经济状况调查福利项目中减少对婚姻的惩罚，并扩大劳动所得税抵免(Earned Income Tax Credit)等项目，以补充受教育程度较低的男性的收入，来鼓励婚姻。其次，我们有强有力的证据表明，向低收入妇女提供长效、可逆的避孕措施和其他形式的节育措施可以减少非婚生育。第三，尽管布什政府为鼓励婚姻而试行的夫妻关系项目收效甚微，但仍有一些亮点可以作为设计和测试新一代此类项目的基础。第四，我们可以为处于不利地位的年轻人创造更多就业机会，我们可以降低他们的监禁率。最后，我们可以做更多的事情来帮助单身母亲抚养孩子，例如，通过扩大儿童保育补贴。
{"title":"The Family Is Here to Stay—or Not","authors":"R. Haskins","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:The past four decades have seen a rapid decline in marriage rates and a rapid increase in nonmarital births. These changes have had at least three worrisome effects on children. Scholars disagree about the magnitude of these effects, but surveys and other research evidence appear to definitively establish that the nation has more poverty, more income inequality, and less salutary child development, especially as a result of the rise in nonmarital births and single-parent families.Ron Haskins examines whether and how government policies could do something to reverse these trends, or deal with their consequences if they can’t be reversed. He finds evidence that some policies could produce enough impacts to be worth pursuing further, at the very least by developing and testing pilot programs.First, writes Haskins, we might encourage marriage by reducing marriage penalties in means-tested benefits programs and expanding programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit to supplement the incomes of poorly educated men. Second, we have strong evidence that offering long-acting, reversible contraception and other forms of birth control to low-income women can reduce nonmarital births. Third, although the couples relationship programs piloted by the Bush administration in an effort to encourage marriage produced few positive results, there are some bright spots that could form the basis for designing and testing a new generation of such programs. Fourth, we could create more opportunities for disadvantaged young men to prepare for employment, and we could reduce their rates of incarceration. And, finally, we could do more to help single mothers raise their children, for example, by expanding child care subsidies.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"25 1","pages":"129 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many unmarried parents are cohabiting when their child is born. Indeed, almost all of the increase in nonmarital childbearing during the past two decades has occurred to cohabiting rather than single mothers.1 But cohabiting unions are very unstable, leading us to use the term “fragile families” to describe them. About half of couples who are cohabiting at their child’s birth will split by the time the child is five. Many of these young parents will go on to form new relationships and to have additional children with new partners. The consequences of this instability for children are not good. Research increasingly shows that family instability undermines parents’ investments in their children, affecting the children’s cognitive and social-emotional development in ways that constrain their life chances.2
{"title":"Marriage and Child Wellbeing Revisited: Introducing the Issue","authors":"Sara McLanahan, Isabel V Sawhill","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Many unmarried parents are cohabiting when their child is born. Indeed, almost all of the increase in nonmarital childbearing during the past two decades has occurred to cohabiting rather than single mothers.1 But cohabiting unions are very unstable, leading us to use the term “fragile families” to describe them. About half of couples who are cohabiting at their child’s birth will split by the time the child is five. Many of these young parents will go on to form new relationships and to have additional children with new partners. The consequences of this instability for children are not good. Research increasingly shows that family instability undermines parents’ investments in their children, affecting the children’s cognitive and social-emotional development in ways that constrain their life chances.2","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"25 1","pages":"3 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:Since the 1960s, the United States has witnessed a dramatic retreat from marriage, marked by divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and lower overall marriage rates. Marriage is now less likely to anchor adults’ lives or provide a stable framework for childrearing, especially among poor and working-class Americans.Much research on the retreat from marriage has focused on its economic foundations. Bradford Wilcox, Nicholas Wolfinger, and Charles Stokes take a different tack, exploring cultural factors that may have contributed to the retreat from marriage and the growing class divide in marriage. These include growing individualism and the waning of a family-oriented ethos, the rise of a “capstone” model of marriage, and the decline of civil society.These cultural and civic trends have been especially consequential for poorer American families. Yet if we take into account cultural factors like adolescent attitudes toward single parenthood and the structure of the family in which they grew up, the authors find, the class divide in nonmarital childbearing among U.S. young women is reduced by about one-fifth. For example, compared to their peers from less-educated homes, adolescent girls with college-educated parents are more likely to hold marriage-friendly attitudes and to be raised in an intact, married home, factors that reduce their risk of having a child outside of marriage.Wilcox, Wolfinger, and Stokes conclude by outlining public policy changes and civic and cultural reforms that might strengthen family life and marriage across the country, especially among poor and working-class families.
