CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being
Adrienne L. Fernandes, Coordinator
Analyst in Social Policy
January 6, 2009
Congressional Research Service
7-5700
www.crs.gov
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Introduction
The nation’s future depends in large part on its children’s ability to develop into contributing
adult members of society. For that reason, and for what many would consider a society’s moral
responsibility to care for the young and vulnerable, Congress and the nation take an interest in
promoting children’s well-being. It can be argued that children are the nation’s most valuable
resource, constituting the next generation of workers, taxpayers, and parents. Their well-being
and ability to develop into productive adults in an increasingly competitive global economy is
influenced by a variety of factors, and public policies can affect these factors to varying degrees.
A host of players, including parents, relatives, teachers, doctors, and social workers promote
children’s well-being by fostering their development. Public policies and government programs
can also promote child well-being and foster aspects of child development. Child development
encompasses a multitude of areas and life stages, and is often assessed according to a complex set
of outcomes, divided into broad domains of health (physical development) and safety; mental and
cognitive development; social and emotional development; and economic and material well-
being.
Developmental outcomes are influenced by a myriad of environmental and social factors,
including family structure, stability, and functioning; economic circumstances; early childhood
care and education; health care, schooling, and the extent to which adolescent youth receive
support in the transition into adulthood. They are also influenced by innate and inherited
characteristics. Clearly, no single influencing factor or policy can ensure child well-being, and
researchers from a variety of disciplines (psychology, neuroscience, sociology, genetics) still
struggle to understand the complicated interaction of factors that carry different levels of
influence during the various stages of infancy, early childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood.
Even if researchers could (statistically) attribute the relative contributions of various factors
(causes) to differences in child outcomes, policymakers would still be left to debate what aspects
of family, school, and community life are appropriate targets for government intervention.
There are plenty of examples of public policies and programs that influence (deliberately or not)
child well-being. However, most are not designed with explicit consideration of how the policy or
program will impact child development. For example, debates over tax and transfer policies often
focus on incentives and disincentives to work and save, without explicitly taking into account the
impact of income adequacy and stability on the development of children in affected families. In
the following paragraphs, we discuss current policy issues that relate to five important factors that
influence child well-being, placing those factors in a context of children’s development. The five
factors are:
• Family Formation and Living Arrangements
• Child Protection and Family Support
• Economic Well-Being
• Early Childhood Care, Education, and Development
• Youth Transition to Adulthood
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Family Formation and Living Arrangements
Parents and family life exert a primary influence on children’s well-being throughout a child’s
development and into adulthood. The family is the place where children develop their first
attachments to other people, usually their parent(s) as their primary care giver(s). Early
attachments have been shown to have consistent and enduring influences on children’s social and
emotional development. The family is also the economic unit that obtains and manages the
resources that meet a child’s basic needs, while also playing a significant role in stimulating the
child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. Of course, the family structure itself is
subject to changes that can place children’s well-being at risk. Divorce, the loss of a parent to
death or incarceration, or being born to a single parent can change or create a family’s
composition and character and ultimately affect children’s well-being.
The importance of the family’s influence on child well-being naturally leads to questions about
how the structure of the family—the presence and roles of parents and adults in the family—
affects outcomes. There is a large body of literature indicating that children who grow up with
only one biological parent in the home are more likely to be financially worse off and have worse
socioeconomic outcomes (even after income differences are taken into account) compared to
children who grow up with both biological parents in the home.
Reducing nonmarital childbearing, promoting marriage, and encouraging the formation and
maintenance of two-parent families are explicit goals that were stipulated in the 1996 welfare
reform law. Although teen birth rates have fallen in fourteen of the last fifteen years, the trend
may be reversing. Also, the proportion of children born outside of marriage has been increasing.
Policymakers and analysts agree that more progress can be achieved in these areas. Historically,
Congress has used direct funding, competitive grants, program demonstration authority, and
government-sponsored evaluations to address family formation issues.
Government funding to support marriage promotion efforts remains a point of contention in the
public policy arena. Government involvement in “family matters” is welcomed by some, while
considered an offensive intrusion by others. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
is currently conducting large-scale research projects to evaluate the impact of marriage
promotion, but actual findings regarding the impacts of these programs are several years away.
The federal government also provides both state block grant funds and competitive grant funds
for abstinence-only education programs. Although no federal funding is specifically earmarked
for comprehensive sex education (which includes information on contraception), several federal
programs can use their funds for activities or services that seek to prevent teenage pregnancy.
Questions remain, however, about the best approach to preventing teen pregnancy, and the role
the federal government should play in funding prevention programs.
