Research Library

Decades of research demonstrate the critical importance of early childhood development, but the United States ranks last among wealthy countries in child health outcomes. This brief lays out a series of recommendations to improve the developmental potential of American children.

The Covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for resettled refugees in the U.S. and exposed underlying vulnerabilities that particularly impact refugee women and children, as well as the organizations that work to support them. The authors examine the difficulties facing refugees in the U.S. and offer policy recommendations that may help them.

Parental stress, which is heightened during natural disasters, can produce negative physiological responses in the developing brains of their infants and young children. This irreversibly alters the child’s brain structure, impacting their long-term prospects for good health and academic and economic success. Now is the time to institute policies and practices that mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the next generation, write the authors,

An increasing number of lawful permanent U.S. residents from Mexico could lose access to their U.S. social security contributions as a result of deportation.

Fellow for the Middle East A.Kadir Yildirim and undergraduate intern Meredith McCain explore survey data on the goals, outcomes and beneficiaries of the Arab Spring protests.

Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, director of the Baker Institute, makes the case for a comprehensive North American strategy in which the U.S., Mexico and Canada act in concert to become the global superpower of the 21st century.

A multi-pronged policy that engages both secular and nonviolent Islamist parties may produce a foreign policy agenda that more successfully advances short- and long-term U.S. objectives in the Middle East, writes research scholar A.Kadir Yildirim.