K-12 gifted and talented programs have struggled with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, native language, and disability inequity since their inception. This inequity has been well documented in public schools since at least the 1970s and has been stubbornly persistent despite receiving substantial attention at conferences, in scholarly journals, and…

During pregnancy, low-income women are at high risk for depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but they are unlikely to receive mental health services. As a follow-up to Narayan et al. (2017), we provide a detailed picture of pregnant women's mental health service (MHS) need versus utilization. Results suggested that the majority of…

Mounting evidence across different disciplines suggests that early-life conditions can have consequences on individual outcomes throughout the life cycle. Relative to other developed countries, the United States fares poorly on standard indicators of early-life health, and this disadvantage may have profound consequences not only for population…

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…

New discoveries in neuroscience suggest that school readiness interventions might come too late if they start after the child is three years old. Many of the skills needed to succeed in school are shaped during a baby's interactions with his or her caregivers. Unfortunately, the level of support and resources provided for new mothers and their…

Ever since the Soviet era there has been an entire system of social welfare benefits in connection with the birth and upbringing of children. Nowadays, in the independent states that came into being in the post-Soviet space, extensive use is also made of various social welfare benefits that are linked to prenatal, childbirth, and postnatal…

In 1999, the Board of Commissioners of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, joined with 21 philanthropic foundations and private funders, as well as nearly 80 community service agencies, to form a public-private partnership that would launch an early childhood initiative, Invest in Children, as a comprehensive system of care focused on improving the…

The National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives (Rural Early Childhood), a research program of the Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute, and Child Trends analyzed data from two nationally representative samples of young children being followed in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study by the National Center for…