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We leverage data on 1,857 families in 140 rural cocoa-growing communities of Côte d'Ivoire to report on child work activities and schooling decisions. We distinguish between unpaid domestic labor and unpaid agricultural child labor activities reported by children in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that more than 80% of children participate in at least one household work activity and more than 50% in at least one agricultural work activity, with differences between boys and girls. Older boys performed more unpaid agricultural work activities, and girls performed more domestic work activities. Thirty-five percent of children were engaged in unpaid agricultural child labor, a rate similar to a national estimate of child labor in cocoa-growing communities of Côte d'Ivoire in 2018/19. Agricultural child labor and schooling are predicted by a child's age and gender, household factors such as parental age, family size, multidimensional poverty, and community factors, especially community-level child labor rates. Social protection and education programs targeting older boys could improve their schooling outcomes and reduce agricultural child labor. Likewise, addressing acute poverty with multifaceted programs reducing consumption-based poverty, poor parental education, and improving community infrastructures could reduce child labor.

Education is considered one of the great equalizers of economic opportunity. However, pre-existing differences in educational access may generate differences in educational investment, which may perpetuate the economic inequalities that education is supposed to mitigate. In this paper, we examine the role of reduced educational investment as a mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity. Specifically, we examine how food insecurity during childhood may reduce educational investments, which, in turn, may increase food insecurity during adulthood. Identifying the mechanism(s) for the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity is essential for designing effective policies to address food insecurity and improve national nutrition and health. Furthermore, understanding the extent to which improvements in food security create positive spillovers in future educational attainment and food security will provide a clearer assessment of the value of programs designed to improve food security. We use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine education as a potential mechanism (mediator) in the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity. We follow a sample of children almost two decades as they transition from childhood to adulthood. We use an estimator developed by Flores and Flores-Lagunes (2009) to estimate the share of the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity that can be attributed to compromised educational investments. In our preliminary analysis, we find only a small amount of evidence for reduced educational investment as a mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity. However, the estimates vary widely across specifications such that large effects are not ruled out.

Exposure to stressful life experiences during childhood, such as food insecurity, can have negative consequences for attainment later in life. The developmental timing of stressful events and how they influence outcomes over the life course is a critical area of research. Indeed, a more comprehensive understanding of the latter life consequences of childhood food insecurity could guide policy-makers in designing more effective social policies to reduce the severity of the poor life outcomes. This project uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the young adult impacts (as late as age 25) of food insecurity experienced in discrete childhood stages -- middle childhood (ages 5-10), early adolescence (ages 11-14), and middle adolescence (ages 15-18). It aims to identify which childhood stage-specific effects of food insecurity are most important to five young adult outcomes in two main areas -- risky sexual behaviors and criminal justice involvement. Results provide consistent evidence that the mean food security scores in middle childhood are associated with the criminal justice involvement outcome. The results are less consistent with the sexual risk taking outcomes. Middle childhood food insecurity is associated with the number of sexual partners in young adulthood, while early adolescent food insecurity is associated with the number of children in young adulthood. Results indicate that male respondents appear to be more sensitive to food insecurity than females.

In this report we present results from our study of the effect of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and WIC [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children] participation during childhood on food insecurity risk in young adulthood. We also examined the effect of parental nutritional knowledge and childhood food involvement on food insecurity in young adulthood. We used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Original Childhood Development Supplement. Our balanced panel (n=1,305) was comprised of individuals who were 0-12 years old in 1997, had data on SNAP and income from their year of birth through 2015, food insecurity data in 2015/2017, and had moved out of their parents' home and started their own household prior to 2015. We estimated logistic models using sample, cluster and strata weights to generate nationally representative results. We find a small, but non-statistically significant effect of SNAP and WIC participation during childhood on odds of being food insecure during young adulthood. When examining change in food security from 1999-2015, we find that participation in SNAP during ages 0-5 years (OR 2.36, 95% CI: 0.99, 5.61), and during ages 12-18 years (OR 2.68, 95% CI: 1.09, 6.57) is associated with a higher odds of being more secure in 2015 than in 1999 compared to low income children who were eligible for, but did not participate in SNAP. Participation in both SNAP and WIC during ages 0-5 predicts higher odds (OR: 4.47, 95% CI: 2.04, 9.78) of being more secure in young adulthood than in childhood compared to low income children who were eligible for, but did not participate in SNAP or WIC. Finally, we saw a statistically significant protective effect of high parental nutritional knowledge (in 1999) and child time spent preparing food (during ages 5-12) on food insecurity risk in 2015-2017. SNAP and WIC, as well as parental nutritional knowledge and childhood food involvement appear to have some protective effect on food insecurity in young adulthood. Future research should further investigate the effects of nutrition education, nutrition assistance program participation, and involvement in food preparation on food insecurity over the short- and long-term.

