children
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We Live in an Era of Ritual Child Sacrifice
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Isabeau Dasho is the Assistant director of the Harris Writing Workshop and new mom. Co-authored by Megan Sanders. Recently I attended the “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery” exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum. It was deft, approachable, and well handled. The curators took care with the horrific and scary bits, respectfully…
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Increasing the Demand for Education With Unconditional Cash Transfers
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Sub-Saharan Africa hosts the majority of the 124 million children not enrolled in school across the globe. Education plays a key role in improving individual and social well-being, but high poverty impedes access to quality education. This cycle of poverty can be broken by reducing the burden of the financial…
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What are the True Costs of Natural Disasters?
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With a year that included severe monsoon flooding in Bangladesh, earthquakes in Mexico, and hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, 2017 was an exceptionally bad year for natural disasters. Policies can help mitigate these tragedies, but to start we must better understand a disaster’s true costs. Conventional metrics consider…
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Ethanol Cookstoves and Their Impact on Pregnant Women: Lessons from Nigeria
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In Nigeria and much of the developing world, kerosene and biomass fuels are used to provide energy for cooking, heating, and lighting. Reliance on these fuels leads to high levels of household air pollution (HAP), which causes 4.3 million premature deaths worldwide, according to a 2012 World Health Organization (WHO)…
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The Child Factor: Drilling Down on Income Segregation
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Income segregation in neighborhoods in the United States has increased over the past few decades, but certain demographic groups have experienced a sharper rise than others. Only two-thirds of households in the United States are families, defined as two or more people related by birth, marriage, or adoption. The other…
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Social Capital Matters for the Mental Health of Children in Rural China
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Social capital is an important component in ensuring sound mental health in children. The more quality time a parent spends with their child, the better it is for the child’s development. This is just one way in which family social capital helps the child’s development, as parents can pass their…
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The Uneven Retreat from Marriage
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A study shows the ways in which demographic changes regarding marriage, divorce, and cohabitation in the past 50 years have fostered family inequality across socioeconomic groups, causing negative impacts for children.
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An Intergenerational Analysis of the Impact of War on Child Soldiers
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Evidence suggests that a one-standard deviation change in the depression and anxiety levels of caregivers is associated with a 0.43-standard deviation change in the negative internalization of symptoms among youth in their care.
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Doctor Knows Best: Leveraging Pediatricians to Reduce the Use of Physical Punishment
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New research uncovers a promising method for reducing parental use of physical punishment by engaging with parents through pediatricians.
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Common Cents: The Benefits of Expanding Head Start
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New research indicates that Head Start offers a substantial benefit for students who are least likely to enroll and yields a significant financial gain for the government.
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Mindfulness in the Classroom: Meeting Children’s Socioemotional Needs
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Evidence suggests that children exposed to social and emotional learning programs with mindfulness practices show significant improvements in executive functions, well-being, social behavior, and academic performance.
