An estimated 94,000 children in Louisiana have a parent who is behind bars, with devastating effects on children and families. The entire family serves this sentence. Parental incarceration is a growing epidemic. Nationally, one in 28 children experiences parental incarceration today, compared...

Worldwide 10-20% of children and adolescents experience mental disorders. Mental disorders, if remain untreated, can impose enormous and lifelong burden to the individual, family and society. Yet, a large proportion of affected children do not receive treatment owing to poor accessibility to...

In this paper, we investigate whether in-utero exposure to municipal-level COVID-19 incidence rates in Brazil was associated with lower infant birth weight. To lower endogeneity related to conception during COVID-19, we include infants who were conceived before and born after, the first official...

Childhood experiences during the early years set a critical foundation for the entire life course, as these shape early child development which in turn strongly influence one’s health throughout life. Child maltreatment includes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual...

When a child with a mental illness is being prescribed psychotropic medication. who decides whether the child should take the medication -- the parent or the child? What if the child is sixteen years of age? What if the child is in foster care: Should the parent or social service agency decide?...

While the long-term consequences of unmet child mental health needs are well-documented, out-of-pocket costs remain an important barrier to accessing medication in childhood and adolescence. This paper exploits the implementation of a public drug insurance program in Québec, Canada, to estimate...