At a time when inequalities in school achievement, workforce skills, and lifelong health status compromise a nation’s competitiveness in a global economy, the need for new ideas to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty around the world is critical. Science tells us that the foundations for successful adulthood are established early in life. The substantial gap between what we know about the roots of growing disparities in health, learning, and behavior and what we are doing to promote the well-being of vulnerable children internationally provides a compelling agenda for strengthening policies and investments that focus on the earliest years of life.

Over the past decade, the world’s policymakers have increased their attention to early childhood health and development, which opens new prospects for advancing a comprehensive early childhood agenda. Meanwhile, a growing, interdisciplinary body of scientific research is already starting to transform the health and well-being of children in the highest-income countries and offers promising opportunity for other nations. Much work needs to be done, however, to successfully raise the commitment to an integrated approach to child development that would enable such breakthroughs to cross economic and national borders. More>>