|
High-Risk Kids in
America
The Family Risk Index measures how
many children face a multitude of problems, which
put them at an elevated risk for a variety of
negative outcomes. This report presents state- level
data on high-risk children for the years 1990
through 1999.
The KIDS COUNT Family Risk Index
defines a high-risk child as one living in a family
with
four or more of the following risk factors:
1. Child is not living with two parents
2. Household head is high school dropout
3. Family income is below the poverty line
4. Child is living with parent(s) who is
underemployed
5. Family is receiving welfare benefits
6. Child does not have health insurance
Conditions That Create High Risk
To provide a clearer picture of the
challenges faced by children and families with
multiple and compounding disadvantages, the
1999 KIDS COUNT Data Book
featured information based on our Family Risk Index.
Recognizing that any one family risk factor
increases the likelihood of negative outcomes for
children, the Family Risk Index was developed to
identify children who are most vulnerable because
their families face multiple problems.
This report presents updated and
expanded national and state-level data on children
with a high-risk profile. A profile of high-risk
kids based on the most recent data is accompanied by
analysis of changes in the number and percent of
children at high risk throughout the last decade.
The Family Risk Index reflects six
separate measures of vulnerability:
· Child is not living with
two parents;
· Household head is high
school dropout;
· Family income is below
the poverty line;
· Child is living with
parent (s) who is underemployed;
· Family is receiving
welfare benefits; and
· Child does not have
health insurance.
While each of these factors is a
clear disadvantage, children growing up with four or
more risk factors face far greater odds of failure
than the average American child. For this analysis,
children with four or more of these risk factors are
labeled “high-risk children.”
Clearly the idea of the compounding
effect of multiple disadvantages is not new. 1
As author Lisbeth Schorr
has noted there is a persuasive body of knowledge on
this topic.
“The research,” she writes, “shows
that the more risk factors are present, the greater
the damaging impact of each. But the impact is not
just additive – risk factors multiply each other’s
destructive effects.”
Cumulative risk has been
demonstrated to have a negative effect on children’s
intelligence scores and to be associated with
developmental delays and behavioral problems.
Developmental research has also established that
both poor and non-poor children are far more likely
to experience these negative outcomes with the
presence of multiple family risks. 3
While poor children
generally have more risk factors, non-poor children
have outcomes similar to their poor counterparts
when many risks are present.
In fact, one of
the most often cited studies of multiple risks
concluded, “the pattern of risk was less important
than the total amount of risk in the child’s
context.”
The evidence also indicates that
problems start early for kids with multiple risks.
For example, when compared to 4-year-olds from
families with no risk factors, a 4-year-old from a
family with several risk factors similar to the ones
contained in our index was twice as likely to have
difficulty concentrating, three times as likely to
have difficulty communicating, and nearly five times
as likely to be in less than very good health.
Similarly, data from the Canadian
government’s National Longitudinal Study of Children
and Youth demonstrated that children ages 6 to 10
years old exposed to four or more risk factors have
a rate of behavioral problems that is five times
that of children who do not have multiple risks.
Not
surprisingly as children grow older, these
disadvantages persist. A Census Bureau report
focused on adolescents found that among 16- and
17-year-olds, those with three or more disadvantages
of the type measured in the Family Risk Index were
much more likely to be idle (not in school and not
working) or be a teenage mother.
Despite compounding challenges many
children with multiple risks do overcome the odds.
And just as research has helped define the problem
so it also demonstrates that there are effective
interventions available to alter the effects of
cumulative risks. A study of exceptionally
vulnerable children, 36-months-old toddlers who were
born premature and with low-birth weight into
families with multiple social and economic risks, is
one example. Participation in an early intervention
providing pediatric care and educational and family
support services resulted in significantly higher IQ
scores for both poor and non-poor children who
received the treatment.
Family-focused programs are key
to addressing the problems of high-risk children. As
our risk index suggests, to change the prospects for
vulnerable children ultimately means changing the
circumstances of their families. And the most
vulnerable children face multiple, not singular,
problems.
The Family Risk Index
The Census Bureau’s March Current
Population Survey (CPS) includes data for all six
separate indicators of risk to a child’s well-being
used in construction of the Family Risk Index. Table
1 shows what percent of children had each of these
six risk factors in 2000. The CPS is a nationally
representative sample of about 50,000 households
which has been conducted by the Census Bureau for
more than 50 years.
The Family Risk Index is constructed
by noting whether each of the risk factors is
present in a child’s life, then cumulating the total
number of these factors for that child.
The more such factors children have
in their lives, the higher the odds that they will
suffer one or more negative outcomes before reaching
adulthood (such as dropping out of high school,
getting arrested, or having a baby). Children living
in families with four or more risk factors are
categorized as “high risk.” All children under age
18 are included in the analysis. For more
information on the construction of the Family Risk
Index please refer to the
1999 KIDS COUNT Data Book.
The risks are defined as follows:
1. Child is not living with two
parents. In 2000, 31 percent of children were
not living with two parents in 2000 (see Table 1).
