The well-being of children and youth is a central Urban Institute research topic. Our work spans child development at the youngest ages to teenagers transitioning into adulthood. We study child care, the child welfare system, juvenile justice, child poverty, and children's health and education. Read more.
The What Works Collaborative is a foundation-supported partnership that conducts timely research and analysis to help inform an evidence-based housing and urban policy agenda. In its latest effort, the Collaborative engaged with experts to identify unanswered questions critical to policy development, and from this derive "field-building" research agendas. These agendas are intended to help guide investments that will inform and advance policy and practice over the next three to five years on five broad policy domains: housing as a platform for overcoming social and economic distress, housing markets, housing finance, successful neighborhoods, and the physical landscape of the next American economy. This summary is part of a series of field-building research agendas produced under the What Works Collaborative. More information can be found on the What Works Collaborative web page.
This policy framing paper is one of three that explores the potential for housing combined with support services to create better outcomes for vulnerable populations. Many experts believe that housing can be a platform for academic achievement among low-income students by providing a stable environment where children access high-performing schools and succeed academically. While existing evidence links a lack of safe, high quality housing with low academic performance, little research explores how housing can be a positive pathway to achieving better school outcomes. The authors develop a field building research scheme that addresses this gap to help inform policymakers and practitioners working to meet the needs of this at-risk group. This framing paper is part of a series of field-building research agendas produced under the What Works Collaborative. More information can be found on the What Works Collaborative web page.
A middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime. A third of Americans raised in the middle class (between the 30th and 70th percentiles of the income distribution) fall out of the middle as adults. Marital status, education, test scores and drug use have a strong influence on whether a middle-class child loses economic ground as an adult. Race is a factor only for men. There is a gender gap in downward mobility from the middle, but it is driven entirely by a disparity between white men and white women.
The multisite Housing Opportunity and Services Together (HOST) demonstration is an ambitious effort to test strategies that use housing as a platform for services to improve the life chances of vulnerable children, youth, and adults. This brief provides an overview of the project's early challenges and successes to offer practitioners insights on the planning and design of "dual generation" interventions and to inform policy supporting comprehensive place-based initiatives.
The U.S. Department of Education's Promise Neighborhood Initiative is one of the Obama administration's major antipoverty initiatives and a core strategy of the White House's Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. It is intended to improve educational outcomes by creating a continuum of school readiness, academic services, and family and community support for children from early childhood through college. The DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) received one of the U.S. Department of Education's 21 Promise Neighborhood planning grants in October 2010. This policy brief summarizes DCPNI's planning year and how DCPNI intends to improve the educational outcomes of youth in the years to come.
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