Somewhat less controversial are federal efforts to improve the outlook for children in single-
parent families through competitive grant funds for responsible fatherhood programs. The
expectation is that these programs will promote the financial responsibility of noncustodial
fathers to their children and increase the participation of fathers in their children’s lives.
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Child Protection and Family Support
For children to develop to their fullest, a family of any structure must function in a way that
supports children’s well-being. At a minimum, adults are expected to ensure children’s safety, and
ideally, to provide them with stability (permanence). Without safety and permanence in their
lives, children’s development (physical, mental, emotional and social) is jeopardized. For many
children, parents are the primary adults that bring safety, permanence and overall well-being to
their lives. For others, kin provide these critical supports.
Preventive services and public health campaigns—such as those warning caretakers to never
shake a baby or warning pregnant women on the dangers of drug or alcohol consumption—intend
to protect and enhance the children’s lives by broadly educating the public on specific risks to
children’s safety and health. By enhancing parents’ knowledge of child development and teaching
parenting skills, home visiting programs are a more intensive kind of preventive service and have
been shown to reduce maltreatment and to improve behavioral and school outcomes for children,
among other positive outcomes.
Some children, however, do not have parents or other adult kin they can depend on to keep them
safe. In FY2006, an estimated 905,000 children were found to have been maltreated and, in the
great majority of these cases, a parent was the perpetrator. Child protective services workers
investigate reports of child maltreatment (including neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse)
and, when necessary, seek to ensure that services to protect the child’s health and safety are
provided. For some children and families, these services—including individual and family
counseling, caseworker visits, and temporary help with budget emergencies—can be delivered
while a child continues to live in the home. For other children, the home is determined (typically
by a judge acting on the advice of a social worker) to be too risky. These children must be
temporarily placed outside their homes, in foster care. On any given day in FY2007, just under
half a million children were in foster care. The goal of foster care is to re-establish a permanent
home for children. Permanence is achieved when, after successful provision of services, a child is
safely reunited with his/her parents. Or, in cases where reuniting with a parent(s) is not a safe or
appropriate plan for the child, permanence is achieved when a child is adopted, or placed with a
legal guardian.
In short, families rear children, and strong family functioning plays a key role in all aspects of
children’s development. Because child rearing is, by tradition, a private function of a private
institution (the family), public intervention is expected to be minimal or non-existent. Knowing
what preventive services to offer, and how to offer them, is critical to protecting and enhancing
children’s well-being within their own homes. And, for some children, the public must intervene
to protect their safety. Again, knowing how and when to intervene is critical.
Federal child welfare policy stresses both safety and permanency (stability) as primary goals of
its activities (offered to children and families in their own homes or in foster care). Achievement
of these goals is believed to be critical to child well-being. For a variety of reasons, including
federal policies in support of foster child adoption and increased use of subsidized guardianship,
the number of children leaving foster care for permanent adoptive homes has risen dramatically in
the past decade. While families of any structure may benefit from services that strengthen and
enhance their ability to meet their children’s developmental needs, the growing pool of adoptive
and guardianship families has unique needs for services that strengthen and stabilize the family
(post-permanency services).
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Given the recent attention to children in foster care or those leaving foster care for permanent
placements with adoptive or guardianship families, Congress may choose to focus new attention
on prevention of child maltreatment, in general, or prevention of placement in foster care more
specifically. Child welfare advocates have long criticized the way federal funds are distributed,
pointing out that the largest portion of the child welfare funding supports children who have
already been removed from their homes, and arguing that this shortchanges support for
prevention activities. Congress may expand efforts to fund home visiting or other kinds of family
support programs intended to strengthen families and reduce child abuse or neglect.
Economic Well-Being
Children are born into families of varying economic and social circumstances (and those
circumstances are subject to change over the course of childhood). While some families have
abundant resources to meet their children’s needs, many parents work at jobs with low wages.
Often, it takes two working parents to earn enough to escape low income, and one or both parents
can be at risk of losing earnings because of illness, unemployment, or periods when work is not
possible because of child-bearing or child care needs. Families of limited economic means may
find it difficult to provide for their children’s basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, medicine); to
afford suitable child care so they can work and earn a living to support their family; and to afford
housing in safe neighborhoods, with good schools. The ability to meet these basic needs can be
further strained during economic downturns.