In the early 90's, the United States reformed its welfare system through state waivers and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. These changes altered family resources and potential investments for childhood human capital, which in turn could affect later adult outcomes. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I examine the long-run impact of growing up under welfare reform on adult education and family structure through age 28. I find that as children, these individuals have higher reading test scores by an average of 6% of a standard deviation. As adults, I find robust evidence that these treated individuals are on average 9% more like to graduate college. I find some evidence that they are more likely to be married and less likely to have a child out of wedlock. The effects for women are larger than men for college completion, marriage rates, and out of wedlock births.

This white paper explores the variation among Part C exiting categories as reported by the 50 states and Washington, D.C., using 2012-13 exiting data. Examining factors that may contribute to variation can lead to improved Part C exiting data quality within and across states. Examination of the Part C exiting data shows that 8 of the 10 categories (categories 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10) had relatively wider variation among states. The paper investigates state characteristics that may influence exiting data variation, as well as possible strategies for improving data quality. This white paper includes four sections. Part 1 summarizes Part C exiting definitions. Part 2 reviews broad, general trends in exiting data variation. Part 3 examines potential reasons for variation, with possible strategies to improve exiting data quality. Finally, Part 4 summarizes the findings of examination of exiting data variation and highlights key findings for state data personnel. [The IDEA Data Center is one of the centers in the Technical Assistance and Dissemination Network (TA&D Network), funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP).]

The food stamp program (SNAP) is one of the most important elements of the social safety net and is the second largest anti-poverty program for children in the U.S. (only the EITC raises more children above poverty). The program varies little across states and over time, which creates challenges for quasi-experimental evaluation. Notably, SNAP benefit levels are fixed across 48 states; but local food prices vary widely, leading to substantial variation in the real value of SNAP benefits. In this study, we leverage time variation in the real value of the SNAP benefit across markets to examine the effects of SNAP on child health. We link panel data on regional food prices and the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan [TFP], as measured by the USDA's Quarterly Food at Home Price Database, to restricted-access geo-located National Health Interview Survey data on samples of SNAP-recipient and SNAP-eligible children. We estimate the relationship between the real value of SNAP benefits (i.e., the ratio of the SNAP maximum benefit to the TFP price faced by a household) and children's health and health care utilization, in a fixed effects framework that controls for a number of individual-level and region characteristics, including non-food prices. Our findings indicate that children in market regions with a lower real value of SNAP benefits utilize significantly less health care, and may utilize emergency room care at increased rates. Lower real SNAP benefits also lead to an increase in school absences but we find no effect on reported health status.

It has been well documented that the children of immigrants in Canada outperform their peers with Canadian-born parents in educational attainment, and that the two groups have similar labour market outcomes. However, large variations by ethnicity or source country exist among the children of immigrants. This study examines the extent to which admission class (e.g., skilled workers, business immigrants, live-in caregivers, the family class and refugees) also matters in the socioeconomic outcomes of childhood immigrants who arrived in Canada before the age of 18. Using the 2011 National Household Survey, linked with the Immigrant Landing File, this study finds large differences by admission class in university completion rates and earnings for childhood immigrants aged 25 to 44. Children of skilled workers and business immigrants had the highest university completion rates and earnings. Children of live-in caregivers and in the family class had the lowest university completion rates, and children of live-in caregivers and refugees landed in Canada had the lowest earnings. The analysis shows that the admission class of immigrant parents matters to their children's outcomes partly through group differences in the education and official language ability of parents and partly through the unique pre- and post-migration circumstances experienced by each admission class.

