Changes in the Lives of U.S. Children: 1990-2000

Kristin Smith, U.S. Census Bureau
Robert Kominski, U.S. Census Bureau
Julia V. Overturf, U.S. Census Bureau

Over the past decade there has been renewed interest and focus on the well-being of children. Spearheaded by federal activities such as the Federal Interagency Forum on Children and Families, much of the interest and work has centered on identifying a wide variety of possible indicators of children's well-being. The yearly Forum report, America's Children, presents about two dozen "key indicators" of well-being. Health and Human Service's yearly volume, Trends in the Well-Being of America's Youth, provides more than 80 indicators. Even with these established reports, work continues to identify and report indicators across dimensions currently untapped, such as positive indicators of development, extended relationships, personal attitudes, and other cognitive and emotional measures. Two of the critical uses of indicators are to track the conditions of children over time, and across various contexts. In addition, it is commonly accepted that the indicators in use should be measured consistently. While many of the indicators in the two cited volumes meet these criteria at some level, progress in adding new indicators has been stymied by the inability to address these points. In a policy context, the ability to provide comparably measured indicators over time is coupled with the need to provide them across space (geography) as well. Especially in the context of measuring outcomes for children in the face of changing programs and policies, it is critical that comparable data be provided to assess the situation of children across, say, states, or smaller pieces of geography. One volume in particular, Kids Count, published by the Annie Casey Foundation, has provided a small set of recurring measures on a state level. In this analysis we provide new data on a series of approximately 30 indicators of child well-being, based on data from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. These data are provided both for specific age groups and racial groupings. In addition, we present these indicators across states to measure the changing situations of children over the decade. This will be the first presentation of these data to the public. The indicators provide information on a wide assortment of conditions of children, organized into three distinct "contexts" - indicators about the child themself, indicators about the social (family) living context of the child, and indicators about the physical residence they live in. These indicators are shown in Tables 1-3, disaggregated by age and racial groupings. (Table shells sent to you via email and mail). We then also provide these indicators in summary form for all states for both 1990 and 2000, with an eye toward showing where sizable changes are occurring. Part of the focus of this analysis is to identify 'clusters' of indicators that may be tracking the same underlying phenomena. We conclude with a discussion of the possibility of the routine production of a set of indicators such as these using the proposed American Community Survey. This includes the potential to provide the indicators on a yearly continuing basis for all states and smaller geographies, as well as for specific demographic subpopulations. Finally, we discuss the utility of such a set of indicators in policy formulation and planning.