Poverty and low income place many American children at disadvantage of being able to attain
their full potential as adults. By almost any indicator, poor children fare worse than their non-poor
counterparts. Poor children are generally reported to be in poorer health than non-poor children,
on a variety of indicators. At birth, infants of poor mothers are more likely to be of low birth
weight, and to die as infants. Poor children are more likely to suffer from chronic asthma, and
more likely to suffer from lead poisoning than non-poor children. These children are more likely
to have stunted growth and anemia, and to suffer from obesity than non-poor children—all signs
of inadequate nutrition. It has been hypothesized that poor health and nutrition in the early years
of life may translate into worse outcomes in later years, by affecting children’s cognitive abilities
and school achievement. Poor children tend to score lower on standardized tests of IQ, verbal
ability, and achievement, and are less likely to advance in grade and complete high school. Poor
teen adolescent girls are more likely to become teenage mothers than their non-poor counterparts,
contributing to a cycle of poverty from one generation to the next.
A brief spell of income loss due to bad luck, such as job loss brought about by economic
downturn, may have immediate effects on families’ sense of economic well-being, putting
families under both financial and emotional stress. Prolonged or deep income poverty among
families with children may signal more chronic problems than merely a lack of income. While
income poverty is associated with poor child outcomes, lack of income in itself may account for
only part of the reason why poor children face poor future prospects. Other factors are arguably as
important, if not more so, than income, per se, in affecting children’s life chances.
Income support policies, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps (now known as the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)), may help reduce family economic stress
during a recession, and mitigate potential negative effects on families and their children. The
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Block Grant provides a major source of funding for
cash welfare for needy families with children, and is used for other benefits and services,
including child care and refundable tax credits.
Early Childhood Care, Education, and Development
Early childhood, from birth to the age of school entry, comprises important years in a child’s
physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. During those years, a child may be cared
for by parents, relatives, foster families, child care workers, and preschool teachers, among
others. Care may be provided in a variety of settings, and sometimes in combination. There is no
single “system” of early childhood care and education in the United States, but rather a patchwork
of arrangements experienced by children, and used by parents. Each arrangement provides a
forum for a child’s development, and therefore can benefit children—to the extent that they foster
their physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development.
Early childhood programs are increasingly being looked at from an overarching view of how they
can benefit children, society, the economy, and the country’s global competitiveness. Policy
discussions include not only child development experts, but a growing number of economists and
members of the business community. Participants in these discussions frequently cite research in
psychology, cognition, and early brain development that demonstrates how important the early
preschool years are for skill formation. Working from the notion that the skills children acquire in
their early years lay the groundwork and set a pattern for acquiring life skills, a growing group is
advocating for increased investment in early childhood programs. The aforementioned skills
encompass not only the cognitive skills generally measured by achievement and IQ tests, but also
non-cognitive abilities (e.g. motivation and “soft skills”), which some researchers show to be
equally important in determining socioeconomic success later in life. The potential positive
outcomes are measurable in the short term with respect to the individual child, and in the longer
term to the contribution he/she makes as a productive adult member of society. Investment in
quality early childhood programs has been shown to lead in the longer term to societal benefits in
the form of lower likelihoods of welfare receipt, teen pregnancy and criminal activity.
Identifying what constitutes a “quality” early childhood program remains a difficult task.
Effective programs, in the form of intensive intervention models, feature highly qualified teachers
and small class sizes, and focus on disadvantaged three- and four-year old children. The federal
Head Start program, also much-studied provides less intense, yet comprehensive services, tending
to a child’s nutritional and medical needs, while fostering cognitive and socio-emotional
development, and promoting improved parenting. Could (and should) further investment expand
on these models? Could (and should) early childhood investment be made more universally, with
the recognition that all children benefit from quality care?
Policymakers are currently wrestling with these questions at the state and federal levels. While
states increasingly invest in pre-kindergarten programs with varying degrees of “universality,”
federal efforts (with the exception of tax provisions) maintain a focus on serving disadvantaged
children in the form of comprehensive child development programs like Head Start, and grants
that fund child care subsidies that can be applied in an assortment of settings with varying levels
of quality and emphasis on children’s development.
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Youth Transition to Adulthood
Youth development emphasizes meeting young people’s emotional and cognitive needs and
building competencies for adulthood. Policymakers and scholars have increasingly focused
attention on supporting services that promote youth development, particularly as the move from
late adolescence to adulthood has become longer and increasingly complex. During the period of
transition, young people cycle between attending school and working, living independently, and
staying with their parents. They also use this time to explore career options and relationships with
potential long-term partners. These choices enable youth to delay becoming independent by an
age that society has traditionally benchmarked as the beginning of adulthood, usually 18 or 21.
This is evident by the rising median age of first marriage, with 27.5 now being the median age for
men and 25.5 the median age for women. Further, young people in their mid-to-late twenties
continue to receive extensive financial assistance and other supports, such as child care and
housing, from their parents.