Significant numbers of people have very low levels of literacy in many OECD countries and, because of this, face significant labour market penalties. Despite this, it remains unclear what teaching strategies are most useful for actually rectifying literacy deficiencies. The subject remains hugely controversial amongst educationalists and has seldom been studied by economists. Research evidence from part of Scotland prompted a national change in the policy guidance given to schools in England in the mid-2000s about how children are taught to read. We conceptualise this as a shock to the education production function that affects the technology of teaching. In particular, there was phasing in of intensive support to some schools across Local Authorities: teachers were trained to use a new phonics approach. We use this staggered introduction of intensive support to estimate the effect of the new "teaching technology" on children's educational attainment. We find there to be effects of the teaching technology ("synthetic phonics") at age 5 and 7. However, by the age of 11, other children have caught up and there are no average effects. There are long-term effects only for those children with a higher initial propensity to struggle with reading. An appendix contains the following tables: (1) Communication, Language and Literacy at Age 5; (2) Local Authorities in Treatment and Control Groups; (3) Heterogeneity in Estimated Treatment Effects by Non-Native Speaker Status and Free School Meals Eligibility--Different Cohorts for the EDRp v Control; (4) Age 11 Results With and Without Imputation; (5) Heterogeneity in Estimated Treatment Effects by Language Type (i.e. Latin Script v Non-Latin Script) and Free School Meals Eligibility; (6) Heterogeneous Effects for Boys and Girls; (7) Heterogeneity by Subject; and (8) Heterogeneity by Subject: Threshold Effects. [Support was provided by the British Academy and the Royal Society in the framework of the Newton International Fellowship.]

This paper studies the effect of parental job loss on children's school performance during the Great Recession in Spain, using an original panel dataset for students observed since the beginning of the crisis in a school in the province of Barcelona. By using fixed effects, this paper is more likely to deal with the problem of selection into troubled firms which is prevalent in the literature. Fixed effect estimates show that students experience a negative and significant decrease on average grades of about 13% of a standard deviation after father's job loss. The impact of paternal job loss is not homogeneous across students, but it is largely concentrated among children whose fathers suffer long unemployment spells after job loss and students in already disadvantaged families in terms of the father's education level. These results suggest that paternal job loss is a mechanism through which further inequalities might develop during and after a deep economic crisis. The following are appended: (1) The impact of parental job loss on grades. A simple theoretical framework; and (2) More details on the data.

This paper examines whether a rise in house prices that occurs immediately prior to children entering college has an impact on their earnings as adults. Higher house prices provide homeowners with additional funds to invest in their children's human capital. The results show that a 1 percentage point increase in house prices, when children are 17 years-old, results in roughly 0.9 percent "higher" annual income for the children of homeowners, and a 1.5 percent "lower" annual income for the children of renters. House price appreciation at age 17 also leads to higher college enrollment rates at age 19 and an increased likelihood of attendance at higher-ranked post-secondary institutions for the children of homeowners, as well as lower college enrollment rates for the children of renters. This Working Paper also includes the following appendices: (1) Data Construction and Summary Statistics; (2) House Prices and Rents; (3) Controlling for Selection into Homeownership; and (4) Intergenerational Mobility.

Much of the discussion surrounding marriage promotion policies have little basis in the reality of life in low-income communities. Research suggests that much of the income differential between low-income and middle class women is the result of differences in educational attainment, labor market experience, and access to labor supply rather than to marital status. Many low-income mothers indicate that marriage can actually reduce their well-being if their potential spouse cannot add to the economic viability of the household. The following policies would significantly improve the economic well-being of single-parent families: (1) eliminate the cap on the number of families that could receive education and training activities counted as work; (2) remove the 12-month time limit on vocational training; (3) give states the flexibility to provide assistance to those participating in education and training programs; (4) increase the earned income tax credit and earned income disregards; and (5) provide full funding for child care subsidies. Several studies have questioned the role of marriage in the different outcomes and life chances of children. The literature emphasizes the importance of providing adequate job opportunities for single mothers so that their economic stability and, ultimately, the well-being of their children can be improved. (Contains 24 references.) (MN)

Teachers require knowledge of the unique skills that each child brings to the classroom in order to effectively target instruction towards students' learning needs. Despite substantial investments in programs aimed at enhancing teacher knowledge of individual students' skills (KISS), we know surprisingly little about how KISS is distributed or how teachers develop KISS, let alone the role that KISS plays in instruction and learning. In this study, I employ nationally-representative data to create KISS measures for kindergarten and first grade teachers. I use these measures to examine the distribution of KISS across schools, within schools, and within classrooms, as well as to investigate potential KISS development mechanisms and instructional uses. To estimate the effect of KISS on student learning, I use a set of student and subject fixed effects models that control for the non-random sorting of students into classrooms, average differences in how well teachers know particular children, and baseline achievement. I find that a standard deviation increase in KISS positively impacts kindergartners' and first graders' achievement by about 0.08-0.09 standard deviations. This result is highly robust to a number of different modeling choices and alternative explanations.

