Cross-national comparisons of homeless youth in Melbourne, Australia, and Los Angeles, CA, United States were conducted. Newly (n = 427) and experienced (n = 864) homeless youth were recruited from each site. Compared to Australia, homeless youth in the United States were younger, more likely to be in school or jail, demonstrated fewer sexual and substance use risk acts, fewer suicidal acts, and reported less need for social services. Across sites, experienced homeless youth were more likely to be older, male, engage in sexual and substance use, report greater need for social services, and make greater use of work, substance use, and health-related services. Homeless youth have different behavioral profiles in Australia and the United States, reflecting differences in the effectiveness of service systems in the two countries in keeping youth with fewer problems out of homelessness. KeywordsHomelessness; Australia; homeless shelters; social policy; youth risk behavior Homelessness among youth is a significant problem in both the United States (US) and Australia (AU) (Hammer, Finkelhor, & Sedlak, 2002;MacKenzie & Chamberlin, 2002; Prime Ministerial Homeless Report, 1998). Because AU and the US are similar in several key dimensions, data gathered in AU may inform US policies regarding homeless youth. Both countries are developed nations with large immigrant populations; both have strong national norms for individualism (in contrast to collectivism) (Kim, Triandis, Kagitcibasi, Choi, & Yoon, 1994); and services for homeless youth are similarly organized with a system of community-based shelters, primary health care clinics, foster care, and, to a lesser extent, comprehensive service agencies. Yet, the cross-national differences in service and policy contexts offer important opportunities to examine national variations in youth's pathways into and out of homelessness. In AU, services for homeless youth are organized so that a large number of relatively small communitybased agencies are geographically dispersed throughout the city (Harrison & Dempsey, 1997). In contrast, US services are more likely to be provided at a few large shelters located in the inner city. Further, AU has adopted a harm-reduction approach to substance use (Nguyen & Fox, 2002), has had multiple national social marketing plans for HIV prevention (Ross, Rigby, Rosse, Anagnostou, & Brown, 1990), has adopted a sexual health approach (not the 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Center for Community Health, 10920 Wilshire Blvd., Suite #350, LA, California 90024-6521; nmilburn@mednet.ucla.edu. (Harrison, Hillier, & Walsh, 1996), offers universal access to health care (Doctors Reform Society, 2003), provides some school-based prevention services to divert youth from homelessness, and provides a weekly stipend for homeless youth. Moreover, AU has less socioeconomic diversity than the US. Given these contextual differences, our first goal was to document the similarities and differences among homeless youth in Melbourne, AU and Los...