From a life course perspective, high school dropout culminates a long-term process of disengagement from school. The present paper uses data from a representative panel of Baltimore school children to describe this unfolding process. Over 40% of the study group left school at some point without a degree, but this high overall rate of dropout masks large differences across sociodemographic lines as well as differences involving academic, parental, and personal resources. A sociodemographic profile of dropout for the study group shows how dropout rates vary across different configurations of background risk factors including family socioeconomic status (SES), family type, and family stress level. Dropout risk factors and resources in support of children's schooling then are examined at four schooling benchmarks: the 1st grade, the rest of elementary school (years 2–5), the middle school (years 6–8), and year 9 (the 1st year of high school for those promoted each year). Academic, parental, and personal resources condition dropout prospects at each time point, with resources measured early in children's schooling forecasting dropout almost as well as those from later in children's schooling. Additionally, evidence is presented that resources add on to one another in moderating dropout risk, including risk associated with family SES. These patterns are discussed in terms of a life course view of the dropout process.

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From a life course perspective, high school dropout culminates a long-term process of disengagement from school. The present paper uses data from a representative panel of Baltimore school children to describe this unfolding process. Over 40% of the study group left school at some point without a degree, but this high overall rate of dropout masks large differences across sociodemographic lines as well as differences involving academic, parental, and personal resources. A sociodemographic profile of dropout for the study group shows how dropout rates vary across different configurations of background risk factors including family socioeconomic status (SES), family type, and family stress level. Dropout risk factors and resources in support of children's schooling then are examined at four schooling benchmarks: the 1st grade, the rest of elementary school (years 2–5), the middle school (years 6–8), and year 9 (the 1st year of high school for those promoted each year). Academic, parental, and personal resources condition dropout prospects at each time point, with resources measured early in children's schooling forecasting dropout almost as well as those from later in children's schooling. Additionally, evidence is presented that resources add on to one another in moderating dropout risk, including risk associated with family SES. These patterns are discussed in terms of a life course view of the dropout process.

E very year, the federal government spends a substantial sum on food assistance-totaling $41.8 billion in 2003 (Oliveira). As a result, there is a great deal of interest in assessing the role that food assistance programs play in helping low-income families maintain nutritional adequacy. One outcome of interest is household food security, a measure developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the 1990s which indicates whether all members of a household have access, at all times, to enough food for an active and healthy life. The relationship between food assistance and food security has been difficult to estimate because the program participation decision is endogenous. Food insecure households are more likely to self-select into food assistance programs, resulting in a positive association that must be controlled in order to assess the effect of program participation on food insecurity and hunger. Furthermore, the positive association resulting from self-selection has been found to dominate the (presumably) negative program effect (Gundersen and Oliveira).In this paper, we study one aspect of the relationship between food security and food assistance. For households that experienced some degree of hunger during the course of a year, we examine whether food assistance use was associated with lower odds of food insecurity during the last thirty days of that year. By focusing on changes in food security status, we partially circumvent the self-selection problem. We limit our analysis to the Food Stamp Program (FSP) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).