Guest Editors' Introduction: Housing, Contexts, and the Well-Being of Children and Youth

Elizabeth Rudd
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Molly Irwin
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

From time to time, most families with children carefully consider the consequences of their housing and neighborhood choices for their children. Policymakers allocate many billions of dollars to a wide variety of housing and neighborhood-based activities in the hope that these activities will foster the healthy development of the next generation. When parents and policymakers look to the social sciences for hard evidence in support of their decisions, however, they will find much of the literature disappointingly inconclusive. This symposium is intended to help build a better evidence base.