Children with incarcerated parents are particularly vulnerable because not only are they faced with the trauma of loss, but also the myriad economic and social challenges that parental incarceration can bring. The goals of Annie E Casey Foundation's work in this field are to support and promote effective responses to these challenges.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we consider how parental education relates to four outcomes in the children's generation: education, lifetime earnings, health, and wealth. By focusing on parents' and children's ranks, we characterize relative mobility in terms of distributions of outcomes and can see patterns that even a relatively disaggregated analysis, like a quintile-based transition matrix, can obscure. Our results show relatively high intergenerational mobility except at extremes, where very low-ranked parents are much more likely to have very low-ranked children and very high-ranked parents are much more likely to have very high-ranked children.

The Kaiser Family Fund survey of state Medicaid directors finds that most states are facing the prospect of mid-fiscal year 2009 program cutbacks in this program that serves vulnerable families.

Here are some useful, age-appropriate “cheat sheets” to help parents and caregivers get the most out of their time with their children, boosting reading skills and enjoyment.

In 2007, 1.7 million children under age 18 had a parent in prison—an 82 percent increase 1991, disproportionately affecting children of color. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to drop out of school, engage in delinquency, and subsequently be incarcerated themselves. This Sentencing Project brief evaluates Department of Justice data and offers policy recommendations to support parent/child relationships and minimize the harm to children.

Children of incarcerated parents are often an invisible population, but analyzing and mapping local data on these families can help policymakers and advocates understand these children's experiences and needs. This Urban Institute brief has the who, what, why and how for cities and governments interested in embarking on such an initiative.

In this October 2008 blog entry, Hershel Sarbin reacts to a recent CFK article on Hope Meadows, an intergenerational community launched in 1993, and how “smartly its founders have adapted to changing conditions over the years.” Therein lies a model for all of us, he says.

Congress recently allocated $750 million over five years to promote marriage and fatherhood initiatives among low-income groups. As a result, federally-funded marriage promotion programs are springing up around the country, including in Washington, DC. Roshin Mathew, an Emerson Hunger Fellow working with Connect for Kids this year, wondered about the connection between marriage promotion and better lives for low-income children. Here are her findings, and her thoughts.

White picket fences, brownstones, housing projects; racially diverse or isolated—:what impact does a family's neighborhood really have on the well-being and opportunities for young people? How much is correlated, and how much is causal? According to this report "rigorous research indicates that neighborhood isolation and distress can contribute to or exacerbate individual and family distress." This report examines what's known about poverty, economic security, access to services, and child and family well-being to better understand the neighborhood-family connection. In general, the analysis suggests that neighborhood poverty has a broader influence than racial/ethnic composition but that both affect family and child outcomes.

It�s a perennial struggle for military families, but one that is hitting home for more and more of them as soldiers rotate back to the home front from Iraq and Afghanistan: the sometimes painful adjustments that come with the return of a long-absent parent. Rebecca Freshour looks at some of the issues.