Research

The purpose of this study was to determine the most prevalent African American Language (AAL) phonological and grammatical features in slavery- and Civil Rights-themed children’s literature.

New data from the Baby’s First Years study provide a look at family food security and how families with low incomes allocate additional funds, including spending on food.

This paper summarizes previously published findings coupled with new analyses of data through the third year of follow-up on the effects of a monthly unconditional cash gift on outcomes related to food security, spending, and consumption from the Baby’s First Years study.

This study investigated relations among parental education, parents’ attitudes toward their adolescents’ school, parental support for learning at home, and adolescents’ academic identity and school performance over time and in different national contexts.

In a cohort followed from late adolescence until established adulthood, this study examined how singlehood, cohabitation, and marriage at different ages are related to well-being at age 34.

Recently, U.S. advocates and funders have supported direct cash transfers for individuals and families as an efficient, immediate, and non-paternalistic path to poverty alleviation. This article address questions and concerns about how such programs are implemented.

Using data from a quasi-random natural experiment of a large family cash transfer among an American Indian tribe in rural North Carolina, this paper examines whether a positive disruption in socioeconomic status during childhood improves birthing person/perinatal outcomes when they become parents themselves.

This study examines how parent-adolescent conflicts, attachment, positive parenting, and communication are related to adolescents’ romantic relationship quality, satisfaction, conflicts, and management. Results stress the relevance of parent-adolescent conflicts and attachment as factors connected to how adolescents experience romantic relationships.

New research findings show that teachers’ experiences during their first year in the profession impact how they assess students, particularly Black students, later in their careers.

Researchers examined whether the Fast Track mental health intervention delivered to individuals in childhood decreased mental health problems and the need for health services among the children of these individuals. They found children of Fast Track participants used fewer general inpatient services and fewer inpatient or outpatient mental health services.

This study tested the hypothesis that high-quality kindergarten teachers sustain and amplify the skill development of children who participated in North Carolina’s NC Pre-K program during the previous year. Higher value-added teachers promoted the skill development of all children, but did not differentially benefit the skill development of former NC Pre-K participants compared to non-participants.

In early 2022, CCFP conducted focus groups comprised of diverse parents and child care providers from across North Carolina. This brief synthesizes their views on the system’s strengths, needs, and ideas for improvement with respect to the early care and education workforce.

In early 2022, CCFP conducted focus groups comprised of diverse parents and child care providers from across North Carolina. This brief synthesizes their views on the system’s strengths, needs, and ideas for improvement with respect to availability and affordability.

In early 2022, CCFP conducted focus groups comprised of diverse parents and child care providers from across North Carolina. This brief synthesizes their views on the system strengths, needs, and ideas for improvement with respect to young children’s social and emotional development.

In early 2022, CCFP conducted focus groups comprised of diverse parents and child care providers from across North Carolina. This brief synthesizes their views on the system’s strengths, needs, and ideas for improvement with respect to school readiness.

To answer these questions about how much adolescents’ lives were disrupted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic or what risk factors predicted such disruption 1,080 adolescents in 9 nations were surveyed 5 times from March 2020 to July 2022, with findings presented in this article. Collectively, the findings provide new insights that policymakers can use to prevent the disruption of adolescents’ lives in future pandemics.

This study assessed whether the peer environment in kindergarten and first grade affected student learning following an early mathematics intervention. Findings suggest that classroom peer effects may play only a limited role in sustaining early intervention effects.

In this study, primary care medical records were reviewed for children ages 3 to 17 with a subspecialty sexual abuse (SA) evaluation to assess factors associated with documentation of SA history and mental health management by the primary care provider.

Introduction to a special issue of The Journal of Genetic Psychology on forgiveness and vengeance in Muslim societies that further advance theoretical and empirical knowledge about the antecedents of forgiveness and vengeance.

This study considers the multigenerational consequences of wealth transmission for the transition to young adulthood.

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined associations of three types of ACEs (abuse, neglect, and household dysfunctions) with experiential (emotional quality of momentary and everyday experiences) and reflective (judgments about life satisfaction, sense of meaning, and ability to pursue goals that can include and extend beyond the self) facets of emotional well-being (EWB) and educational achievement.

Parental self-efficacy (PSE) captures parents’ beliefs in their ability to perform the parenting role successfully and to handle pivotal issues of specific developmental periods. This study examined the developmental trends of PSE among Italian mothers and fathers over seven waves as well as the longitudinal associations between PSE and rule-breaking behaviors during late adolescence.

This study examined parental self-efficacy among mothers and fathers over 3.5 years during children’s transition into adolescence, and whether the level and developmental trajectory of parental self-efficacy varied by cultural group. Data were drawn from three waves of the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) project, a large-scale longitudinal, cross-cultural study, across nine countries (12 ethnic/cultural groups). Results suggest that declines in parental self-efficacy documented in previous research are culturally influenced.

This research brief summarizes finding from Electronic Health Record Tools to Identify Child Maltreatment: Scoping Literature Review and Key Informant Interviews, which reviewed existing research on EHR-based child abuse screens and clinical decision support systems. The authors also collected the perspectives of medical personnel on the implementation of such tools.

New research findings show that teachers’ experiences during their first year teaching impact how they assess students, particularly Black students, later in their careers.

This paper presents an argument for why there is a need to re-envision the underlying culture of undergraduate biology education to ensure the success, retention, and matriculation of Black students.

