Homeless and working street youth represent a unique group to examine because they spend their time outside the settings of home, school, and adult-supervised recreational activities that are typically associated with healthy normative development. Yet they have largely been excluded from developmental research. This issue represents an initial step toward integrating knowledge of street youth into the domain of developmental research. To convey the diversity of the world's street youth, the volume takes a geographical approach, presenting studies from four different regions of the world: India, South America, Africa, and North America. The chapters explore issues of stress and resilience, cognitive development, identity formation, gender differences, and the development of self-efficacy under harsh conditions. Authors also offer practical guidelines for doing research with street youth, addressing the methodological challenges and ethical issues.
The final chapter provides a model for understanding homeless and working street youth that synthesizes concerns across disciplines, including medicine and public health, and brings a human rights perspective to the study of impoverished youth. This is the 85th issue of the quarterly journal "New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development."