Kids at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Positioning efforts to alleviate childhood poverty in any way against efforts to build future assets for children is a mistake. I am a professor at the University of Michigan. As a child I grew up poor, evicted often, living in hotels, homeless at other times, while eating seemed optional, not mandatory, for survival in our house. I ended up dropping

Kids back at school (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Coinciding with the start of the school year, New York City parents got some good news last week when Mayor de Blasio launched the city’s first universal baby bonds program. Starting this year, every public-school kindergartener will receive access to a college savings account seeded with $100 from the city.

This