An unlevel playing field

Many factors contribute to shaping a child’s first few years of life. These factors begin even before the child is born and span both the family and community environment. Children raised in poverty and under-resourced environments experience an accumulation of disadvantages including higher rates of low birth weight, unstable family structures, trauma, and poor academic performance, which according to the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), places “these children in a trajectory that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment and often premature death.” As CDF puts it, “They were not derailed from the right track; they never got on it.”