The Great Recession and its immediate aftermath have brought increasing attention both to food insecurity among children and to the associated food safety net. This report examines how the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) functions as a component of the broader food assistance safety net for school-age children, focusing on connections between SNAP and the school meal programs at a policy level, as well patterns in children's participation across programs. It is divided into two parts. Part I provides an overview of the programs, highlighting both geographic variability in each of the programs, as well as structural features that create explicit, as well as potentially unintended, linkages between them. Part II uses recent national data to formally explore the role of the combined food assistance safety net for school-age children during and immediately after the Great Recession -- a period in which the demands placed on food assistance programs for children reached historic highs. The report concludes by discussing implications of both the programmatic linkages and the empirical patterns of participation for policy and research.

Our paper examines the prevalence and determinants of children's transitions into and out of food insecurity since 2001. We use longitudinally linked data from the Food Security Supplements to the Current Population Surveys to estimate one-year transition probabilities of entry and exit from food insecurity. Our results indicate that child hunger is typically short-lived, but children experiencing very low food security frequently experience multiple consecutive years of food insecurity. We demonstrate large demographic and socioeconomic differences in rates of entry into very low food security and persistence in children's food insecurity. Income and employment shocks are important predictors of child hunger transitions. Finally, we find that the Great Recession increased the likelihood that children entered into and persisted in food insecurity among children.

We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of children were able to add two single digits, and just 19% were able to read and comprehend a simple word. Our unannounced school checks found 72% of enrolled children in grades 1-4 attending their schools, but the schools were poorly equipped. Teachers were present at 86% of schools visited. Despite surveying 351 schools, we found no examples of successful schools where children reached reasonable levels of literacy and numeracy for age. Our evidence suggests that interventions that raise school quality in these villages, rather than those which target enrolment, may be most important to generate very sharp improvements in children's educational outcomes. [Additional financial support for this research was provided by Effective Intervention, a UK charity.]

This paper exploits a source of variation in the eligibility for federal nutrition programs to identify the program effects on food insecurity. Children are eligible for the WIC [Women, Infants and Children] program until the day before they turn 61 months old. The result is an age discontinuity in program participation at the 61-month cutoff. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth-cohort dataset, we find strong evidence of a sizeable increase in household food insecurity at the 61-month cutoff. Our findings are robust to different model specifications, datasets, and various bandwidth choices using various non-parametric estimations. A section on data sources is appended.

Using data linked across generations in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I estimate the relationship between exposure to volatile income during childhood and a set of socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. The empirical framework is an augmented intergenerational income mobility model that includes controls for income volatility. I measure income volatility at the family level in two ways. First, instability as measured by squared deviations around a family-specific mean, and then as percent changes of 25 percent or more. Volatility enters the model both separately and interacted with income level. I find that family income instability during childhood has a small, positive association with high school dropout--one which appears driven by volatility among children from lower income households. Evidence suggests that volatility exposure generally has a minimal impact on intergenerational outcomes relative to permanent income.

Rates of food insecurity in households with children have significantly increased over the past decade. The majority of children, including those at risk for food insecurity, participate in some form of non-parental child care during the preschool years. To evaluate the relationship between the two phenomenon, this study investigates the effects of child care arrangements on food insecurity in households with children. To address the selection bias problem that arises from the fact that enrollment in different types of child care is not a random process, this study uses propensity scores techniques. The authors compare outcomes across five child care arrangement patterns: no non-parental care (i.e., exclusive parent care), relative care, non-relative care, center care, and Head Start. Our results demonstrate that for low income preschoolers, compared to no non-parental care, attending a child care center reduces the probability of both food insecurity and very low food security, relative care reduces the probability of food insecurity, and non-relative care increases the probability of very low food security.

