DHHS Releases Report on Well-Being of Children and Youth

Back to Research Articles

The US Department of Health and Human Services released the fourth edition of Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children & Youth. The report presents recent estimates on more than 90 indicators of well-being. The report separates indicators into 5 areas: 1) population, family, and neighborhood; 2) economic security; 3) health conditions and health care; 4) social development, behavioral health, and teen fertility; and 5) education and achievement. Other main sections of the report discuss changes in risk-taking among high-school students and the co-occurrence of teen health risk behaviors.

The report's findings include the following:

• Youth violence has been decreasing, with homicide rates down from 20.7 to 12.8 per 1000 youth ages 15 to 19 between 1993 and 1997, and declines in reported weapon carrying among 9th-12th grade students from 26% in 1991 to 18% in 1997.



• After increases between 1985 and 1991, the birth rate for teen females ages 15 to 19 continued its downward trend from 62.1 births per 1000 in 1991 to 52.3 per 1000 in 1997.



• Median income for families with children increased between 1996 and 1997, from $41,925 to $43,545.



• The percentage of families with children receiving welfare payments decreased steadily between 1993 and 1997 from 14% to 9%.



• The percentage of single mothers who were in the labor force increased from 66% in 1996 to 74% in 1998.

The report discusses the need for better data on children and youth, noting that there are few measures of social development and health-related behaviors for very young and pre-teenage children that are regularly measured (e.g., there is a lack of good indicators of school readiness for young children). The report also states that measures of mental health for children of any age are rare, as are positive measures of social development and related behaviors--leading to "a gloomier picture of our children's overall well-being than is in fact the case." Other areas in need of measurement development (or improvements in the quality, consistency, or frequency of data) include parent-child interactions, child abuse and neglect, youth violent crime, day care quality, learning disabilities, children in institutionalized care, and the tracking of children’s health at the state and local levels.

US Department of Health and Human Services. 2000. Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children & Youth 1999. Available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/99trends/index.htm.

To subscribe to the MCH Alert, send an email message to MCHALERT@LIST.NCEMCH.ORG, with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. You do not need to enter any text in the body of the message.

MCH Alert. 2001. Arlington, VA: National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health. http://www.ncemch.org/alert.