This book examines the relationships between poverty, disadvantage, and educational failure in a way considered to be more comprehensive and complex than is possible when such an examination is based solely on a concept of cultural disadvantage and defective experience. The mortality of infants and their mothers around birth, held to be both the most reliable and the most clearly associated indicator of social condition with risk to children, is explored. Conditions in pregnancy and around birth which appear to be associated with hazard to the child (such as the distribution and consequences of low birth weight) are discussed. Certain variables which mediate between social and economic conditions and the lowered effectiveness of mothers as reproducers are examined. Remainder of the book focuses on hazardous events to which children are exposed during their own production to the character and the effect of the environments in which they must live. Evidence linking nutrition, disease, and mental development are considered. Available data on malnutrition, morbidity, and medical care among children of poor families in this country are examined to gain an insight of the degree to< which the quality of their lives puts these children at risk as learners either by impairing their learning capacity or by interfering with their orderly acquisition of knowledge. (RJ)