This paper addresses the issue of how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to commercial and other private sector Web sites. Beginning with a brief discussion of the role electronic communication plays in our lives, the paper then considers the placement of the ADA in the context of current technology and of computer usage in the country. The paper next analyzes the legal background to the ADA and Internet access issues, pointing out authorities and scholarship on both sides of the question. The paper goes on to identify the narrow legal issues, bearing most upon the definition of the word "place" in Title III of the ADA. It analyzes the meaning and application of this term, in light of the ADA's legislative history, its plain meaning, and court decisions applying this term in nontechnology-based settings. The paper concludes that the law does clearly contemplate the coverage of the Internet by Title III of the ADA. Finally, the paper explains the practical and economic arguments that should guide those implementing the law, suggesting strategies by which the accessibility principle can be broadly implemented without disruption and with benefit to consumers and businesses alike. (Contains 87 references.) (DB)

The most recent figures place the number of juvenile arrests in the United States at 2.11 million. (OJJDP, 2009). In some states, children as young as 10 years old are incarcerated for violent offenses. Crowded juvenile facilities are often unable to meet the needs of these large numbers of youth. The cost to treat offenders within long-term residential facilities is expensive. States spend anywhere from $4 million (in smaller states like Hawaii) to $450 million in larger states such as California on their annual juvenile corrections budget (freelibrary.com, 2010). Locked confinement in a state juvenile correction institution can run in excess of $60,000 annually (Tyler, Ziedenberg, and Lotke, 2006). As an alternative to incarceration for adjudicated youth, several forms of adventure therapy programming have been used. Most of these programs were developed around the premise that the structure of the adventure experience and associated facilitation could produce beneficial changes more effectively than time spent within a locked treatment facility. Just as the type of adventure therapy programs are mixed, so are the outcome research findings associated with juvenile delinquency. Several studies criticize adventure therapy with adjudicated youth for having insignificant or no lasting evidence of effectiveness, including Aos, Miller, and Drake (2006), Brown, Borduin, and Henggeler, (2001), Moote and Wodarski (1997), and Wilson and Lipsey (2000). As recognized in these studies, the key to unlocking the understanding of what is an effective adventure therapy program for juvenile delinquents is the inclusion of certain critical elements. Gass (1993), and more recently in Gillis and Gass (2010), identified seven key factors that seem to predominate the treatment elements of successful programs. These seven elements include treatment: (1) enhanced through action-oriented experiences, (2) centered on the use of unfamiliar client environments, (3) producing a climate of functional change through the positive use of stress, (4) highly informed with client assessment, (5) conducted in a small group, supportive atmosphere, (6) focused on solution oriented principles and techniques, and (7) that changed the role of therapist to remain more "mobile" to actively design and frame interventions.

This report looks at the development and socialisation of children under 5 years of age in two Caribbean countries, Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica. It involved fieldwork in four very different communities as well as extensive discussion with academics and professionals. Too little is known about child socialisation in the Caribbean, and this research, the authors believe, breaks new ground. It shows that although most children are loved and cared for, the lives of many are scarred by poverty. The two countries the authors worked in are by no means the poorest in the developing world. But they both have substantial poor populations. Poor families are offered only the most basic help by the state. Child-rearing in the communities they studied remains highly traditional. Corporal punishment is common and children are often ignored, shouted at or belittled. Both countries have signed up to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and their laws and policies pay attention to it. But the day-to-day lives of children have changed little. This applies particularly to children living in poverty, with a disability or with some other form of disadvantage. But the picture is not one of unrelieved gloom. Child-rearing in the region does seem to be getting less regimented and more caring, and there is a growing realisation that the first few years of a child's life are vital to his or her social as well as intellectual and physical development. However, many of the people they met said that Caribbean communities are less supportive than in the past. This means that children are cared for increasingly by their mothers. Despite stereotypes of extended Caribbean families, many mothers are not involved in a wide network of female support. The feeling is that families are drawing in on themselves because of cultural change, including more television watching, and the fear of crime, especially from gangs of drug-fuelled young men. A bibliography is included. (Contains 1 footnote.) [This paper was written with Martin Ince.

Using data from the 2000 Census, this study examines the relationship between household living arrangements and economic resources among Mexican immigrant families with children. I model separately the relationships between family income and household structure and proportion of total household income contributed and household structure. The results show that families that coreside with extended kin and non-kin have higher incomes, all else equal, relative to those that reside in single-family households. In addition, Mexican immigrant families that reside in extended-household living arrangements contribute about three quarters of total household income. While families may gain some economic efficiency through extended household living arrangements, the results are consistent with expectations that Mexican immigrant families expend scarce resources in support of the migration and settlement of extended kin. The Mexican delayed assimilation thesis suggests such support inadvertently diverts resources away from immigrant children and slows intergenerational progress. (Contains 2 footnotes and 3 tables.)

