Children's Bureau Express

U.S. Census Reports on Living Arrangements of Children

A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau looks at the living arrangements of the nation's 71.5 million children.

The report uses data from 1996 to analyze trends in the make-up of households that include children.

The Bureau found an increase in the percentage of children living in a traditional nuclear family (56 percent in 1996 compared with 51 percent in 1991). The analysis also found that living arrangements reflected many other family configurations, such as single parent families, multigenerational families, families formed through adoption, blended families (e.g., steprelatives or halfsiblings), and families that comprise other relatives besides the traditional parents and children configuration.

The report notes that children in racial minority groups were more than twice as likely as white children to live in extended families. Among Hispanic children, immigration was often cited as the reason for moving in with sponsoring relatives. More than half of all black children lived with a single parent, and higher proportions of black children lived exclusively with their grandparents than other racial groups. Black and Hispanic children also comprised half of the foster care population. White, non-Hispanic children represented the majority of adopted children.

Order a copy of Living Arrangements of Children: Fall 1996 from the U.S. Census Bureau Population Division at 301-457-2422.

The report is also available online at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/child/la-child.html.

Related Items

The KIDS COUNT website at the Annie E. Casey Foundation (http://www.kidscount.org) contains data on children from the 2000 U.S. Census, including profiles for particular geographic areas and congressional districts.

Visit the website of Child Trends, Inc. for a new report summarizing key data from the 2000 U.S. Census on Hispanic children, youth, and families (http://www.childtrends.org/files/hispanicfactsheet2.pdf).

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