Since modern welfare reform began in the 1980s, we have seen low-income parents leave the welfare rolls and join the workforce in large numbers. At the same time, the Earned Income Tax Credit has offered a monetary incentive for low-income parents to work. Thus, unlike some of the other two-generation mechanisms discussed in this issue of…

For poor families, the possession of assets--savings accounts, homes, and the like--has the potential not only to relieve some of the stress of living in poverty but also to make a better future seem like a real possibility. If children in families that own certain assets fare better than children in families without them, then helping poor…

Most of the authors in this issue of "Future of Children" focus on a single strategy for helping both adults and children that could become a component of two-generation programs. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, on the other hand, look at actual programs with an explicit two-generation focus that have been tried in the…

Better-educated parents generally have children who are themselves better educated, healthier, wealthier, and better off in almost every way than the children of the less educated. But this simple correlation does not prove that the relationship is causal. Neeraj Kaushal sifts through the evidence from economics and public policy and reviews large…

Parents' health and children's health are closely intertwined--healthier parents have healthier children, and vice versa. Genetics accounts for some of this relationship, but much of it can be traced to environment and behavior, and the environmental and behavioral risk factors for poor health disproportionately affect families living in…

Families who live in poverty face disadvantages that can hinder their children's development in many ways, write Greg Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal. As they struggle to get by economically, and as they cope with substandard housing, unsafe neighborhoods, and inadequate schools, poor families experience more stress in…

Over the past decade postsecondary education has been moving increasingly from the classroom to online. During the fall 2010 term 31 percent of U.S. college students took at least one online course. The primary reasons for the growth of e-learning in the nation's colleges and universities include the desire of those institutions to generate…

In the nearly fifty years since the adoption of the Higher Education Act of 1965, financial aid programs have grown in scale, expanded in scope, and multiplied in form. As a result, financial aid has become the norm among college enrollees. Aid now flows not only to traditional college students but also to part-time students, older students, and…

Military children don't exist in a vacuum; rather, they are embedded in and deeply influenced by their families, neighborhoods, schools, the military itself, and many other interacting systems. To minimize the risks that military children face and maximize their resilience, write Harold Kudler and Colonel Rebecca Porter, we must go beyond…

Since the advent of the all-volunteer force in the 1970s, marriage, parenthood, and family life have become commonplace in the U.S. military among enlisted personnel and officers alike, and military spouses and children now outnumber service members by a ratio of 1.4 to 1. Reviewing data from the government and from academic and nonacademic…

How are children's lives altered when a parent goes off to war? What aspects of combat deployment are most likely to put children at risk for psychological and other problems, and what resources for resilience can they tap to overcome such hardships and thrive? To answer these questions, Patricia Lester and Lieutenant Colonel Eric Flake first…

Since the U.S. military began fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002, approximately two million military children have seen a parent deploy into harm's way at least once, and many families have experienced multiple deployments. Most deployments end with a parent's safe return home, but more than 50,000 service members have been…

In this article, the authors found that the economic circumstances of military families are good, certainly much improved compared with even a decade ago. The military context is nonetheless challenging, with long hours, dangerous work, frequent transfers, and stressful absences during deployment. Service members receive relatively high pay and…

In this article, the authors present their approach to understanding resilience among military connected young people, and they discuss some of the gaps in their knowledge. They begin by defining resilience, and then present a theoretical model of how young people demonstrate resilient functioning. Next they consider some of the research on…

The vast majority of high school students aspire to some kind of postsecondary education, yet far too many of them enter college without the basic content knowledge, skills, or habits of mind they need to succeed. Andrea Venezia and Laura Jaeger look at the state of college readiness among high school students, the effectiveness of programs in…