{"title":"One Nation, Divided: Culture, Civic Institutions, and the Marriage Divide","authors":"W. Wilcox, N. H. Wolfinger, Charles Stokes","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0015","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:Since the 1960s, the United States has witnessed a dramatic retreat from marriage, marked by divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and lower overall marriage rates. Marriage is now less likely to anchor adults’ lives or provide a stable framework for childrearing, especially among poor and working-class Americans.Much research on the retreat from marriage has focused on its economic foundations. Bradford Wilcox, Nicholas Wolfinger, and Charles Stokes take a different tack, exploring cultural factors that may have contributed to the retreat from marriage and the growing class divide in marriage. These include growing individualism and the waning of a family-oriented ethos, the rise of a “capstone” model of marriage, and the decline of civil society.These cultural and civic trends have been especially consequential for poorer American families. Yet if we take into account cultural factors like adolescent attitudes toward single parenthood and the structure of the family in which they grew up, the authors find, the class divide in nonmarital childbearing among U.S. young women is reduced by about one-fifth. For example, compared to their peers from less-educated homes, adolescent girls with college-educated parents are more likely to hold marriage-friendly attitudes and to be raised in an intact, married home, factors that reduce their risk of having a child outside of marriage.Wilcox, Wolfinger, and Stokes conclude by outlining public policy changes and civic and cultural reforms that might strengthen family life and marriage across the country, especially among poor and working-class families.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"25 1","pages":"111 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:Families influence their children’s health in two ways that are amenable to public policy— through their financial and other investments in children, and through the quality of care that they provide. In general, children who receive more resources or better parenting are healthier than those who don’t. Public policies, therefore, might improve children’s health either by giving families more resources or by helping parents provide better care.When it comes to financial resources, write Lawrence Berger and Sarah Font, the research is straightforward—programs that add to disadvantaged families’ incomes, whether in cash or in kind, can indeed improve their children’s health. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, has been linked to higher birth weights and greater cognitive achievement.When it comes to programs that target quality of care, however, the picture is more complex. At the low end of the spectrum, poor parenting shades into neglect or abuse, which can seriously harm children’s health and development. Thus we might expect that the child protective services system, which has the power to intervene and protect children in such cases, could also improve children’s health in the long run. But Berger and Font find that the system’s ability to affect children’s health is limited, largely because it becomes involved in children’s lives only after damage has already occurred.Other programs, however, have the potential to improve parenting, reduce maltreatment, and thus enhance children’s health and development. Home visiting programs show particular promise, as do large-scale, community-level primary prevention programs.
