Big Ideas for Children: Investing in Our Nation's Future
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BIG IDEAS FOR CHILDREN INVESTING IN OUR NATIon’s FUTURE BIG IDEAS FOR CHILDREN INVESTING IN OUR Nation’S FUTURE Acknowledgments First Focus would like to thank The Atlantic Philanthropies and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation as the original founders of First Focus (previously the “Children’s Investment Project”), and for their continued critical support of our efforts on behalf of America’s children. This publication was also made possible by the generous support and encouragement of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Casey Family Programs, The Joyce Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. We are also grateful for the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Goldman Sachs Foundation, and a supporter who wishes to remain anonymous. Finally, we wish to thank the authors who have contributed to this publication, for their ideas and innovative thinking. This book was designed by 360jmg. Editor’s note The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of First Focus or the organizations whose contributions have made this report possible. We have published this series in an effort to facilitate a robust debate among policymakers, advocates, and political candidates regarding policy solutions to improve the well-being of our nation’s children. Table of Contents Foreword Foreword by Bruce Lesley, President, First Focus 1 Place, Race and Health: 6 Promoting Opportunities for Good Health for All Children Brian D. Smedley The Kids-First Agenda 15 David L. Kirp Out of the Desert: 25 An Integrated Approach to Ending Child Poverty Elisabeth Mason and Julie Kashen Paying for Investments in Children 30 Isabel V. Sawhill The Case for Investing in 49 Disadvantaged Young Children James J. Heckman Achieving a High Return on 59 Early Childhood Investment: Scholarships for Early Childhood Development Arthur J. Rolnick and Rob Grunewald Evolving No Child Left Behind 67 Linda Darling-Hammond Lessons for the United States from 81 Other Advanced Economies in Tackling Child Poverty Kate Bell, Jared Bernstein and Mark Greenberg A Springboard to the Ownership Society 93 Katie McMinn Campbell and Jason D. Newman Supporting Young Children and Families: 102 An Investment Strategy that Pays Julia B. Isaacs 2020 Vision for America’s Children 112 William C. Bell Big Ideas for Children: Investing in Our Nation’s Future | 3 A New Way of Thinking About 121 Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention James M. Hmurovich Cutting the Gordian Knot: 129 National Reforms to Assure Coverage of Developmental Child Health Treatment Sara Rosenbaum How Policymakers Can Use 137 Automation to Help Families and Children Stan Dorn Helping Parents Raise Healthy, 146 Happy Productive Children Nemours Health and Prevention Services Children in Immigrant Families: 159 Key to America’s Future Donald J. Hernandez Making Work Pay – Again 183 Ron Haskins A Big, New Investment in America’s 191 Poorest (and Youngest?) Children: Conditional Cash Transfers J. Lawrence Aber Protecting Children from Firearm Violence 203 David Hemenway Investing in Middle Class Families: 211 The Case for a Much Expanded Child Tax Credit James C. Capretta Evidence-based Programs and 219 Policies for Children and Youth Carol Emig and Kristin Anderson Moore Communicating About Children 226 Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research Foreword Big Ideas: Opening the Door of Opportunity for All Children by Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus Economists, including Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, have repeatedly proven that early interventions in the lives of children will reap enormous long- term returns. As Heckman and authors David Kirp, Linda Darling-Hammond, Isabel Sawhill, Julia Isaacs, Art Rolnick, and Rob Grunewald show in Big Ideas for Children: Investing in Our Nation’s Future, there are few public programs or investment opportunities that provide a greater rate of return toward a nation’s economic development than investing in children. What is often missing are the big ideas or the longer-term vision necessary to make improvements in the lives of children, including, as authors Sara Rosenbaum and Stan Dorn note, recognition that children have special development needs. This collection of more than 20 papers by numerous experts in economics and children’s public policy highlights a number of possible policy options to combat poverty: invest in early childhood and education programs, reform the health care system for children, improve child safety, child well-being, and home and community for children and families. Although we do not necessarily agree with all that is written here, our hope is to inspire some new discussions, thinking, and dialogue around public policy issues to improve the well-being and opportunities for our nation’s children. Beyond expanding the debate and thinking around improving the status of children in our nation, what is required includes the political will and the leadership necessary to make improvement a reality. Fortunately, there are some important moments, typically in the first year or so of a new administration, when big ideas and political leadership come together to make important improvements in the lives of children. For example, a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt provided that leadership, albeit during the last year of his presidency, by calling on December 25, 1908, for the establishment of the very first White House Conference on the Care for Dependent Children. President Roosevelt moved quickly and opened the two-day conference at the White House a month later on January 25, 1909, and addressed the delegates by saying: “There can be no more important subject from the standpoint of the nation than that with which you are to deal, because when you take care of the children, you are taking care of the nation of tomorrow; and it is incumbent upon every one of us to do all in his or her power to provide for Big Ideas for Children: Investing in Our Nation’s Future | 1 Foreword the interests of those children whom cruel misfortune has handicapped at the very outset of their lives.” The conference’s proposal for the creation of a Children’s Bureau was passed, and the Bureau created in 1912. At the close of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson renewed and built upon Roosevelt’s commitment to children through the Children’s Bureau by declaring 1918 “Children’s Year,” with the accompanying phrase, “The health of the child is the power of the nation.” On establishing a White House Conference on Child Welfare Standards that was held in 1919, President Wilson said, “Next to the duty of doing everything possible for the soldiers at the front, there could be, it seems to me, no more patriotic duty than that of protecting the children who constitute one-third of our population.” Out of this conference came the passage of child labor laws and the Shephard-Towner Maternal and Infancy Act, which laid the groundwork for subsequent child welfare and maternal and child health legislation as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” During the last century, other progress was made. As further examples, child labor laws were passed, food stamps were created to combat hunger, President John F. Kennedy challenged a younger generation to serve the nation through programs such as the Peace Corps, and President Lyndon B. Johnson established Medicaid and Head Start to benefit low-income children as part of his “Great Society” agenda. Further, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Vaccines for Children (VFC), while the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush pushed for the enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) during his first year in office. All of these initiatives combined new ideas with political leadership in the White House and the Congress to strive to make significant efforts to improve the lives of children. Unfortunately, these initiatives were often followed by periods of neglect or even backtracking in some areas, because few American political leaders place children high on their list of legislative priorities. For example, the Alliance for Excellent Education has noted that, although the United States saw its athletes bring home more medals than any other nation in the 2008 Summer Olympics, our country performs less well in comparison to other countries in terms of academic achievement. That is also the case for other measures of child well-being, such as infant mortality and poverty rates. In fact, the United Nations ranked the United States 20th out of 21 countries on various outcome indicators for children. No nation would chant “we’re number 20,” and that ranking is not something that we should ever find acceptable, particularly when the lives of our children are at stake. Previously, when faced with such threats to our future, our country has always responded. Today while other countries are undertaking significant national commitments to tackle problems facing children in their countries, such as childhood poverty in Britain, as highlighted in the paper by Kate Bell, Jared Bernstein, and Mark Greenberg, the most significant recent efforts in the United States have all seen 2 | Big Ideas for Children: Investing in Our Nation’s Future Foreword erosion: Head Start funding has declined by more than 10 percent in the last five years; programs to combat infant mortality, such as the Healthy Start program and the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, are down 10 percent and