children

Studies have shown that child abuse can have long-term effects on both victims and society. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, such experiences can be associated with negative psychological and behavioral consequences for the victim well into adult life. Societal consequences include the costs associated with the child welfare and criminal justice systems, as well as the indirect costs associated with a loss of productivity due to underemployment.

Changes in family structure and attitudes toward family have obviously taken place in the past few decades across the West. Family-related data are often assessed at the national level, but how do similar countries compare with one another?

Jean Piaget, a pioneer of 20th-century cognitive development theory, claimed that preschoolers were “irrational, illogical … and limited to the here and now.” But nearly 100 years later, new technologies and approaches have provided cognitive scientists new ways to investigate how infants and young children learn; their findings challenge Piaget’s longstanding theories of early childhood cognitive development.

Since the first charter school opened in the late 1980s, more than 4,000 have been established. The charter school movement is not without its critics, of course, and some argue that an approach that works in one area may bring about different results in another.

Over the past decade, funding for and participation in after-school programs has grown substantially. To ensure that their promise is effectively delivered, evaluating their relative benefits and required factors for success is critical.

Prisoners suffering from mental illness or showing its symptoms are common among criminal justice populations. The potential relationship between crime and mental illness could have important policy implications, particularly if increased more widespread mental health treatment could prove to have wide effects on rates of criminality.

For more than a decade marketers of prepared foods have used “front of package” labeling to promote the supposed health benefits of their products to consumers. Today supermarket shelves are lined with items labeled “low in calories” or “better for you” aimed at children and their parents. As concerns have grown about childhood obesity, however, the veracity of these claims has come into question.