This study explored the association between relative age and the persistence of ADHD diagnosis at older ages. Contrary to some expectations, children who were younger when they started kindergarten are as likely as children who were older to have a stable ADHD diagnosis.

This study examined the relation between adolescents’ perceived changes in internalizing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and four different family and peer relationships in Germany and Slovakia. In both countries, we found that higher levels of father internalizing symptoms exacerbated the relation between pandemic disruption and increases in pandemic-related adolescent internalizing symptoms. Similarly, parental support buffered the relation between adolescent perceptions of COVID-19 disruption and increases in the adolescents’ internalizing symptoms.

This research brief summarizes the findings of randomized control trial evaluations of the Family Connects program. The findings suggest that, when implemented with high quality, Family Connects has been effective at improving maternal and infant health and well-being and reducing health disparities among racial groups.

Low income can lead to limited choice of and access to contraception. This study examined whether an unconditional cash transfer (UCT) impacts contraceptive use, including increased satisfaction with and reduced barriers to preferred methods, for individuals with low income. Receipt of monthly UCTs did not impact contraception methods, perceived barriers to use, or satisfaction.

In spite of the laudable efforts of psychological scientists to create evidence-based interventions and the tireless work of psychological professionals to implement these programs, we have not moved the needle on improving the population mental health (and overall health) and well-being of our nation’s children. In answer to this challenge, psychological scientists have begun to model three approaches to population mental health that could be emulated by the field: bottom-up scaling, top-down community-level interventions, and systems transformation.

Among children experiencing poverty, a monthly cash gift affected healthy food intake, but not health or sleep.

College-educated mothers spend substantially more time in intensive childcare than less educated mothers despite their higher opportunity cost of time and working more hours. This study looks at one reason this may be by testing the hypothesis that college-educated mothers enjoy childcare more.

Parenting that is high in rejection and low in acceptance is associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing problems in children and adolescents. Findings show that more variability over time in experiences of parental acceptance/rejection predicts internalizing and externalizing symptoms as children transition into adolescence, and this effect is present across multiple diverse samples.

This working paper provides a child-centric framework for reparations and the resulting
policy considerations and implications for child descendants of enslaved African Americans.

Findings from this study suggest that, among families experiencing low economic resources, maternal reports of stress are associated with differences in patterns of infant resting brain activity during the first year of life.

COVID-19 has led to a child care workforce and mental health crisis for staff, families, and children under age three (infants and toddlers). The current level of stress for chil­dren, families, and infant-toddler early care and education professionals and its impact on infant and toddler well-being needs our attention.

School districts across the U.S. have adopted funding policies designed to distribute resources more equitably across schools. However, schools are also increasing external fundraising efforts to supplement district budget allocations. This study found that external fundraising offset the policy-induced per-pupil expenditure gap by 26-39 percent.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) minimizes recall burden and maximizes ecological validity and has emerged as a valuable tool. However, EMA has yet to be reliably utilized in young children. The present study evaluates the performance of a developmentally appropriate EMA smartphone app for young children ages 4–10.

A family cash transfer in childhood that had long-term effects on individual functioning did not impact the home environment of participants who became parents. Rather, parents in both groups were providing home environments generally conducive to their children’s growth and development.

Using data from surveys of Italian adolescents, researchers looked at the pattern of adolescent coping from just before the pandemic started and then for two more years. As adolescents reported feeling more stress about the pandemic, they reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression, and reported feeling less capable of coping with negative emotions. The findings are important for informing interventions to strengthen coping strategies for adolescents during stressful community-wide events.

Health care systems are increasingly prioritizing food insecurity interventions to improve health, but it is unclear how health systems collaborate with other sectors that are addressing food insecurity. This study evaluated existing collaborations and explore opportunities for further cross-sector engagement.

The use of online questionnaires for research purposes has proliferated in recent years. However, many researchers undertake online survey research without knowledge of the prevalence and likelihood of experiencing survey questionnaire fraud nor familiarity with measures used to identify fraud once it has occurred. We offer lessons learned to illustrate the sophisticated nature of fraud in online research and the importance of multi-pronged strategies to detect and limit online survey questionnaire fraud.

COVID-19 has altered adolescents’ opportunities for developing and strengthening interpersonal skills and proficiencies. Using data from adolescents in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom, we examined the relation between internalizing symptoms assessed pre-pandemic or when pandemic-related restrictions were lifted and associated internalizing symptoms during a subsequent restrictive pandemic period.

Researchers studying predictors of adolescents’ adjustment have increasingly focused on temperamental characteristics of self-regulation (e.g., effortful control – EC) and negative emotionality (NE). This study contributed to understanding how different configurations of specific dimensions of NE and EC were associated with aggressive and prosocial behaviors and if these associations differed across genders and three different countries, two of which have seldom been examined.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred an economic downturn that may have eroded population mental health, especially for renters and homeowners at risk of housing loss. Findings show that individuals who reported difficulty keeping up with rent or mortgage had increased anxiety and depression risks but that state eviction/foreclosure bans weakened these associations.

African American students often encounter racial microaggressions when attending predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Experiencing racial microaggressions can negatively affect African American students’ feelings of belonging to the campus community. Racial microaggressions can also affect students’ physical and emotional stability.

