New Index Reveals Decade of Improvement for California Kids: Will Recession Undermine Gains for Kids?

[from Kidsdata.org]

Is the overall health and well-being of California’s children improving or deteriorating? How has their status changed since the 1990s? And how might the recent economic downturn affect the future of the state’s children?

To help answer these questions, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health today released the first-ever “California Index of Child and Youth Well Being.” The index, which is based on data from kidsdata.org, shows a consistent pattern of improvement in how children have fared over the last decade, but warns that the present economic recession could undermine and possibly even reverse those gains. View the Summary>>

Key Results:

• Child well-being from 1995 to 2006 improved by about 16% for children in California. Results also are available for the state’s two major population centers (the Bay Area and Los Angeles County), both of which also registered gains in child well-being. Read more>>

• Child well-being also improved for all racial/ethnic groups that could be examined by available data (African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Latino). However, racial/ethnic disparities persisted over time. African American children, in particular, consistently fared worse than their Caucasians peers during the period studied. Read more>>

• Estimates show that poverty may rise from 18.5% of California’s children in 2008 to 27% in 2010, before falling to 24% in 2012, meaning the impact of the current economic recession likely will be long-lasting for California’s children. Read more>>

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health commissioned Kenneth Land, Ph.D., of Duke University to create the California Index of Child and Youth Well-Being. The composite index is modeled after Dr. Land’s national Child and Youth Well-Being Index. Kidsdata.org promotes the health and well-being of children by making data free and easily accessible to policy-makers, service providers, grantseekers, media, parents, and others who influence kids’ lives. This fall, kidsdata.org expanded to offer children’s health data for all counties, cities, and school districts in California – nearly 1,600 regions in all.

Related posts:

1. Foster Care and Child Welfare Data Added to Kidsdata.org
2. Briefing Examines Economic Costs of Child Poverty
3. CWLA Reveals Top 5 Child Welfare Challenges and Opportunities for 2010
4. San Francisco Children Living in Poverty – Is the Data affected by Foster Youth Placed out of County?
5. Federal Policy – Invest in Kids Act