All Work
Early Childhood Education
Universal Child Care: A Risky Experiment with Our Nation's Children
A growing chorus of advocates are vigorously pushing for a large expansion of U.S. child care as a “win-win-win” that supports women’s careers and boosts the economy while promoting children’s healthy development. However, a growing body of research on childcare’s impact on children suggests that greater caution is warranted.
A Big Stake in the Ground for Universal Childcare Via the American Rescue Plan
The American Rescue Plan was presented as an emergency response to prevent the childcare sector from collapsing. But its primary aims are in fact to advance a longstanding advocacy agenda: leveraging pandemic relief funds to carry out a kind of “trial run” of universal childcare.
Has the Pandemic Caused a Crisis in Child Care?
We know too little about the child care problem we’re spending billions of dollars to solve. To make good policy in a crucial area, we need more reliable data.
Improving Early Childhood Development by Allowing Advanced Child Tax Credits
Katharine Stevens and Matt Weidinger propose allowing parents to advance future child tax credits into the earliest years of their child’s life, strengthening families' ability to choose how and by whom their children are cared for during the formative first years of development.
Universal Child Care: A Bad Deal for Kids?
Rather than seeking to outsource young children’s care to paid professionals, policy should aim to better enable parents to spend more time caring for their young children themselves, especially in the critical first five years of life.
Three Problems with President Biden's Child Care Rescue Plan
Biden’s American Rescue Plan constitutes a substantial scale-up of government spending on nonparental, out-of-home care for young children, which poses an unrecognized risk to the well-being of children and families.
The Socioeconomic Achievement Gap Hasn’t Budged in Half a Century. Now What?
A groundbreaking new study has found that despite enormous public investment, achievement gaps between wealthier and poorer children have remained unchanged over the past 50 years.
A Look Back at the Social Security Act of 1935 and Its Forgotten Focus on Needy Children
Eighty years ago today, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the 37-page Social Security Act (SSA) of 1935 into law, enacting the most fundamental change in social policy in America’s history. But the program's original focus on children’s human flourishing has largely been lost.