Family & Children

After peaking in 2002, child well-being in the United States has been stagnant for five years. Meanwhile, recent data from the Child Well-Being Index shows some disturbing upward trends in child obesity and youth violence, as well as a persistent academic achievement gap. To date, public policy has not sufficiently mobilized to combat these issues before they start to affect the nation’s children.

Executive Summary 

Poverty reduction strategies increasingly focus on the importance of creating financial assets. Child Savings Accounts (CSAs) are a novel and promising tool that builds on that focus by promoting savings starting at a young age. Child Savings Accounts (CSAs) exist as policies, products, and programs, and are being offered by governments, financial institutions, and non-profits for a variety of purposes.

INTRODUCTION

Child Savings Accounts (CSAs) exist as policies, products, and programs, and are currently being offered by governments, financial institutions, and non-profits. CSAs are more than basic savings accounts. What distinguishes CSAs from standard savings accounts is the degree to which they serve as means to an end-most often to spur the social and/or economic development of children. Another distinguishing feature is they are often intentionally targeted to children of low- and moderate-income families (as opposed to only children of middle-class and well-off families).

The pending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act will provide the next president an opportunity to substantially reshape federal education policy. To provide a preview of what that change may look like, the New America Foundation invited ducation advisers to the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates to speak about their candidates’ education policy agendas. Lisa Graham Keegan is a former Arizona superintendent of education who advises Sen. John McCain.

(LA Times.com's Booster Shots Blog)--...The authors of the Child Well-Being Index of 2008* surmise that the late boomers, who "saw up-close the risky behavior of their cohorts," decided they wanted better for their kids. That, in turn, "led parents to more closely monitor the behavior of their adolescent children." Much as it's maligned, that "helicopter parenting" seems to have worked to keep more of Generation Y healthy and safe than their parents had been.

Washington, DC--The quality of life of American children has been stalled since 2002, according to the Foundation for Child Development (FCD) 2008 Child Well-Being Index (CWI), an annual comprehensive measure of how children are faring in the United States, released today at a New America Foundation event.  The CWI calculates the overall status of American children for every year since 1975, and finds less than a three percent improvement for kids over the past generation. 

(USA Today)--To a teenager, "When I was your age" usually signals that an adult is about to hold forth on just how different — and awful — the world is these days. But the latest version of an annual study, out today, suggests that since the mid-1970s a few key features of teens' lives have remained essentially the same.

Among the most vivid similarities: Today's teens read about as well (or as poorly) as their parents did a generation ago and aren't much more likely to have earned a high school diploma.

On Tuesday, July 22, 2008, the Workforce and Family Program hosted the release of the 2008 Foundation for Child Development (FCD) Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI). The event featured highlights from the 2008 CWI, including a special focus comparing the well-being of “echo boomer” teens in this decade with the well-being of their “later boomer” parents when they were teenagers. The event also featured presentations by:

David Gray discussed the latest Child Well-Being Index report and the well being of teens, on WTOP radio with anchors Dimitri Sotis and Bob Kur. Link to Audio

...Another report by the Urban Institute and the New America Foundation discussed on Friday looked at changes in spending between 2006 and 2007, and found that while the overall children’s budget increased .7 percent, the non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid grew 5.3 percent...