Social welfare programs, including quality early education, earned-income tax credit and health care, can change children’s lives. More importantly, recent studies show the benefits from these programs strongly influence the next generation, lifting them out of poverty.

The long-term impact of prekindergarten is well established and widely known. 50 years ago, 123 three-and four-year-old African Americans from low-income families in Ypsilanti, Michigan took part in an experiment. About half attended a pioneering early education program called Perry Preschool, while the control group did not. Researchers have been able to track the lives of most of these children ever since. The kids who went to Perry Preschool did better in school, made more money, and were healthier than the control group.

The benefits of Perry Preschool didn’t just stop with those children. A study published last summer by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman and his colleagues takes the implications of Perry a giant step further. This research shows that the children of the Perry preschoolers are also better off because of their parents’ experience.

As the Perry preschoolers grew up, they became better educated and developed greater socio - emotional skills than the control group. They became better parents. Their children grew up in harmonious two-parent families that made, on average, about $ 10,000 more a year. It was enough to lift many of them out of poverty. This healthy upbringing has had a long-lasting effect on the children of the Perry preschoolers. Compared to the children of the control group, they were much less likely to have dropped out, and more likely to have graduated from high school.

Here’s another example. A Norwegian study demonstrated the decades-long impact on babies who, during their first year, benefited from their mothers’ having had the opportunity to sign up for free mother and child health care centers. In the following years, these youngsters grew taller and stayed in school longer than those whose mothers did not receive the same support. At 40, they are in better health.

Laurie Santos, the psychology professor behind Yale University’s most popular course, recently launched a free six-week class aimed at teenagers, called “The Science of Well-Being for Teens”. It was developed to address rising rates of anxiety and depression and suicide (自杀) rates for kids between 9th and 12th grades, Santos says.

In the first lesson, she mentions one of the course’s pre-recorded lectures: Our brains lie to us about what makes us happy. “For adults, this may mean pursuing money or success at work, and for teens this might mean focusing on the perfect grades and getting into the best colleges,” Santos says. “The problem isn’t that we’re not putting work into feeling better—it’s that we’re doing the wrong things, prioritizing the wrong behaviors.”

Instead of focusing on reaching a financial milestone or perfect grades, aim to program your brain with thoughts and behaviors that make you feel better, Santos recommends. Regularly connecting with friends, taking care of your health and learning how to accept negative emotions all contribute more significantly to your well-being than having the right job, car or relationships, she adds in a course lecture.

The timing of the teen-specific course, which already has at least 17,000 members, is good, More than a third of teens self-report experiencing poor mental health, and nearly half feel constant sadness or hopelessness during the pandemic, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey that surveyed participants through mid-2021. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, those numbers had already increased by 40% from 2009 to 2019, the CDC noted. The agency’s survey also found that 20% of teens had seriously considered and 9% had attempted suicide.

Santos says she wants to help change those numbers by making the science of happiness accessible. “Happiness isn’t just about enjoying our day-to-day lives,” she adds. “It helps you land jobs and live longer, contributing to your success when you’re not really chasing it.”

America’s youth is turning its back on tobacco. According to a study recently published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cigarette smoking among US high school students is at an all-time low. One in 5 US high school students in 2016 reported using a tobacco product within the past 30 days, an improvement from 1 in 4 students just one year before.

“These findings show the importance of continuing to implement the evidence-based strategies that we now work to reduce all forms of tobacco product use, including e-cigarettes, among our nation’s youth,” says Brian King, of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health and senior author of the study.

And it’s not just tobacco: Drug use among US teens is down across the board. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has published annual reports on US teens’ drug use since 1996, and the 2016 survey shows the lowest rates of illegal drug and alcohol use. Marijuana (大麻) use remained “mostly steady”. “It is encouraging to see more young people making healthy choices not to use illegal substances,” says former National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli.

All individual forms of tobacco such as cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, and smoke-less tobacco saw declines in usage in 2016. Experts are especially encouraged by the decline in cigarettes, the most popular tobacco product among teens. In 2016, 11.3 percent of high school students reported using e-cigarettes, down from 16 percent in 2015.

Dr. King says adaptation is key to the decline of e-cigarettes. “We have over a half-century of science telling students about the harmful effects of tobacco use and what works best to prevent it,” says King. “E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among our nation’s youth, and it’s critical that our proven strategies are modernized to keep pace with the changing tobacco product landscape.”