Estimates indicate that a child’s exposure to higher NC Pre-K funding was positively associated with that child’s academic achievement 6 years later. NC Pre-K funding effects on achievement were positive for all subgroups tested, and statistically significant for most.

Article reviews what racial microaggressions are, the impact of microaggressions on african-americans students, and research-based recommendations to address racial microaggressions in educational settings.

Researchers examined whether kindergarten conduct problems among mostly population-representative samples of children were associated with increased criminal and related costs across adolescence and adulthood, as well as government and medical services costs in adulthood.

“Backpack” food programs administered through public schools send non-perishable foods home with children to supplement school meals. Power Packs Project (PPP) is a unique backpack program, in that it provides fresh food. This study is the first to examine the effect of picking up a Power Pack in a given week on parent and child food insecurity and meal routines.

Findings provide the strongest evidence to date that very short birth spacing of zero through 6 months from last birth to the index child’s conception is a prenatal predictor of child maltreatment (indexed as child welfare involvement) throughout early childhood. However, challenging previous empirical evidence, this study reports inconsistent results for benefits of additional spacing delay beyond 6 months with regard to child maltreatment risk reduction, especially for children of racial and ethnic minorities.

This study demonstrates how data- and theory-driven methods can be integrated to identify the most important preadolescent risk factors in predicting adolescent mental health.

Food insecurity among adolescents is not static but varies from day to day. This daily variation is greater for economically disadvantaged youth.

Assignment to Family Connects, a short-term home visiting program, was associated with improvements in population-level self-reported scores of positive parenting 2 years post-intervention.

This brief, published in partnership with the Hunt Institute, describes the state of school-aged children’s health and healthcare access in the U.S., summarizes research on the link between children’s health and educational performance, and presents examples and models of school-based healthcare along with summaries of the existing evidence on their effectiveness.

Receipt of maltreatment evaluation was associated with a higher risk of subsequent acute health service use, both for maltreatment-related illnesses and for broader conditions.

Short video on co-regulation, the interactive process by which caring adults (1) provide warm supportive relationships, (2) promote self-regulation through coaching, modeling, and feedback, and (3) structure supportive environments.

The authors performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of ACE exposure on Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) levels – a neural biomarker involved in childhood and adult neurogenesis and long-term memory formation.

Current findings build support for the effectiveness of TCIT-U as universal prevention of behavior problems with an ethnically and racially diverse sample of teachers and children, including children with developmental disabilities.

In their chapter, Situated Professional Learning through Targeted Reading Instruction: Building Teacher Capacity and Diagnostic Practice, in Innovations in Literacy Professional Learning, Leslie Babinski and co-authors explore professional learning within the Targeted Reading Instruction model.

This paper reviews the economic research on U.S. safety net programs and cash aid to families with children and what existing studies reveal about its impacts on family investment mechanisms and children’s outcomes.

Findings have implications for ways to successfully market home-based parenting programs to families experiencing risk factors for child maltreatment and engage them in evidence-based services to promote family well-being.

Research characterizes public assistance programs as stigmatizing and stressful (e.g., psychological costs) but obscures differences across programs or the features of policy design that contribute to varied bureaucratic encounters.

This study broadens the traditional focus on income as the primary measure of economic deprivation by providing the first analysis of wealth deprivation, or net worth poverty (NWP), and adult health.

School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs) provide students with access to healthcare during the regular school day through private videoconferencing with a healthcare provider. SBTC access reduces the likelihood that a student is chronically absent and reduces the number of days absent.

In their chapter, The Utility of Critical Race Mixed Methodology: An Explanatory Sequential Example, in Advancing Culturally Responsive Research and Researchers, Whitney McCoy and co-authors explore the combining of mixed methodology and critical race theory (CRT) through the explaining of Critical Race Mixed Methodology (CRMM).

In the APA Handbook of Adolescent and Young Adult Development, Drew Rothenberg and co-authors focus on the parenting of adolescents and young adults in the United States. First considering some of the sociodemographic trends that are reshaping families, then examining classic social learning and behavioral approaches to conceptualizing the parenting of adolescents as well as family systems approaches.

In the APA Handbook of Adolescent and Young Adult Development, Jen Lansford and co-authors discuss how parents and their adolescent and young adult offspring observe and participate in parent–offspring interactions in their communities and hold expectations about their own relationships derived in part from culturally shaped expectations.

The purpose of this report is to highlight the insights from our first year that we can glean from plea tracking, describe the cases managed in the Durham Office, and draw attention to any emerging patterns in case characteristics and prosecutorial discretion.

Although there is a breadth of knowledge on child marriage in many low- and middle-income countries, little research and policy discussion exists surrounding child marriage within the United States. Using administrative data from several sources, this study examines how a range of different state-level variables, including political lean, academic performance, median household income, religiosity, population density, minimum age requirements and other state laws, such as parental and judicial consent, and median distance to an abortion clinic are related to variation in child marriage rates across states.

To reflect historical changes in family composition, gender roles and division of childcare, norms about the acceptability of different forms of discipline, and the digital environment in which children live, this report presents the HOME-21, a revised version of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment–Short Form, which has been the most widely used measure of children’s home environments for decades.

CrowdScience listener Ilixo, age 11, has been wondering why it is that our parents become so annoying as we become teenagers. Is it something that is changing in his brain or are they actually becoming more annoying as they age? Presenter Marnie Chesterton consults our assembled panel of experts, including Jennifer Lansford, a Research Professor at Duke University who studies parenting and child development.

