This report presents a conceptual framework for efforts to prepare at-risk youth for healthy adult functioning and self-sufficiency. Produced as part of the Youth Demonstration Development project for the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, the...

This report describes the cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development of children who take part in the Head Start program. Focusing on children who first entered Head Start in fall 2009 and completed one or two years of the program before starting kindergarten, the authors examined...

This Evaluation Highlight discusses the early accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned from the following four states pursuing practice-level quality measurement: Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. It describes the states’ efforts to select meaningful measures,...

This report projects health care spending in Minnesota from 2008 to 2018, updating Mathematica’s earlier projections completed in 2009. Changes to the input data are documented, as are changes to the methodology to account for the recession’s spending impacts and health care reform.

The final report to Congress presents complete findings from our seven-year national evaluation of Early Head Start. The findings show that the program promotes learning and the parenting that supports it within the first three years of life. Participating children perform significantly better...

In 1998, Mathematica began a five-year comprehensive evaluation of WFNJ to determine how clients were faring under the new reforms, how reform was implemented, and how communities responded to welfare reform and local challenges and opportunities. This report provides a brief summary of key...

This brief examines how policymakers’ positive engagement can benefit children’s health care coverage advocates, as well as the strategies for making this engagement happen. Key strategies include understanding states’ unique political environments; identifying, nurturing, and supporting...

This comprehensive study found that Santa Clara County’s Healthy Kids program--a health insurance program for children in low and middle income families--is closing a major gap in health care for county children. Since it was launched in 2001, Healthy Kids has insured over 25,000 children in...

The Affordable Care Act has altered payment policy for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, with the goal of lowering costs to bring them closer to the costs of traditional Medicare. Using new information on 2009 MA costs, an issue brief compares plans’ estimates of per capita costs for...

Improving the ability of the long-term care system to meet the needs of an aging population is at the top of the nation’s policy agenda. This issue brief describes the demographic characteristics of vulnerable adults—those at significant risk of needing long-term care services in the...