Policy 360

You might expect that elderly people would have more wealth than families with kids because they're older and they've had more time to save. But Christina Gibson-Davis' research shows the gap in wealth between the two groups has grown "startlingly wide" over the past 25 years.

Gibson-Davis is a faculty member at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Michael Sorrell is president of Paul Quinn College, and he has turned the historically black institution in Dallas into what he calls “an engine of social mobility.” He became president of Paul Quinn in 2007. At the time there were more than a dozen abandoned buildings on campus.

Michael Sorrell has since been named HBCU President of the Year three times for his contributions to higher education, and this year he was named to Fortune’s List of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

Leaders in towns and cities affected by Hurricane Florence are attempting to get operations running again. Soon they will likely be thinking about how their communities can do things differently so the next big weather event doesn’t cause as many problems.

Elizabeth Albright studies how communities recover after devastating natural disasters. For one research project, she followed seven Colorado communities for three years following deadly floods there. She joins Judith Kelley to talk about what she learned.

Yemen is in the midst of civil war, a brutal conflict that has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the United Nations. By some estimates, 75 percent of the people there are in need of humanitarian assistance. Millions have been forced to flee, and more are at risk of starvation. Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America, recently returned from a trip to Yemen. She visited camps for displaced people, and has returned to the U.S. determined to help.

Kelly Brownell has stepped away from his role as dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy to launch a new World Food Policy Center at Duke University. He talks with the school's new dean, Judith Kelley, about key challenges that he hopes his new center will begin to address.

For example, he hopes to get people in the food and food policy space talking to each other. The academic field is segmented, he says. "There is a lot of depth around particular topics but not much breadth across them and very little communications across them."

It’s often said that one in 10 people on the planet is hungry, and that number is on the rise. Abigail Bennett is the lead author of a new report from Duke University’s World Food Policy Center, The Environmental Defense Fund, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Duke University Marine Lab on the contribution of fisheries to food and nutrition security. Abby has served as a fellow at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and is a consultant at the World Bank.

Researchers now believe they can predict bad behavior later in life, just from a child's behavior and life circumstances as a toddler. This is the last of a four-part series looking at early childhood.

Guest: Daniel Shaw of the Center for Parents and Children and the Pitt Parents and Children Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh.

There's an intriguing new study that shows a connected between when low-income families receive supplemental nutrition, or SNAP assistance, and student test scores. The study is believed to be the first to show a connection between benefits of this sort and academic performance.

The authors of the study are Anna Gassman-Pines and Laura Bellows. Gassman-Pines is an Associate Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Neuroscience at Duke University. Laura Bellows is a doctoral student at the Sanford School of Public Policy.

It's becoming more and more apparent that the first thousand days of a child's life are crucial. In particular, the nutrition a child receives early in life dictates the kind of life that child will go on to have. But around the world, many women face huge obstacles when it comes to securing proper nutrition for their families.

Journalist Roger Thurow traveled the world to see firsthand the challenges many mothers face as a part of an exploration of a worldwide initiative to end early childhood malnutrition. He met new mothers and babies in Uganda, India, Guatemala, and Chicago, and tells their stories in the book The First Thousand Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children - And the World.

Most experts recommend mothers breastfeed for six months exclusively after birth – but most women don’t do so. In the U.S.. only 27 percent of mothers reach the 6-month mark. In the U.K., it’s less than one percent. Professor Rafael Pérez-Escamilla of the Yale School of Public Health has been working on a way to boost and sustain breastfeeding rates – and he’s doing it on a country-by-country basis.