A Decade of Improvement for CA’s Kids

There are, of course, numerous ways to measure how kids in California are doing –
you need only look at the list of individual indicators available through kidsdata.org to find hundreds of different measurements, from poverty to infant mortality to college readiness. But have you ever wondered whether the overall well-being of California’s children is improving or deteriorating? California now has a tool, the California Index of Child and Youth Well-Being, to do just this – that is, provide a measure of kids’ overall status over time. The index, which is based on 16 key indicators from kidsdata.org, shows a consistent pattern of improvement in how children have fared over the last decade, but it also warns that the present economic recession could undermine and possibly even reverse those gains. Some key results from this study:

• Child well-being from 1995 to 2006 improved by about 16% for children in
  California. Results also are available for the state’s two
  major population centers (the Bay Area and Los Angeles
  County), both of which also registered gains in child well-being.

• Child well-being also improved for all racial/ethnic groups that could be
  examined by available data (African American, Asian, Caucasian, and
  Latino). However, racial/ethnic disparities persisted over time.
  African American children, in particular, consistently fared worse than their
  Caucasian peers during the period studied.

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health commissioned Kenneth Land,
Ph.D., of Duke University to create the California Index of Child and Youth Well-Being.
The composite index is modeled after Dr. Land’s national Child and Youth Well-Being
Index.

Tags: Data Projects

Posted by Andy Krackov

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