On January 14, 2021, the Brookings Institution in partnership with Princeton University held the final Future of Children event, “Three Trimesters to Three Years: Promoting Early Development.” The event was held virtually with 909 live viewers and another 304 views of the recorded event.  This was the largest attended roll out event since Princeton/Brookings began publishing the journal in 2005.

In conjunction with this event an announcement was emailed to our listserv and posted on the Future of Children website. It reads:

We will be sunsetting the Future of Children journal this year following publication of our spring issue, “Research-Practice Partnerships to Support Early Education.”

Many factors led to this decision, chief among them the retirement of key personnel—our editor-in-chief, Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, and senior editor Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution—and the demands of continual fundraising.

We thank you for your support of the Future of Children over the 17 years since our team at Princeton and Brookings took over the journal from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. We believe that the journal and its accompanying policy briefs and outreach activities have made a real difference in the lives of children, in the areas of education, physical and mental health, racial and ethnic disparities, and many more. No matter the subject, we’ve remained committed to one central idea: that sound evidence—rather than ideology, guesswork, or wishful thinking—should underlie both policy and practice.

All of our issues and policy briefs will continue to be available free of charge on our website; they are also archived on JSTOR.