For Immediate Release: June 11, 2003

 San Francisco, CA – The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) today released a new study focusing on policy reforms that would help America’s children.

Titled A Brighter Future: Solutions to Policy Issues Affecting America’s Children, the study is edited by Lawrence J. McQuillan, director of PRI’s Business and Economic Studies, and features chapters by national policy experts in fields ranging from foster care to medicating children. The authors recommend many practical reforms including streamlining family courts and adoption, reducing the intrusiveness of government, privatizing some family services, government fiscal responsibility, and empowering parents through lower taxes and educational choices.

“In this study, the best policy experts in America tackle the difficult and often neglected issues affecting today’s children,” said McQuillan.

 Chapters in the study include:

• Orphanages as Villages
• Medicating Children
• How Real Are Environmental Health Risks to Children?
• How Privacy Policies Affect Children
• Why Universal Preschool Will Not Help Children
• Taxing Times for American Families

In a chapter on family courts, Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute writes, “In few areas does the welfare system operate worse than juvenile and family courts. The result is suffering on the part of America’s most vulnerable – our abused, neglected, and abandoned children.”

Richard McKenzie, who was raised in an orphanage and is now a professor of economics, discusses the benefits of orphanages as an alternative to foster care.

Editor Lawrence J. McQuillan examines the impact of the current tax system on children and families. “A typical American family now pays more each year in taxes than they spend on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined,” said McQuillan.

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About PRI
For more than two decades, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) has championed individual liberty through free markets. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility.