America's Children in Brief

Each year since 1997, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics has published a report on the well-being of children and families. The America's Children series provides accessible compendiums of indicators drawn across topics from the most reliable official statistics; it is designed to complement other more specialized, technical, or comprehensive reports produced by various Forum agencies. The America's Children series makes Federal data on children and families available in a nontechnical, easy-to-use format in order to stimulate discussion among data providers, policymakers, and the public. The data in this report come from a variety of sources-featuring both sample and universe surveys-often with different underlying populations, as appropriate for the topic. Indicators are chosen because they are easy to understand, are based on substantial research connecting them to child well-being, cut across important areas of children's lives, are measured regularly so that they can be updated and show trends over time, and represent large segments of the population rather than one particular group. These indicators span seven domains: Family and Social Environment, Economic Circumstances, Health Care, Physical Environment and Safety, Behavior, Education, and Health. To provide a more in-depth perspective across report domains, this year's America's Children in Brief highlights selected indicators by race and ethnicity. This report reveals that the adolescent birth rate declined across all race and Hispanic origin groups and the rate of immediate college enrollment increased among White, non-Hispanic; Black, non-Hispanic; and Hispanic high school completers. Poverty rates and percentages of children living in food-insecure homes remain higher for Black, non-Hispanic and Hispanic children than for their White, non-Hispanic counterparts. New this year is a supplemental poverty measure for White, non-Hispanic; Black, non-Hispanic; Hispanic; and Asian, non-Hispanic children.