New Report Projects that Conditions for U.S. Kids Will Worsen

The 2010 Child Well-Being Index (CWI), released this  month by the Foundation for Child Development,  reveals some startling statistics about how America’s children may be weathering the Great Recession. In  2010, the Great Recession may well wipe out almost all progress made since 1975 for children in the CWI’s Family Economic Well-Being Domain, which brings together measures of children in families living  beneath the poverty line, median family income, parental employment, and health insurance coverage. Among the more concerning findings from this year’s
CWI report:

• More than 1 in 5 kids currently live in poverty, according to projections, an increase of 5 percent in only 4 years. A related analysis, issued by our foundation, shows that poverty rates in California may be increasing by even greater amounts.

• Risky behavior, including violent crime and illegal drug use, are anticipated to increase.

• Reliance on cheap food with low nutrition may worsen the child obesity epidemic.

Also, although many measures point to a slowly recovering economy, the CWI shows a lag between when a recession first hits and its eventual impact, which means deteriorating conditions for children through the end of this year – or longer.

The researchers at Duke University who prepared this report also developed a similar index for California that projected that the Great Recession would leave a long-lasting impact on children in the form of sustained high levels of poverty. This California Index of Child and Youth Well Being, commissioned by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, employs measures from kidsdata.org to help illuminate how kids have been faring over time for California and two of the state’s most populous regions, Los Angeles County and the Bay Area.

Tags: Child Health Issues, Data Projects

Posted by Andy Krackov

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 12:08 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.