Parent and child endorsement of reactive aggression both predict the emergence of child aggression, but they are rarely studied together and in longitudinal contexts. The present study does so by examining the unique predictive effects of parent and child endorsement of reactive aggression at age 8 on child aggression at age 9 in 1456 children from 13 cultural groups in 9 nations.

This brief is part of a series to examine state-level policies that relate to social service and safety net programs and the ways in which state and federal policy implementation at the local level may affect the reach of program benefits among Latino families.

In this study, researchers found that states’ granting of drivers’ licenses to undocumented people, availability of government information in Spanish, and employer mandates to inform employees were associated with higher EITC receipt among Hispanic families. These findings showcase ways in which information and outreach at the state level can support the equitable receipt of tax refunds and similar types of benefits distributed through the tax system.

Lisa Gennetian and Anna Gassman-Pines’ chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Parenting focuses on families with young children age 0-5 and considers the context of work and employment for parents, the role of child care and early education as supports for working parents, and the theoretical and empirical linkages between parents’ work contexts and parenting.

Jen Lansford’s chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Parenting provides an overview of parents’ discipline and punishment in relation to child development.

Increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of educators serving students in our public schools is a promising strategy that is vastly underutilized. The research has repeatedly shown the importance of a diverse teacher workforce. However, the path to increase diversity of educators is complex and will take significant efforts and investments by policymakers and advocates to accomplish.

Motivated by the rise in premature mortality among working-age adults, we examine the association between adult familial deaths and the transition to motherhood. Although many deaths can be disruptive, deaths that occur sooner than expected and to certain family members (e.g., mothers) may prompt changes in resources, time available for parenting, or psychological understandings in ways that change fertility behavior.

In this policy memo, Ladd argues that charter schools disrupt four core goals of education policy in the United States, namely: 1) establishing coherent systems of schools, 2) attending to child poverty and disadvantage, 3) limiting racial segregation and isolation, and 4) ensuring that public funds are spent wisely. Ladd offers policy recommendations to better meet these challenges.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers not identifying as White non-Hispanic in our sample were more likely to get laid off than White workers. However, these workers were less likely than White workers to receive unemployment insurance at all. Among those who were laid off, these workers and White workers experienced similar increases in material and mental health difficulties and similar gains when they received unemployment insurance.

This article presents data on the positive association of having a child maltreatment evaluation with subsequent acute health care utilization among children from birth to age three.

Scholars have focused on administrative burden or the costs of claiming public benefits. Learning, psychological, and compliance costs can discourage program participation and benefit redemption. Although policy changes during COVID-19 were poised to reduce compliance costs and ease conditions that create redemption costs in each program, the learning costs of policy changes prevented many program participants from experiencing the benefits of these policy transformations.

A diverse teacher workforce has the potential to improve outcomes for all students, and especially for students of color. While North Carolina clearly recognizes the importance of increasing diversity in the workforce – and despite national and local efforts from school districts and policy makers – the teaching workforce remains largely white and female, even as the students they serve become increasingly diverse, widening the racial gap between teachers and students.

Child abuse and neglect medical experts provide care to children when there is concern for maltreatment. Their clinical notes contain valuable information. This article includes the results of creating and implemented a coding system for data abstraction from these notes.

This article examines the impact on student absenteeism of a large, school-based community crime monitoring program that employed local community members to monitor and report crime on designated city blocks during times when students traveled to and from school. The authors find that the program resulted in a 0.58 percentage point (8.5 percent) reduction in the elementary school-level absence rate in the years following initial implementation.

The author investigates the effects of a multiyear program, StudentU, on the early high school outcomes of participating students by exploiting data from oversubscribed admissions lotteries. Results suggest that comprehensive services delivered outside of the regular school day have the potential to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged students.

The prevalence of arrests for crimes involving guns among young adults in North Carolina with a gun-disqualifying felony record acquired before age 18 suggests that the federal gun prohibitor conferred by a felony record is not highly effective as currently implemented in this population. From a risk-based perspective, these restrictions appear to be justified; better implementation and enforcement may improve their effectiveness.

In Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, Drew Rothenberg and Susannah Zietz’s chapter, Child Growth, National Development, and Early Childhood Development in 51 Low-and Middle-Income Countries, considers the effects of multiple bioecological systems on child growth and development.

In Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, Jennifer Lansford, Drew Rothenberg and Kirby Deater-Deckard’s chapter, Parent Discipline and Violence, National Development, and Early Childhood Development in 51 Low- and Middle-Income Countries, focuses on nonviolent discipline, psychological aggression, and physical violence in relation to specific domains of early childhood development.

In Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, Drew Rothenberg and co-authors chapter, Predictors of Early Childhood Development, analyzes how the representations of different process, person, and context systems fare relative to one another in predicting the early childhood development outcomes

These findings provide evidence that net worth poverty has negative associations with children’s development. Net worth poverty predicts lower reading and applied problem scores and increased behavioral problems.

This study provides evidence that net worth poverty has negative associations with children’s development.

This study demonstrates that a universal approach to early family intervention can have positive population impact while also reducing disparities in outcomes.