Within the last 50 years, the work-family-household arrangements upon which social policy systems in industrial nations were formulated have disappeared. This briefing paper examines how social policies of the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and France have responded. The paper is presented in two major sections. The first section describes family policies in each country concerning parental leave, child benefits/family allowances, child care, marriage/cohabitation, and divorce. The second section discusses the mixed effects of maternity leave on womens employment, the lack of a relationship between fertility and maternity leave and fertility and cash benefits, and factors that complicate the relationship between countries' social spending and child poverty. Job-protected maternity leave is described as the most basic entitlement reflecting public acknowledgment of the economic necessity of working motherhood. Analyses suggest that fertility rates do not seem responsive to cash benefits or other policies, such as extended maternity leave, that function as wages for motherhood. In countries where child care provisions are not widely available, lengthy paid leaves have the effect of bringing women into the home for long periods of time. The most important role of cash benefits is to reduce child poverty, as illustrated by patterns in the U.S., France, and Germany. The paper concludes by asserting that Western European nations family policy can be divided into two types, one in which the social welfare system provides a comprehensive array of universal family benefits and services, and the other in which benefits are nonuniversal and accompanied by higher child poverty rates. The United States fits neither of the European patterns and is characterized by several contradictions contributing to the lack of political support for families. (Contains 98 references.) (KB)

This paper examines risk factors that exist in the lives of incarcerated parents and their children, focusing on the living arrangements of the children. It uses data from the 1997 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities to address three issues: risk factors present in the lives of incarcerated parents and their children, how children in some living arrangements might be more vulnerable than others, and whether these risk factors predict where a child is placed during the parent's incarceration. The paper begins by reviewing the literature on the effects of parental incarceration on children, then discusses how substitute care arrangements relate to child outcomes. Study results indicate that there are many risk factors in the lives of incarcerated parents and their children. Children are increasingly likely to be placed with someone other than a parent, and are particularly likely to be placed in foster or agency care, as the number of risk factors rises. For both mothers and fathers, four risk factors significantly relate to child placement in foster care or an agency (history of physical or sexual abuse, less than a 12th grade education, and welfare benefit receipt). History of mental health problems is not a significant factor. Some gender and racial differences are present. (Contains 92 references and 6 tables.) (SM)

The concept of social exclusion has been widely debated in Europe, though there has been little discussion of its application to children. This paper examines what is meant by exclusion of children, considering the choice of reference group, the geographical dimensions of exclusion, and the issue of who is responsible for any exclusion of children. It looks at social exclusion in the United Kingdom and in the European Union, then it goes on to discuss the use of the concept of exclusion in the United States, where in contrast to Europe, it has achieved little penetration to date. To assess whether there are grounds for discussion of social exclusion as it relates to children in the United States, the paper focuses on various features of U.S. society and institutions, including the measurement of poverty, analysis of children's living standards, state versus federal responsibilities, welfare reform, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and politics and the economy. (Contains 58 references.) (SM)

In the 1996 and 1997 Massachusetts legislative sessions, several of Boston's key business leaders became active child advocates in alliance with more traditional advocates and other civic leaders, convincing public policymakers to create and fund several initiatives benefiting children. This working paper presents reflections on successful legislative advocacy for children and describes the advocacy strategy development and implementation. Section 1 of the paper presents reflections in the following areas: (1) why business leaders make a positive difference in child advocacy; (2) what convinces business leaders to become legislative child advocates; (3) recruiting business leaders to be "messengers" for children; (4) where advocates can find business leaders; (5) how advocates can work effectively with business leaders; (6) what strategies work best for advocates in such an alliance; and (7) the number of business leaders needed and the necessary conditions for sustaining involvement. Section 2, presented as a case study, describes the United Way's role in developing a strategy for enrolling business leaders as advocates for the "Success By 6" initiative to support preventive approaches to improve the lives of young children and their families. Other areas discussed include developing a role for business leaders, deciding what issues to support, training business leaders for legislative advocacy, and examining business leaders' actions as advocates. Included throughout this section are quotations from interviews with 27 business leaders and others involved with the initiative, descriptions of key findings on effective child advocacy, the "Success By 6" public awareness campaign, and descriptions of state legislation. (KB)