Nonpoor children in head start: Explanations and implications
Abstract
According to the Head Start Act (1998), children are income-eligible for the program if their “families' incomes are below the poverty line.” There are a number of statutory exceptions to this general rule and, according to the Head Start Bureau, the result is that about 6 percent of the children in the program are not poor. But the major national surveys of Head Start families report that 30 percent or more of Head Start children are not “poor.” This paper confirms and explains the high proportion of nonpoor children in Head Start: at enrollment, at least 28 percent are not poor; at midyear, at least 32 percent are not poor; and by the end of the program year, at least 34 percent and perhaps more than 50 percent are not poor. Although the presence of some of these nonpoor children seems to be an appropriate or at least understandable aspect of running a national program with Head Start's current organizational structure, the presence of others seems much less warranted and raises substantial questions of horizontal equity. Moreover, taken together, the large number of nonpoor children suggests that the program is not well targeted to fulfill its mission of providing compensatory services to developmentally disadvantaged children-and reveals the essential ambiguity of Head Start's role in the wider world of early care and education. The income and program dynamics that have led to so many nonpoor children being in Head Start are also at work in many other programs, and, thus, our findings demonstrate the need to understand better how income eligibility is determined across various means-tested programs.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Article provided by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. in its journal Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Volume (Year): 26 (2007)
Issue (Month): 3 ()
Pages: 613-631
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/34787/home
Related research
Keywords:References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Neidell, Matthew & Waldfogel, Jane, 2009. "Program participation of immigrant children: Evidence from the local availability of Head Start," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 704-715, December.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:26:y:2007:i:3:p:613-631For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.