摘要:家庭通过两种符合公共政策的方式影响其子女的健康——通过其对儿童的财政和其他投资，以及通过其提供的护理质量。一般来说，获得更多资源或更好的教育的孩子比那些没有得到的孩子更健康。因此，公共政策可以通过给家庭更多的资源或帮助父母提供更好的照顾来改善儿童的健康。劳伦斯·伯杰(Lawrence Berger)和莎拉·方特(Sarah Font)写道，当涉及到财政资源时，研究结果很直截了当——增加弱势家庭收入的项目，无论是现金还是实物，确实可以改善他们孩子的健康。例如，劳动所得税抵免(Earned Income Tax Credit)与较高的出生体重和更高的认知成就有关。然而，当涉及到以护理质量为目标的项目时，情况就复杂多了。在较低的范围内，不良的养育方式演变为忽视或虐待，这可能严重损害儿童的健康和发展。因此，我们可以期望，在这种情况下有能力干预和保护儿童的儿童保护服务系统，也可以从长远来看改善儿童的健康。但伯杰和丰特发现，该系统影响儿童健康的能力是有限的，主要是因为它只有在损害已经发生之后才会介入儿童的生活。然而，其他项目有可能改善养育方式，减少虐待，从而促进儿童的健康和发展。家访计划和大规模的社区一级预防计划一样，显示出特别的希望。
{"title":"The Role of the Family and Family-Centered Programs and Policies","authors":"Lawrence M. Berger, Sarah A. Font","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:Families influence their children’s health in two ways that are amenable to public policy— through their financial and other investments in children, and through the quality of care that they provide. In general, children who receive more resources or better parenting are healthier than those who don’t. Public policies, therefore, might improve children’s health either by giving families more resources or by helping parents provide better care.When it comes to financial resources, write Lawrence Berger and Sarah Font, the research is straightforward—programs that add to disadvantaged families’ incomes, whether in cash or in kind, can indeed improve their children’s health. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, has been linked to higher birth weights and greater cognitive achievement.When it comes to programs that target quality of care, however, the picture is more complex. At the low end of the spectrum, poor parenting shades into neglect or abuse, which can seriously harm children’s health and development. Thus we might expect that the child protective services system, which has the power to intervene and protect children in such cases, could also improve children’s health in the long run. But Berger and Font find that the system’s ability to affect children’s health is limited, largely because it becomes involved in children’s lives only after damage has already occurred.Other programs, however, have the potential to improve parenting, reduce maltreatment, and thus enhance children’s health and development. Home visiting programs show particular promise, as do large-scale, community-level primary prevention programs.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"25 1","pages":"155 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:The past century has seen vast improvements in our children’s health. The infectious diseases that once killed huge numbers of children have largely been conquered. Infant mortality has also fallen markedly, although the United States lags behind other industrialized nations in this and other measures of children’s health. Accidents and injuries also kill fewer children than they once did.Today, write Sara Rosenbaum and Robert Blum, the greatest threats to U.S. children’s health are social and environmental conditions, such as stress and exposure to toxic substances, which are associated with noncommunicable illnesses, such as mental health problems and asthma. Unlike the communicable diseases of the past, these are not equal-opportunity hazards. They are far more likely to affect poor children and the children of racial and ethnic minorities. And they have long-lasting effects, both for individuals and for the nation. For example, people who experience unhealthy levels of stress as children grow up to become less healthy, less productive adults.Rosenbaum and Blum also examine government spending on children’s health. Though such spending has increased over time, the largest share of that increased spending has been for health care, while spending on other determinants of child health, which may be as or more important, has not kept pace. Investments in medical care alone can’t overcome social and environmental threats to children’s health that have their roots in historic levels of poverty and inequality. Rosenbaum and Blum argue that the best way to promote children’s health today is to mitigate poverty, invest in education, and make our neighborhoods and communities healthier and safer.