In their chapter, Latinx Immigrant Parents and Their Children in Times of COVID-19: Facing Inequities Together in the “Mexican Room” of the New Latino South, in The Pandemic Divide: How Covid Increased Inequality in America, Leslie Babinski and co-authors outline the state of affairs for Latinx families in the southeastern US in times of Covid-19 and to situate what is happening within the broader experiences of Latinx communities in the US.

This research brief examines two measures of educational opportunity in North Carolina public school districts, average achievement and achievement growth. The first measure— average achievement—indexes the average level of student achievement at a single point in time. The second measure—achievement growth—indexes the rate of growth in student achievement over time.

This paper analyzed how housing, neighborhood, and health insurance explain disparities in case positivity between and within racial-ethnic groups in Durham County, North Carolina, finding that housing, neighborhood, and health insurance had a significant role in producing racial-ethnic disparities in COVID-19 case positivity.

Economic theory suggests that crime should respond to punishment severity. Using increases in punishment severity in drug-free school zones along with changes in the probability of detection resulting from a community crime-monitoring program, we demonstrate that drug-related crime drops in blocks just within the drug-free school zones, where punishments are more severe, but only if the monitoring intensity–and hence the probability of detection–is at intermediate levels.

This study examined whether a key set of adolescent and early adulthood risk factors predicts problematic alcohol, cannabis, and other substance use in established adulthood. Externalizing behaviors and prior substance use in early adulthood were consistent predictors of problematic alcohol and cannabis misuse in established adulthood across samples.

A key policy question in evaluating social programs to address childhood poverty is how families receiving unconditional financial support would spend those funds. Economists have limited empirical evidence on this topic in the U.S. We find that the cash transfers increased spending on child-specific goods and mothers’ early-learning activities with their infants.

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected American families and children, including through the closure or change in the nature of their care and school settings. For all families, care or school disruptions were related to worse child behavior, more negative parental mood, and increased likelihood of losing temper and punishment.

Emeryville, California’s Fair Workweek Ordinance (FWO) aimed to reduce service workers’ schedule unpredictability by requiring large retail and food service employers to provide advanced notice of schedules and to compensate workers for last-minute schedule changes. The FWO decreased working parents’ schedule unpredictability and improved their well-being, decreased parents’ days worked while increasing hours per work day, and parent well-being improved.

This study examined whether the childhood intervention program called Fast Track improves family life into the second generation.

Longitudinal data from the Parenting Across Cultures study of children, mothers, and fathers in 12 cultural groups in nine countries were used to understand predictors of compliance with COVID-19 mitigation strategies and vaccine hesitancy. Findings suggest the importance of bolstering confidence in government responses to future human ecosystem disruptions, perhaps through consistent, clear, non-partisan messaging and transparency in acknowledging limitations and admitting mistakes to inspire compliance with government and public health recommendations.

This paper, co-authored by Lisa Gennetian, provides three reasons why giving cash to families with low incomes is a sound policy investment for families and children. (It focuses on why cash is important, not which policy option is the optimal mechanism for distributing cash to families.)

Researchers examine net worth by the intersection of gender, parental, and relationship status during a period of increasing wealth inequality and family diversification using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 through 2019. Despite changing social selection into marriage and parenthood, married parents consistently held a wealth advantage over demographically similar adults in other household types.

Behavioral economics (BE) combines economics with social psychology and cognitive decision-making to offer a broader framework for understanding factors that affect people’s decisions and actions. It provides a way to examine how decisions can be shaped not only by information and costs but by how choices are designed, as well as the context and circumstances of the moment in which decisions are made.

Juvenile justice involvement was associated with increased risk of adult criminality, with residential services associated with highest risk. Juvenile justice involvement may catalyze rather than deter from adult offending.

In this paper the authors study the effects of three large, nearly-simultaneous coal-fired power plant closures on school absences in Chicago. They find that the closures resulted in a 6 percent reduction in absenteeism in nearby schools relative to those farther away following the closures.

This study investigated associations between COVID-19-related disruption and perception of increases in internalising symptoms among young adults and whether these associations were moderated by earlier measures of adolescent positivity and future orientation and parental psychological control.

We conducted a scoping literature review and key informant interviews of child maltreatment experts to (1) document the existing research evidence on the performance of EHR-based child abuse screens (EHR-CA-S) and clinical decision support systems (EHR-CA-CDSS )and (2) examine clinical perspectives regarding the use of such tools and factors that affect uptake. We find that current evidence does not support adoption of a particular CA-S or CA-CDSS and that further refinement of these tools is necessary.

Data from the Baby’s First Years study, a randomized control trial, show that a predictable, monthly unconditional cash transfer given to low-income families may have a causal impact on infant brain activity.

The pandemic profoundly affected American children with disruptions to their schooling and daily care. A new study found that service sector workers who had a young child reported disruption on 24 percent of days in fall 2020. The disruptions were more common in remote learning and had a negative impact on children’s behavior and on parenting mood and behavior.

In this paper, we analyze program activity for Family Connects (FC), an evidencebased postpartum home-visiting intervention, during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic began, FC transitioned to a virtual protocol which maintains key psychosocial components of the in-person protocol and adjusts health assessments to address the lack of in-person contact.

Early reports highlighted challenges in delivering home visiting programs virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic but the extent of the changes in program implementation and their implications remains unknown. We examine program activity and families’ perceptions of virtual home visiting during the first nine months of the pandemic using implementation data for Family Connects (FC), an evidence-based and MIECHV-eligible, postpartum nurse home visiting program.

