In this article, Ajay Chaudry and Heather Sandstrom review research on child care and early education for children under age three. They describe the array of early care and education arrangements families use for infants and toddlers; how these patterns have changed in recent decades; and differences by family socioeconomic status, race, and…

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…

The past four decades have seen a rapid decline in marriage rates and a rapid increase in nonmarital births. These changes have had at least three worrisome effects on children. Scholars disagree about the magnitude of these effects, but surveys and other research evidence appear to definitively establish that the nation has more poverty, more…

Rebecca Blank explores a weakness of the welfare reforms of the mid-1990s--the failure of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to address the plight of so-called "hard to employ" single mothers and their children. TANF has moved many women on the welfare caseload into work, but the services it provides are not intensive or flexible…

The authors examine black, white, and Hispanic children's differing experiences in early childhood care and education and explore links between these experiences and racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness. Children who attend center care or preschool programs enter school more ready to learn, but both the share of children enrolled in these…