Development in the Preschool Years: Birth to Age Five reports a prospective longitudinal analysis of influences on development in the years from birth to age five. While speculation on the ways in which young children grow tends to be in terms of generalities, this volume emphasizes the role of empirical data in such discourse, and attempts to relate observations to an antecedent set o f quantitative findings. At a more particular level, the investigation considers six aspects of development: motor, intellectual, language, somatic, social, and physical development. The book is organized into three parts. The first part contains chapters that review of the corpus of longitudinal studies, specific approaches, and recent research; and describe the methods used to generate and analyze the data. The second part provides multivariate regression analyses of the data in six domains while the third part presents a discussion of the findings. The fundamental intent of this investigation is to make a contribution to policy formation for the early years of life.