For vulnerable youth populations, the transition to adulthood is further complicated by a number
of challenges. Family conflict or abandonment, housing insecurity, problems obtaining
educational supports and health care, and obstacles to securing employment that provides
adequate wages and health insurance can contribute to negative outcomes including low income
and poor academic attainment. Seven groups can be identified as being at high risk of
experiencing these challenges: youth emancipating from foster care, runaway and homeless
youth, youth in the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, immigrant youth and youth with
limited English proficiency, youth with physical and mental disabilities, youth with mental
disorders, and youth receiving special education. Youth may be members of multiple vulnerable
populations, and within these groups, the population is diverse. Not all vulnerable youth will
experience negative outcomes in adulthood. However, factors such as poverty, and incidents of
problem behaviors, increase the likelihood of these negative outcomes. Involvement in the child
welfare system and problems in school also suggest that youth may experience heightened
difficulties during the transition to adulthood.
The concept of “disconnected youth” has gained currency among scholars and policy makers with
concerns about the negative outcomes these individuals face in adulthood. Disconnected youth
are not embedded in social networks of family, friends, and communities that provide assistance
in the form of employment connections, health care, housing, tuition and other financial
assistance, and emotional support. Studies have focused on two measurable characteristics to
indicate disconnectedness: the lack of high school and/or college attendance, coupled with not
having a job for at least one year. At least two million youth ages 16 to 24 are considered
“disconnected” under this criteria, a disproportionate share of whom are racial and ethnic
minorities. Disconnected youth demonstrate the same risk markers and behaviors as other
vulnerable youth. Concentrated poverty, community insecurity, and family structure are
associated with their poor academic and employment outcomes.
Congress has increasingly focused attention on youth who are not in school or working.
Congressional hearings have explored the pathways that lead young people to become
disconnected, as well as the extent to which the federal government should assist the population.
Some researchers and youth advocates assert that disconnected youth are most vulnerable during
downturns in the economy, and that educational attainment and skills can mitigate the barriers
they might face in securing employment in an increasingly competitive global market.
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CRS Issue Statement on Child Well-Being

Determining which policies, if any, can help youth connect (or stay connected) to education and
the workforce may be a challenge for policymakers.

Issue Team Members

Adrienne L. Fernandes, Coordinator
Garrine P. Laney
Analyst in Social Policy
Analyst in Social Policy
afernandes@crs.loc.gov, 7-9005
glaney@crs.loc.gov, 7-2518
Gene Falk
Maggie McCarty
Specialist in Social Policy
Specialist in Housing Policy
gfalk@crs.loc.gov, 7-7344
mmccarty@crs.loc.gov, 7-2163
Thomas Gabe
Libby Perl
Specialist in Social Policy
Analyst in Housing Policy
tgabe@crs.loc.gov, 7-7357
eperl@crs.loc.gov, 7-7806
Karen Spar
Joe Richardson
Specialist in Social Policy
Specialist in Social Policy
kspar@crs.loc.gov, 7-7319
jirichardson@crs.loc.gov, 7-7325
Karen E. Lynch
Roger Walke
Analyst in Social Policy
Specialist in American Indian Policy
klynch@crs.loc.gov, 7-6899
rwalke@crs.loc.gov, 7-8641
Carmen Solomon-Fears
Rebecca R. Skinner
Specialist in Social Policy
Specialist in Education Policy
csolomonfears@crs.loc.gov, 7-7306
rskinner@crs.loc.gov, 7-6600
Emilie Stoltzfus
Ann Lordeman
Specialist in Social Policy
Specialist in Social Policy
estoltzfus@crs.loc.gov, 7-2324
alordeman@crs.loc.gov, 7-2323
Alison M. Smith
Gail McCallion
Legislative Attorney
Specialist in Social Policy
amsmith@crs.loc.gov, 7-6054
gmccallion@crs.loc.gov, 7-7758
Ramya Sundararaman
Jeffrey J. Kuenzi
Analyst in Public Health
Specialist in Education Policy
rsundararaman@crs.loc.gov, 7-7285
jkuenzi@crs.loc.gov, 7-8645
Chad C. Haddal
Erin D. Caffrey
Analyst in Immigration Policy
Analyst in Education Policy
chaddal@crs.loc.gov, 7-3701
ecaffrey@crs.loc.gov, 7-9447
Kristin M. Finklea
Natalie Paris Love
Analyst in Domestic Security
Analyst in American Federalism and Emergency
kfinklea@crs.loc.gov, 7-6259
Management Policy
nlove@crs.loc.gov, 7-9569
Bruce E. Foote
Holly A. Mirchel
Analyst in Housing Policy
Information Research Specialist
bfoote@crs.loc.gov, 7-7805
hmirchel@crs.loc.gov, 7-5564

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