Is income during children's earliest years a key determinant of long-term child and adult success in the longer run? The research to date, Christopher Wimer and Sharon Wolf write, suggests that it is. Wimer and Wolf review substantial descriptive evidence that income can enhance child development and later adult outcomes, and that it does so most…

Since 1950, marriage behavior in the United States has changed dramatically. Though most men and women still marry at some point in their lives, they now do so later and are more likely to divorce. Cohabitation has become commonplace as either a precursor or an alternative to marriage, and a growing fraction of births take place outside marriage.…

In 2012, nearly 16 million U.S. children, or over one in five, lived in households that were food-insecure, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines as "a household-level economic and social condition of limited access to food." Even when we control for the effects of other factors correlated with poverty, these children are more…

In Mark Greenberg's view, a national child care strategy should pursue four goals. Every parent who needs child care to get or keep work should be able to afford care without having to leave children in unhealthy or dangerous environments; all families should be able to place their children in settings that foster education and healthy…

What do the half-century decline in U.S. marriage and the attendant rise in single parenthood mean for the economic well-being of children, especially children living in single-parent families? Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill show how differing living arrangements can be expected to affect families' economic well-being. Married-parent and…

A number of economic and labor market trends in the United States over the past 30 years affect the well-being of workers and their families. This article describes key changes taking place and the implications for social and economic policies designed to help low-income working families and their children, particularly those families that include…

To provide an array of perspectives about policies needed to serve the growing number of children of immigrant families in the U.S., experts across various organizations and backgrounds were asked to respond to this question: "How should policymakers, advocates, stakeholders, and practitioners respond strategically and proactively to demographic…

Children from low-income families are more likely than other children to have serious health problems. And, as Anne Case and Christina Paxson show, childhood health problems can prevent poor children from achieving economic success as adults. Income-related disparities in childhood health are evident at birth or even before, and the disparities…

Several major demographic shifts over the past half-century have transformed who we are and how we live in this country in many ways. Most striking, however, is the fact that children today are much more likely to be members of ethnic or racial minority groups. Racial/ethnic minorities are destined, in aggregate, to become the numerical majority…