U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2007, Tenth Anniversary Edition

NCJ Number
219130
Date Published
July 2007
Length
207 pages
Annotation
This report, a compendium of indicators of child well-being for 2007 illustrative of both the promises and difficulties confronting the Nation’s young people, presents 38 indicators on important aspects of children’s lives in the areas of family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health.
Abstract
Highlights from each section of the report depicting the well-being of children include: (1) in 2006, there were 73.7 million children ages 0-17 in the United States, or 25 percent of the population; (2) racial and ethnic diversity continues to increase over time; (3) in 2006, 67 percent of children ages 0-17 lived with 2 married parents, down from 77 percent in 1980; (4) in 2005, there were 12 substantiated reports of child maltreatment per 1,000 children; (5) in 2005, 89 percent of children had health insurance coverage at some point during the year; (6) in 2005, 40 percent of households with children had one or more housing problems, up from 37 percent in 2003; (7) in 2004, the injury death rate for children ages 1-4 was 13 deaths per 100,000 children; (8) the percentages of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students reporting illicit drug use in the past 30 days remained stable from 2005 to 2006; (9) in 2005, 69 percent of high school completers enrolled immediately in a 2- or 4-year college; (10) in 2005, 5 percent of children ages 4-17 were reported by a parent to have serious emotional or behavioral difficulties; and (11) the proportion of children ages 6-19 who were overweight increased from 6 percent in 1976-1980 to 11 percent in 1988-1994 and continued to rise to 18 percent in 2003-2004. Tables and appendixes A-B