As computer technology becomes increasingly prevalent throughout society, concerns have been raised about an emerging "digital divide" between those children who are benefitting and those who are being left behind. This article presents results from new analyses of national survey data describing children's differential access to computers in school and at home, and the varying conditions that ...

Children from low-income backgrounds enter school with much less mathematical knowledge than their more affluent peers. These early deficits have long-term consequences; children who start behind generally stay behind. This article describes how a theoretical analysis of the development of number sense gave rise to an intervention that reduces this gap by producing large, rapid, and broad impro...

This chapter explores variations in cognitive and social-emotional developmental outcomes among the 307 children who participated in the study. Cognitive development for infants and toddlers was assessed directly by researchers, and included early learning skills such as visual reception, fi ne motor, receptive vocabulary, and expressive vocabulary. For preschool-age children, cognitive develop...

For the changes under welfare reform to positively affect children, the gains that mothers make from employment must lead to improvements in children's daily settings at home, in child care, at school, or in the community. This article focuses on the role child care can play in promoting the development of, and life opportunities for, low-income children. Key observations include: Total federal...

Poverty is a reality for many families living in Canadian inner cities. There is no accepted definition of poverty in Canada. However, it was estimated that 9.6% of Canadians were living on a low income in 2009.1 This is based on a low-income cutoff defined as the income level at which a family might be in straitened circumstances because it has to spend a greater portion of its income on basic...