Home visiting is a popular approach to improving the health and well-being of families with infants and young children in the United States; but, to date, no home visiting program has achieved population impact for families in rural communities. The current report includes evaluation results from the dissemination of a brief, universal postpartum home visiting program to four high-poverty rural counties.

Using a sample of 1338 families from 12 cultural groups in 9 nations, we examined whether retrospectively remembered Generation 1 (G1) parent rejecting behaviors were passed to Generation 2 (G2 parents), whether such intergenerational transmission led to higher Generation 3 (G3 child) externalizing and internalizing behavior at age 13, and whether such intergenerational transmission could be interrupted by parent participation in parenting programs or family income increases of > 5%.

Across countries, adolescents’ internalizing problems pre-pandemic predicted increased internalizing during the pandemic, and poorer well-being pre-pandemic predicted increased externalizing and substance use during the pandemic.

Historically, individualism vs. collectivism has been a main organizing framework for understanding cultural differences in family life. This study examines parents in nine countries to understand their individualism, collectivism and parenting attitudes. They found parenting attitudes are predicted by a range of sociodemographic factors.

This study capitalizes on a longitudinal, cross-national study of parenting, adolescent development, and young adult competence to document the association between personal disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic and reported changes in internalizing and externalizing behavior in young adults and their mothers since the pandemic began.

This brief examines how the benefits of high-quality ECE might simultaneously diminish and persist in the long run. Strategies are then discussed to sustain the impacts of ECE during elementary school.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on alcohol and illicit substance use among adults without children, parents, and adolescents was investigated through two studies with five samples from independent ongoing U.S. longitudinal studies.

Many young people were hesitant to reach out to formal systems in the future, in part because of negative experiences during past disclosure experiences. Young people may be more likely to seek support through their preferred communication medium, so providing text- and chat-based communication may be one way to encourage and facilitate disclosure.

Early proficiency in math skills is increasingly being seen as an independent area worthy of early curriculum development and policy investment to reduce socioeconomic disparities in children’s school readiness.

This paper investigates economic and psychological hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic among a diverse sample of socioeconomically disadvantaged parents and their elementary school-aged children. Longitudinal models revealed that food insecurity, negative parent and child mood, and child misbehavior significantly increased when schools closed; only food insecurity and parent depression later decreased.

This study evaluated how individuals’ own substance use and their perception of peers’ substance use predict each other across development from early adolescence to middle adulthood.

Anna Gassman Pines, Elizabeth Ananat, and Yulya Trushinovsky wrote a chapter in the book Who Gets What? The New Politics of Insecurity. In the chapter, they identify how recent trends combine to increase instability and uncertainty among low-wage workers, discuss the effects of instability and uncertainty on workers and families, and consider potential policy solutions.

Analyses were based on a 20+ year prospective, community-representative study of 1420 children, who were assessed up to 8 times during childhood (ages 9–16; 6674 observations) about access to guns in their home.

Studies identify one element of compliance costs—quarterly appointments—as a barrier to continued WIC participation. This article draws on 44 in-depth qualitative interviews with participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to examine how WIC participants perceived the reduction of compliance costs following the implementation of remote appointments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. WIC participants reported satisfaction with remote appointments and a reduction in the compliance costs of accessing and maintaining benefits.

Wealth inequality—the unequal distribution of assets and debts across a population—has reached historic levels in the United States, particularly for households with children.

The Family Connects (FC) program, a community-wide nurse home visiting program for newborns, has been shown to provide benefits for children and families through the first 5 years of life.

This brief summarizes the findings from Net Worth Poverty in Child Households by Race and Ethnicity, 1989–2019 in the Journal of Marriage and the Family and offers historical context for U.S. policies that have contributed to racial and ethnic differences in net worth poverty in child households.

Beth Gifford, Megan Golonka and Kelly Evans wrote a chapter of the book, Children with Incarceratead Mothers Separation, Loss, and Reunification. The chapter summarized findings of their study that examined the timing of mother’s incarceration in relation to her children’s involvement with social services, contributory factors leading to foster care placement, and foster care discharge outcomes.

Participants of the study pointed to a number of actionable recommendations to increase program participation and enhance the participant experience in the nutrition assistance programs SNAP and WIC: Federal and state WIC programs should strengthen vendor management to improve the shopping experience. State and local agencies should develop peer programs to educate WIC participants on…

Women face unique logistical and financial barriers to health care access.

This article investigates the effects of coal-fired power plant closures on zip code–level rates of emergency department visits for asthma-related conditions among 0- to 4-year-old children in Chicago, Illinois. Findings demonstrate that closing coal-fired power plants can lead to improvements in the respiratory health of young children.

Key Takeaways: Harsher immigration law enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement leads to decreased use of prenatal care for foreign-born mothers and declines in birth weight. The uptick in ICE activities under the Trump administration may have long-lasting, harmful effects on U.S.-born citizens. Sheriffs and local governments should terminate their 287(g) agreements with ICE…

Scholars have examined how administrative burden creates barriers to accessing public benefits but have primarily focused on the challenges of claiming benefits. Less is known about the difficulties beneficiaries face when using public benefits, especially voucher-based public assistance programs. Examining redemption costs can help clarify when and where beneficiaries experience burdens, reasons behind discontinuity in program participation, and why public programs fail to meet objectives.

