Family and Household Data

This brief discusses how immigration policy keeps families apart and presents national data attesting to these family separations. Immigrants are more likely than natives to be married with spouse absent, their households are more likely to be headed by men with no wife present, and foreign-born children are more likely to be in nonchild relationships to the householder than natives. In a subset of foreign-born children with at least one parent in the United States, 21 percent were separated from their mothers and 34 percent from their fathers for 1 year or more.

Zone 126 is a nonprofit neighborhood organization in Queens, New York City that was awarded a Promise Neighborhood planning grant from the US Department of Education in 2011. The Urban Institute developed a neighborhood survey for residents of Astoria Houses, a public housing development in the Zone 126 neighborhood, to support Zone 126's needs assessment and planning process. Zone 126 used results from the survey to inform the initiative’s family and child-centered programming. This report summarizes the methodology and findings of the survey and provides the survey instrument and sources of survey questions.

This evaluation of the Case Management Partnership Initiative (CPMI) found that the program successfully linked high-need families with services designed to prevent truancy. The truancy prevention program, implemented at Anacostia and Ballou High Schools in 2011-2012, links chronically truant ninth graders and their families to social services and case management, and includes weekly interagency case management meetings. While the evaluation found that the program was implemented as intended, it is unclear whether the program's efforts impacted truancy among participants. Nonetheless, CMPI remains a promising platform for additional program experimentation, including possible modifications to timing, eligibility criteria, and program components.

An evaluation of the Truancy Court Diversion Program (TCDP) found that despite significant implementation challenges, parent-child communication and youths' attitudes towards school both improved. A voluntary program for middle school students at risk for chronic truancy, TCDP involves judicially-led sessions that address student attitudes combined with case management and service referrals to address family-level attendance barriers. The evaluation found that families of truant youth had high levels of need and were successfully connected to services. The evaluation suggests that the program should be formalized and better supported through dedicated resources and support from school administration prior to expansion.

Growing up poor strongly predicts poverty and poor adult outcomes. This study explores two primary reasons poverty may persist across generations: risk behavior in adolescence and dropping out of high school. Results suggest that risk behavior and dropping out help perpetuate poor economic outcomes for children from single-parent families but are less important for children who grow up in low-income families. The findings suggest that policies directed at reducing youth risk behavior and dropping out can improve economic outcomes when targeted to youth from single-parent households.