{"title":"How Healthy Are Our Children?","authors":"S. Rosenbaum, R. Blum","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:The past century has seen vast improvements in our children’s health. The infectious diseases that once killed huge numbers of children have largely been conquered. Infant mortality has also fallen markedly, although the United States lags behind other industrialized nations in this and other measures of children’s health. Accidents and injuries also kill fewer children than they once did.Today, write Sara Rosenbaum and Robert Blum, the greatest threats to U.S. children’s health are social and environmental conditions, such as stress and exposure to toxic substances, which are associated with noncommunicable illnesses, such as mental health problems and asthma. Unlike the communicable diseases of the past, these are not equal-opportunity hazards. They are far more likely to affect poor children and the children of racial and ethnic minorities. And they have long-lasting effects, both for individuals and for the nation. For example, people who experience unhealthy levels of stress as children grow up to become less healthy, less productive adults.Rosenbaum and Blum also examine government spending on children’s health. Though such spending has increased over time, the largest share of that increased spending has been for health care, while spending on other determinants of child health, which may be as or more important, has not kept pace. Investments in medical care alone can’t overcome social and environmental threats to children’s health that have their roots in historic levels of poverty and inequality. Rosenbaum and Blum argue that the best way to promote children’s health today is to mitigate poverty, invest in education, and make our neighborhoods and communities healthier and safer.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"153 1","pages":"11 - 34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:Food assistance programs —including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), the National School Lunch Program, and the School Breakfast Program —have been remarkably successful at their core mission: reducing food insecurity among low-income children. Moreover, writes Craig Gundersen, SNAP in particular has also been shown to reduce poverty, improve birth outcomes and children’s health generally, and increase survival among low-weight infants. Thus these programs are a crucial component of the United States’ social safety net for health.Recent years have seen proposals to alter these programs to achieve additional goals, such as reducing childhood obesity. Two popular ideas are to restrict what recipients can purchase with SNAP benefits and to change the composition of school meals, in an effort to change eating patterns. Gundersen shows that these proposed changes are unlikely to reduce childhood obesity yet are likely to have the unintended effect of damaging the programs’ core mission by reducing participation and thus increasing food insecurity among children.On the other hand, Gundersen writes, policy makers could contemplate certain changes that would make food assistance programs even more effective. For example, lawmakers could revisit the SNAP benefit formula, which hasn’t changed for decades, to make certain that aid is going to those who need it most. Similarly, the School Breakfast Program could be expanded to cover more children, and summer meal programs could reach more children when school isn’t in session.
{"title":"Food Assistance Programs and Child Health","authors":"C. Gundersen","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:Food assistance programs —including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), the National School Lunch Program, and the School Breakfast Program —have been remarkably successful at their core mission: reducing food insecurity among low-income children. Moreover, writes Craig Gundersen, SNAP in particular has also been shown to reduce poverty, improve birth outcomes and children’s health generally, and increase survival among low-weight infants. Thus these programs are a crucial component of the United States’ social safety net for health.Recent years have seen proposals to alter these programs to achieve additional goals, such as reducing childhood obesity. Two popular ideas are to restrict what recipients can purchase with SNAP benefits and to change the composition of school meals, in an effort to change eating patterns. Gundersen shows that these proposed changes are unlikely to reduce childhood obesity yet are likely to have the unintended effect of damaging the programs’ core mission by reducing participation and thus increasing food insecurity among children.On the other hand, Gundersen writes, policy makers could contemplate certain changes that would make food assistance programs even more effective. For example, lawmakers could revisit the SNAP benefit formula, which hasn’t changed for decades, to make certain that aid is going to those who need it most. Similarly, the School Breakfast Program could be expanded to cover more children, and summer meal programs could reach more children when school isn’t in session.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"25 1","pages":"109 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:Children who are healthy early in life—from conception to age five—not only grow up to be healthier adults, they are also better educated, earn more, and contribute more to the economy. The United States lags behind other advanced countries in early childhood health, threatening both the health of future generations and the nation’s long-term economic viability.Moreover, unhealthy childhoods are not evenly distributed. An accounting of early childhood health in the United States reveals stark inequalities along racial/ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Because of the strong connection between early health and adult outcomes, early childhood offers a critical window to improve disadvantaged children’s life chances through evidence-based interventions and thereby to reduce inequality. Restricting her review to studies that can plausibly show causation, Maya Rossin-Slater examines the evidence behind a variety of programs and policies that target any of three groups: women at risk of getting pregnant, pregnant women, or children through age five.She finds that some programs and policies have failed to show consistent results. But the good news is that others are quite effective at improving early childhood health. The most successful include the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), universal immunization, and high-quality, center-based early childhood care and education. Economic analyses reveal that these programs’ benefits outweigh their costs, suggesting that public spending to support them is more than justified.
{"title":"Promoting Health in Early Childhood","authors":"Maya Rossin-Slater","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2015.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2015.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:Children who are healthy early in life—from conception to age five—not only grow up to be healthier adults, they are also better educated, earn more, and contribute more to the economy. The United States lags behind other advanced countries in early childhood health, threatening both the health of future generations and the nation’s long-term economic viability.Moreover, unhealthy childhoods are not evenly distributed. An accounting of early childhood health in the United States reveals stark inequalities along racial/ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Because of the strong connection between early health and adult outcomes, early childhood offers a critical window to improve disadvantaged children’s life chances through evidence-based interventions and thereby to reduce inequality. Restricting her review to studies that can plausibly show causation, Maya Rossin-Slater examines the evidence behind a variety of programs and policies that target any of three groups: women at risk of getting pregnant, pregnant women, or children through age five.She finds that some programs and policies have failed to show consistent results. But the good news is that others are quite effective at improving early childhood health. The most successful include the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), universal immunization, and high-quality, center-based early childhood care and education. Economic analyses reveal that these programs’ benefits outweigh their costs, suggesting that public spending to support them is more than justified.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"25 1","pages":"35 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2015.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary:One way to assess the value of preschool education programs is to compare their upfront costs with the economic benefits they produce, measured by such outcomes as less need for special education services, improved high school graduation rates, higher earnings and less criminal activity in adulthood, and so on. What do such benefit-cost analyses tell us about the wisdom of investing in greater access to preschool? In this article, Lynn Karoly carefully reviews the evidence.First, she identifies the biggest challenges in measuring the economic returns from preschool programs. Then she summarizes the range of estimates from various benefit-cost analyses and some of the methodological differences that can account for the differences among them. Last, she explores the implications of the research for using benefit-cost analysis results to make policy decisions about preschool education.One key challenge: Although many preschool programs have been evaluated for their educational effectiveness, few have been subject to economic evaluations. Most predictive studies of preschool education’s long-term economic benefits rely on benefit-cost analyses of programs that were implemented decades ago, when a far smaller proportion of children attended preschool at all, and that followed their subjects well into adult life. Although analyses of those programs suggest returns from preschool as high as $17 for every dollar invested, Karoly concludes that in today’s context, it may be more realistic to expect returns in the range of $3 to $4.In the end, Karoly writes, we need to improve the quality and usefulness of economic evaluations of preschool, particularly by calculating the true economic value of preschool programs’ short-term and medium-term effects in areas such as cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral development. We could then more easily evaluate the economic benefits of a preschool program without having to wait until the participating children grow to adulthood.
{"title":"The Economic Returns to Early Childhood Education","authors":"L. Karoly","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2016.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2016.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Summary:One way to assess the value of preschool education programs is to compare their upfront costs with the economic benefits they produce, measured by such outcomes as less need for special education services, improved high school graduation rates, higher earnings and less criminal activity in adulthood, and so on. What do such benefit-cost analyses tell us about the wisdom of investing in greater access to preschool? In this article, Lynn Karoly carefully reviews the evidence.First, she identifies the biggest challenges in measuring the economic returns from preschool programs. Then she summarizes the range of estimates from various benefit-cost analyses and some of the methodological differences that can account for the differences among them. Last, she explores the implications of the research for using benefit-cost analysis results to make policy decisions about preschool education.One key challenge: Although many preschool programs have been evaluated for their educational effectiveness, few have been subject to economic evaluations. Most predictive studies of preschool education’s long-term economic benefits rely on benefit-cost analyses of programs that were implemented decades ago, when a far smaller proportion of children attended preschool at all, and that followed their subjects well into adult life. Although analyses of those programs suggest returns from preschool as high as $17 for every dollar invested, Karoly concludes that in today’s context, it may be more realistic to expect returns in the range of $3 to $4.In the end, Karoly writes, we need to improve the quality and usefulness of economic evaluations of preschool, particularly by calculating the true economic value of preschool programs’ short-term and medium-term effects in areas such as cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral development. We could then more easily evaluate the economic benefits of a preschool program without having to wait until the participating children grow to adulthood.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"26 1","pages":"37 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2016.0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66361014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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