Children’s opportunities are influenced by the circumstances of their parents prior to conception, during pregnancy, and at birth. Accordingly, an indicators system that assesses child well-being would benefit from monitoring factors measured at birth that are related to children’s opportunities for a healthy, successful, and fulfilling life. The goal of this paper is to identify a small set of critical family and parent-level factors measured at or shortly after birth that are related to the later prospects of U.S. children. To identify a limited set of variables that could comprise an index of a “strong start,” we identified a set of candidate variables and created measures using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort. Those variables that were related to better developmental outcomes, over and above other variables included in the model and judged to be malleable, to have face validity, and to be well-measured and widely available, were identified as potential components of an index. An array of preliminary indices were examined to assess whether they predicted children’s development at 24, 48 and 60 months. Based on these analyses, a recommended Index of a Strong Start was developed. It includes: mother’s education; mother’s age at first birth; family income; and parent’s union status at birth.
