The State of Our Nation's Children

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics released its annual report on the well-being of America's children today. It tracks measures in eight key areas ranging from demographics and family background to health care, behavior, and education. The report is worth checking out in full, but I've chosen to highlight some selected findings below.

The chart below shows child poverty rates over time. As the middle line indicates, the percentage of children in poverty has hovered near 20 percent since 1980 and is notable for its lack of variation. The most notable positive finding is that the percentage of children living in poverty has declined for families with females as heads-of-households. This next chart shows the percentage of youth living in various household structures, by whether or not the adult(s) were employed. All of the categories have risen over time, suggesting that more adults have more secure employment than they did in 1980 (this is of course a general trend upward and current unemployment numbers suggest at least a temporary downturn on this measure). Household with two married parents have consistently been more economically stable than other family structures.

Part of the reason children are increasingly living with working adults is the next graph, which shows the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers by age group. Children born out of wedlock has risen for every age group except 15-17 year-olds. Births from eighteen and nineteen year-olds has risen slightly in the last few years, but remain well off the modern high in the early 1990s.

The next graph shows the percentage of children aged 6-17 who qualify as overweight according to body mass index calculations from the Center for Disease Control. It shows a steady increase in overweight children, male and female, between 1976-80 and 1999-00. The percentage of overweight adolescents has increased from six percent to 17 over the graph's time frame, numbers which seemed low to me. If anyone needs further evidence of how a housing bubble developed, look no further. The chart below shows the percentage of children living in households where the cost of housing was greater than 30 percent of the family's income. It rose from 15 to 37 percent, suggesting that more families are spending more money on housing. The percentage of children living in households spending more than 50 percent of their monthly income on housing costs alone has gone from six to 16. These numbers include both renters and owners.
Find all the indicators here.