Infancy—the period of life from birth to age 1—is associated with a unique set of public policy issues related to babies' health, development, and welfare. RAND's research on infants spans a wide range of topics for this brief but important period of life, including infant mortality, low birth weight, neonatal care, immunizations, breastfeeding and feeding practices, and cognitive development.
REPORT
This briefing uses existing statewide and county data to provide California early care and education quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) planners and other stakeholders with important information about some fundamentals of the proposed QRIS rating scheme that could inform California's QRIS design in advance of field-based pilot efforts.
REPORT
California has taken steps to implement components of a comprehensive professional development system for its early child education workforce. However, further advances are needed and more information is required to identify possible inefficiencies in the current system.
REPORT
Uses two sources of representative data, the 2005 National Household Education Survey and the 2007 RAND California Preschool Study, to describe child care and early learning arrangements for the approximately 2.8 million California children ages 0 to 5 who are younger than the age at which they would enter kindergarten.
REPORT
Better child outcomes are the ultimate goal of early care and education (ECE) quality improvement (QI) efforts, but assessing these outcomes is difficult and rarely done. This study identifies five strategies for incorporating child assessments into the design, implementation, and evaluation of QI initiatives such as quality rating and improvement systems. The study assesses the merits of each strategy and offers guidance for its use.
RESEARCH BRIEF
Offers recommendations for improving the education and training of California's early childhood workforce.
RESEARCH BRIEF
Identifies five strategies for incorporating child assessments into the design, implementation, and evaluation of initiatives designed to raise the quality of care in early care and education settings such as quality rating and improvement systems.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Parents of newborns and seriously ill children often know about family leave options, but are too overwhelmed to apply for them. Most parents interviewed in this study wanted expert guidance and saw hospitals and clinics as promising information sources.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Using a 12-year county-level panel, this study found that a 10 percent increase in births that occur in hospitals with electronic medical records reduces neonatal mortality by 16 deaths per 100,000 live births.
TOOL
The Malaysian Family Life Surveys were conducted in 1976-1977 and 1988-1989. The surveys collected detailed current and retrospective information on family structure, fertility, economic status, education, and more from a partially-overlapping sample of more than 4,000 individuals and households.
TOOL
The Guatemalan Survey of Family Health was designed to examine the way in which rural Guatemalan families and individuals cope with childhood illness and pregnancy, and the role of ethnicity, poverty, social support, and health beliefs in this process.
REPORT
What can governments do to address the demographic challenge? RAND Europe examines population ageing: consequences and possible solutions.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This article tests whether parents reinforce or compensate for child endowments.
RESEARCH BRIEF
Describes the characteristics of rural hospitals and those who use them and discusses the challenges these hospitals face.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
The authors use data from the Matlab Demographic Surveillance System on nearly 94,000 singleton live births that occurred between 1987 and 2002 to investigate the extent to which the change in mortality over this period can be explained by changes in repr
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Determine the effect of very low birth weight (VLBW; <1500 g) and moderately low birth weight (MLBW; 1500-2499 g) on children's mental and motor development and physical growth during the first 2 years of life and whether VLBW and MLBW babies catch up to normal birth weight (NBW; >/=2500 g) children by age 2.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Moderate iodine deficiency in Mexican schoolchildren was associated with a 4.26 times higher risk of low IQ. More attention is needed to ensure effective salt iodination processes.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This article summarizes results from a child care survey of military families conducted by the RAND Corporation in 2004 and draws policy implications for the military child care system.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.
PERIODICAL
The Spring 2008 issue of RAND Review compares neonatal services across the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Sweden, discusses water resources management, U.S. policies in Asia, and political polarization.
REPORT
Gathers information on the provision of neonatal services in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the United States, Canada, Sweden and Australia. It was produced to support the National Audit Office’s Value for Money study of neonatal services in England. Therefore, the report aims to provide a compendium of relevant data to facilitate comparisons and benchmarking of neonatal services (organisation, statistics, and so on).
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