Handbook of Adolescent Development Research and Its Impact on Global Policy

Of the 1.2 billion adolescents in the world today, 90% live in low- and middle-income countries. These adolescents face many challenges in their lives. Enrollment in secondary schools is still low in many parts of the world, with illiteracy rates approaching 30% in the least developed countries. Further, adolescents not in school are more vulnerable to trafficking, recruitment into armed conflict, and child labor. Many adolescent girls marry and begin bearing children at a young age, contributing to the perpetuation of poverty and health problems.

Despite these many challenges, adolescents also represent a resource to be cultivated through educational opportunities and vocational training to move them toward economic independence, through initiatives to improve their reproductive health, and through positive interpersonal relationships to help them avoid risky behaviors and make positive decisions about their futures.

Edited by Jennifer E. Lansford and Prerna Banati, the Handbook of Adolescent Development Research and its Impact on Global Policy tackles both the challenges and the promise of adolescence by presenting cutting-edge research on social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physical development. In addition to providing actionable strategies for policy-makers and practitioners, this volume consciously adopts a positive framing of adolescence, representing young people as opportunities, rather than threats. Throughout the book, readers will find a valuable investment at the individual and societal levels as a way to contribute to a positive shift in the public discourse around young people today.

Jennifer E. Lansford is a Research Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. A developmental psychologist by training, Lansford leads an international study of parenting and child development in nine countries that is currently in its tenth annual year of data collection. Her research focuses on the development of aggression and other behavior problems in diverse cultural contexts, with an emphasis on how family and peer contexts contribute to or protect against these outcomes. She has consulted with UNICEF on standards for parenting programs in a number of countries.

Prerna Banati is Chief of Programmes at UNICEF's Office of Research - Innocenti. Her research focuses on the social and structural forces that are among the most fundamental determinants of poor wellbeing among children. She was a Takemi Fellow in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard University, and has previously worked at the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria and at the World Health Organization. Before WHO, she was based in South Africa leading research on community HIV prevention and has published in the fields of HIV prevention, reproductive health, health systems and financing.