Wasting America's Future is the first attempt to evaluate the burden of child poverty on future earnings and economic output and to calculate some of child poverty's other economic impacts, such as the cost of repeated grades, special education, and future medical care. The book's groundbreaking economic analysis shows that ending child poverty should save society - businesses, taxpayers, citizens - billions of dollars annually and result in substantial long-term savings.

Wasting America's Future gives often surprising evidence that even a brief episode of poverty can do lasting damage to children; or that low family income (separate from race, separate from single-parent status) is a devastatingly powerful predictor of negative outcomes for children.

For many readers, though, the essence of the book will lie in the stories of children and families, many of whom endure unfair and damaging lives with grace, and who remind us that good things - whole and healthy young lives - are worth paying for.