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July 2002Vol. 3, No. 6Two New Reports from the Casey Foundation Consider Children's Well-Being

Two new reports from the Annie E. Casey Foundation provide insights into the well-being of U.S. children.

Both reports are part of the Casey Foundation's ongoing KIDS COUNT project, which provides policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being by tracking the status of children nationally and on a state-by-state basis on ten key indicators of child well-being.

The KIDS COUNT Data Book 2002 draws from a variety of data sources and is available from the Casey Foundation website as an interactive online database and as downloadable delimited text files.

KIDS COUNT worked with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) to produce the PRB/KIDS COUNT Special Report: Children at Risk--State Trends 1990-2000, which compares data from the 1990 Decennial Census with data from the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey.

Drawing from different data sets, the two documents report similar findings. There was a decrease in the:

  • Percentage of children living in poverty
  • Percentage of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment
  • Percentage of teens (ages 16 to 19) not attending school and not working.

There was an increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent families.

The percentage of teens (ages 16 to 19) that are high school dropouts was the only statistic that differed in comparison--Kids Count Data Book 2002 showed no change, while the PRB/KIDS Count Special Report showed a slight decrease.

Both reports can be accessed from the "KIDS COUNT" link on the Annie E. Casey Foundation website at http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/index.htm.

Related Items

Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children & Youth 2001, an annual report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, presents the most recent and reliable estimates on more than 80 indicators of well-being. View the report online at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/01trends/index.htm.

Child Welfare Outcomes 1999: Annual Report, the second in an annual series from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, presents data on how States perform with respect to a set of national child welfare outcomes. The report is available on the publications page of the Children's Bureau website at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb.