Children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development has strong implications for educational attainment, physical and mental health, family formation, and economic success in adulthood. A wide confluence of forces – parenting practices, early childhood education, material hardship, healthcare access and health, and neighborhood characteristics – all bear on children’s growth and development. Despite policy efforts to address all these contextual factors shaping children’s lives, disparities persist in education and socio-emotional outcomes by socioeconomic status. This panel will focus on four sets of specific, policy relevant inputs to children’s cognitive and social growth, deepening the evidence-base that informs policies to level the playing field for children across the economic spectrum. The first paper examines the impact of socio-emotional supports for children on behavioral problems from kindergarten through fifth grade. This paper draws on data from the Chicago School Readiness Project, through which Head Start classrooms were randomly assigned teacher training on classroom management and additional behavioral and mental health supports for children. Results to date indicate that the intervention is associated with lower internalizing behavioral problems in kindergarten and third grade. The second paper draws on a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset – the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey Birth cohort (ECLS-B) – to examine how food insecurity in early life shapes children’s cognitive skills and behavior in kindergarten. Initial results suggest that food insecurity in early life is associated with lower reading and math skills in kindergarten and with increased behavioral problems. The third paper draws on two national, longitudinal dataset of children to explore the relationship between an ADHD diagnosis and cognitive skills in kindergarten. Specifically, this paper tests whether the relationship between an ADHD diagnosis and lower literacy skills in kindergarten is stronger among black children than among white children, hypothesizing that black children diagnosed with ADHD face greater stigma and receive less medical treatment and support than white children. The paper further explores whether these associations changed between 1980 and 2000, a period when ADHD diagnosis rates tripled. The fourth paper draws on the nationally-representative Survey of Income and Program Participation to explore the relationship between parents’ work schedules and parenting practices that have been shown to support children’s healthy growth and development. The authors also explore the types of childcare arrangements parents rely upon while working, and investigate the ways in which the relationship between non-standard work hours and parenting varies by race, ethnicity, and nativity. Together these papers explore a range of important factors shaping children’s cognitive and social growth – early education quality, food insecurity, parents’ work schedules and parenting practices, and medical diagnoses and attending treatment and support – on children’s social and cognitive development. Using different datasets and statistical methods, all highlight areas for possible policy intervention to support the healthy growth and development of all children.