Lower family income during childhood is related to increased rates of adolescent depression, though the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood.

Clearance rates for nonfatal shootings, especially cases involving gang- and drug-related violence, are disturbingly low in many US cities.

Edited by Jennifer Lansford and Drew Rothenberg with Marc Bornstein, this book shares findings from a study of parents and children in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and the United States. Each chapter is authored by a contributor native to the country examined. Together, the chapters provide a global understanding of parenting across cultures.

While we expected to find that Hispanic families may be disadvantaged by decentralized service delivery in a manner that is similar to the experiences of African American families, workers instead note significant resources that help facilitate Hispanic families’ access to programs.

This article examines the influence of teacher assistants and other personnel on outcomes for elementary school students during a period of recession-induced cutbacks in teacher assistants.

We examine how increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities impacted newborn health and prenatal care utilization in North Carolina around the time Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act was first being implemented within the state.

Nationwide, school principals are given wide discretion to use disciplinary tools like suspension and expulsion to create a safe learning environment.

The science that informs best practice in early intervention, early childhood education, and early childhood mental health is clear: the most important resource infants and toddlers have is the relationships they develop with adult caregivers. For young children in child care programs, relationships with their teachers are a resource they depend on.

The disproportionality between the representation of white students and students of color in gifted education programs is both persistent and pervasive. Attempts over the years to remedy the issue have done little to narrow this disparity.

Family science has long considered the ways in which parents’ experiences in the workplace can affect families.

Social and emotional development was in peril prior to the pandemic. After this time apart, it will take systematic, intentional, and intensive efforts to get social and emotional learning back on track.

Just one in ten nonfatal shootings in Chicago lead to an arrest.

Using detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment.

In response to police killings of Black people and the ensuing protests that took place in communities across the country in 2020, media coverage in North Carolina and in much of the nation this past year has focused heavily on instances of police violence and the protests and counterprotests that have since occurred throughout the…

This study is the first to examine net worth poverty, and its intersection with income poverty, by race and ethnicity among child households in the United States.

Key Takeaways: Economic instability remains high among hourly service workers — from both job and household income loss. Food insecurity has increased significantly among working families. Safety net programs can help families maintain their incomes and reduce food insecurity, however benefits are not reaching everyone. Keeping vulnerable families afloat during the pandemic will require policymakers…

The Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy partnered with the Durham Crisis Response Center, the Exchange Family Center, the Center for Child and Family Health, and the Durham County Department of Social Services to create the Durham Integrated Domestic Violence Response System (DIDVRS). DIDVRS is an evidence-based, community-led approach to more appropriately address…

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 has changed American society in ways that are difficult to capture in a timely manner.

Zika virus epidemics have potential large-scale population effects. Controlled studies of mice and nonhuman primates indicate that Zika affects fecundity, raising concerns about miscarriage in human populations.

Over the last five decades, dramatic social changes have disrupted established patterns of family life and human development in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This book examines the role of these changes, such as urbanization, educational progress, emigration, and globalization, and describes their implications for Gulf families.

During the spring of 2020, a statewide survey was undertaken to understand how early childhood educators sought to navigate the transition to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This brief uses data from a survey of educators in nine districts participating in the North Carolina Resilience and Learning Project on the challenges of remote learning and education during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers recommendations for improving educational equity during remote learning, addressing the following areas: technology access, availability of adult support, student well-being,…

This Brief Will Cover Emotional and Mental Health Support for Teachers. Survey data from N.C. teachers on their concerns about returning to school in the fall. Recommended strategies for helping school administrators promote wellness among school staff upon their return. Re-envisioning the Way Students and Schools Interact. Recommended practices for promoting relationship building among teachers,…

This brief provides an overview of the various channels through which COVID-19 has affected the lives of children and families, and proposes 4 key actions to help communities heal and build stronger, equitable systems: Create a “new” public health system centered upon a universal approach to care with a focus on equity. Invest in early…

This brief provides an overview of lessons learned about online schooling for young children during the COVID-19 pandemic from K-1 classroom and ESL teachers, and 5 recommendations for how to support the continuation of online learning into the next school year.

Findings from a Statewide Survey of Teachers, by Robert C. Carr, Ph.D.

Key Takeaways: Government officials halted housing evictions in North Carolina as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. We analyze administrative data on evictions from the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts and on public school children in Durham to identify characteristics of children who experience eviction. Our analysis shows that an additional benefit of the…

Katie Rosanbalm wrote the opening chapter of a book entitled, Alleviating the Educational Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences. The book is a collection of approaches to trauma-informed education based on school-university-community collaborations. Rosanbalm’s chapter summarizes the literature on why trauma-informed strategies are important to academic success and describes the specifics of the Resilience and Learning Model. It concludes with preliminary qualitative findings from pilot schools.

Children’s earliest experiences shape their brain’s architecture and create the foundation for healthy development and future learning. High-quality early learning environments support children in meeting critical developmental milestones, and children who attend high-quality early education programs are better prepared for success in school — academically, socially and emotionally.

This policy brief focuses on how necessary responses to the COVID-19 pandemic alter the health and social service landscape for children and families, particularly those who were already vulnerable, and offers policy guidance.

Inside: Protecting the Physical Well-Being of Essential Child Care Providers and Young Children Supporting the Social-Emotional Well-Being of Essential Child Care Providers and Young Children Caring for Older Children Supporting Child Care Administrators Whose Facilities are Staying Open to Meet Essential Needs

This brief provides an overview of key ways in which COVID-19 has impacted working families, as drawn from our study’s survey analysis. 1. Drastic Reductions in Work Hours and Increase in Job Loss 2. Harmed Well-Being of Both Parents and Their Children 3. Policy Supports Not Reaching Families 4. Employer-Provided Benefits Reaching Some Families

Parents charged with a criminal offense had higher rates of having a child protective services (CPS) assessment/investigation during the three years preceding the charge than parents who were not charged. Changing parental incarceration rates would change CPS caseloads substantially.

Based on growing evidence of the long-term benefits of enriched early childhood experiences, we evaluate the potential for addressing gender disparities in elementary school through early care and education programs.

Carolyn Barnes uses ethnographic accounts of three organizations to reveal how interacting with government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.

Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we examine the empirically underexplored ways in which racial and ethnic identity shapes parental time use.

Fire has long served as a tool in agriculture, but the practice’s link with economic activity has made its health consequences difficult to study.

Charles T. Clotfelter, Steven W. Hemelt, Helen F. Ladd Education Finance and Policy (2019) 14 (3): 492–521. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00258

Policy feedback scholarship has focused on how laws and their implementation affect either organizations (e.g., their resources, priorities, political opportunities, or incentive structures) or individuals (e.g., their civic skills and resources or their psychological orientations toward the state).

Policy makers, practitioners, and researchers have emphasized the importance of supportive relationships between staff and parents in early childhood education settings and schools.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program is an important intervention for prevention and treatment of obesity and food insecurity, but participation has dropped among eligible populations from 2009 to 2015.

The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the potential of an innovative high school neuroscience-based health course for implementation feasibility and impact on student outcomes.

Saint-Eloi Cadely et al. found longitudinal patterns for the perpetration of both psychological and physical intimate partner violence (IPV), including actively and minimally aggressive patterns.

This report provides a comprehensive look at 2014 social spending by the federal government on children ages 0-8 and breaks down program spending by family income.

Using a randomized controlled trial, we tested a new teacher professional development program for increasing the language and literacy skills of young Latino English learners with 45 teachers and 105 students in 12 elementary schools.

We study the evolution of a campus-based aid program for low-income students that began with grant-heavy financial aid and later added a suite of nonfinancial supports.

North Carolina’s Smart Start and More at Four (MAF) early childhood programs were evaluated through the end of elementary school (age 11) by estimating the impact of state funding allocations to programs in each of 100 counties across 13 consecutive years on outcomes for all children in each county-year group (n = 1,004,571; 49% female; 61% non-Latinx White, 30% African American, 4% Latinx, 5% other).

Many advocacy organizations devote time and resources to increasing community awareness and educating the public in an effort to gain support for their issue.

This is the third in a series of four inter-related reports titled Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress.

This study examines the community-wide effects of investments in two early childhood initiatives in North Carolina (Smart Start and More at Four) on the likelihood of a student being placed into special education.

This report builds on the previous report in this series, Foundations for Understanding Self-Regulation from an Applied Developmental Perspective, which describes a theoretical framework that is utilized in the present review of empirical ecological, biological, and developmental studies.

This is the first in a series of four inter-related reports titled Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress, with subtitles specifying the focus of each report.

According to the North Carolina (N.C.) Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services, approximately 18,000 adults and 1,000 children in Durham County abused or were addicted to illegal drugs, prescription medications, or alcohol in 2012(1). Substance abuse not only impacts the individual and his/her family, but also the community.

This memo examines recent data from Durham Public Schools related to student absenteeism. This memo examines four related issues surrounding absenteeism: Description of student absenteeism by grade-level Persistence of truancy from one year to the next The association between truancy and grade retention, and The overlap between absenteeism and tardies.

This report summarizes preliminary findings associated with the MHOP program that began in Durham County in January of 2011.

Approximately one quarter of U.S. students do not graduate from high school with their peers. Failing to complete high school severely limits opportunities for employment and future financial stability. High school dropouts earn lower wages through their lifetime and work for fewer years.1 The costs to society of high school dropouts are also high and…

In 2009, the Spencer Foundation renewed its generous support of the Data Center with an additional two years of funding. In addition, Duke University and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction have continued to support the Data Center through the collaborative relationship established in the current Memorandum of Understanding between the two institutions.

This report presents the final findings for a two-year evaluation of the Hill Center Reading Achievement Program (HillRAP) as implemented in a middle school setting from September 2008 to June 2010. The Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University conducted this evaluation in collaboration with the Davie County Public Schools and the Mebane…

Child abuse and neglect is a serious problem in the United States. From 2004 to 2005 the number of substantiated reports of maltreatment increased by 27,000 cases from 872,000 to 899,000.

At the request of the North Carolina Division of Social Services (NCDSS), the Center for Child and Family Policy at The Terry Sanford Institute at Duke University evaluated the Multiple Response System (MRS) reform for families reported to child welfare in 10 MRS pilot counties.

The impact of substance use and addiction surrounds us and affects every aspect of our Durham community.

In response to a request from the North Carolina Division of Social Services (DSS),Center for Child and Family Policy at The Terry Sanford Institute at Duke University evaluated the Multiple Response System reform for families reported for child maltreatment.