This factor includes children living in
single-parent families as well as those living with
neither parent. Such living arrangements often
reflect some disruption in the child’s life such as
divorce, separation, or even foster care placement.
In the case of single-parent families, there is
often less time and fewer resources for the care and
monitoring of children as well as the absence of a
second adult to back up and reinforce the struggling
single parent.
2. Household head is high school
dropout. The knowledge, experiences, and
education that a parent brings to a family have
important implications for a child’s socialization.
Parents without a good education are less likely to
provide the child with an environment that is
educationally stimulating. There is a
well-documented correlation between a mother’s level
of education and a child’s learning pace, especially
in the early years. 10
Unfortunately, 18 percent
of American children in 2000 were growing up in
homes where the head of the household was a high
school dropout (see Table 1).
We used the educational attainment
of the head of the household (referred to as the
householder by the Census Bureau) because this
measure is closely related to the general
educational level in a household. Also, it could be
applied to all children, regardless of their living
arrangements.
3. Family income is below the
poverty line. Despite the fact that the national
child poverty rate in 1999 (the March 2000 CPS
measures poverty in the previous year) stood at its
lowest point in 20 years, 17 percent of children
under 18 were still growing up in a family with an
income below the official poverty line (see Table
1). 11
These children face an array of
problems that have been closely linked to growing up
in poverty such as delinquency, school failure, and
teen parenting.
The poverty line, which is defined
by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget,
represents a series of thresholds that are based on
the size and composition of the family. For a family
of two adults and two children, the poverty
threshold was $16,895 in 1999. For one adult and two
children the threshold was $13,423.
4. Child is living with parent(s)
who is underemployed. In 2000, nearly 19 million
American children, or 25 percent, were growing up in
households where no parent had a full-time,
year-round job (see Table 1). 14
Children who do not live
with a parent who has a steady full-time job are
more likely to be poor. In addition, children in
these circumstances are subject to the increased
psychological stress and family disruption that
often accompany unemployment and underemployment.
Full-time, year round work is defined as one parent
or more who worked at least 35 hours per week for 50
or more weeks in the previous year.
5. Family is receiving welfare
benefits. This measure reflects children living
in families that receive any cash public assistance
such as Aid to Families with
Dependent Children/Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (AFDC/TANF), General
Assistance (GA), or Supplemental Security Income
(SSI). These are the major public assistance
programs tha t provide cash to needy or low-income
families. It is important
to recognize that most means-tested
assistance programs, such as Medicaid, Food Stamps,
or the School Lunch Program, provide non-cash
benefits. According to administrative data, 2.2
million families were participating in the TANF
program as of June 2000, down 56 percent from the
caseload in 1993. 15
Nine percent of all
children were living in households receiving welfare
assistance in 2000 (see Table 1).
6. Child does not have health
insurance .
Finally, access to decent
health care has long been seen as a basic
determinant of a family’s capacity to promote the
physical welfare of children. But 14 percent, or
more than 10 million children nationwide, do not
have health insurance (see Table 1).16
These children are at
higher risk for health problems and the related
problem of time lost from school and other
activities. Children who lack health insurance
coverage are less likely to have a regular source of
care and are more likely to be exposed to health
risks such as lack of immunization. This measure
reflects children under age 18 who were not covered
by any kind of public or private health insurance
during the previous calendar year.
Insurance coverage includes that
provided through private sector insurance (typically
through an employer) or public sector insurance such
as Medicaid.
The validity of the Family Risk
Index is illustrated by looking at the relationship
between high risk, as measured by the Index, and a
couple of key outcomes. Analysis of data from the
March 2000 CPS indicates that 27 percent of the
16-to-19-year-olds in the high-risk category were
high school dropouts (not a high school graduate and
not currently in school). For teens not in the
high-risk category the dropout rate was 7 percent.
Because of the way the data are
gathered, measuring teenage motherhood from the CPS
is not as clear or straightforward as measuring
dropout tatus. Nonetheless, the data are
compelling. In 2000, 19 percent of 15-to-19-year-old
females i n the high-risk category were teen moms,
compared to only 3 percent of those not in the
high-risk category.
This empirical evidence suggests
what most people know intuitively – as the number of
barriers and disadvantages increase, the severity of
problems tend to be compounded. In the remainder of
this Working Paper, the CPS files are used to
provide figures on high-risk kids, nationally and
state-by-state, throughout the 1990s.
Counting Vulnerable Kids – National
Data
Applying the Family Risk Index to
data in the Current Population Survey reveals that
nationwide there were 7.1 million children growing
up with four or more risk factors in 2000. These 7.1
million children represent 10 percent of all
children (see Table 2).
Data presented in Table 3 indicate
that the disadvantages associated with being in the
high-risk category are not spread evenly among
groups or across different types of locations. Black
kids were more than five times as likely to be in
the high-risk category as Non-Hispanic white
children (23 percent of black children were in the
highrisk category compared to 4 percent of
Non-Hispanic white kids). Hispanic children were
also more likely to be in the high-risk category.
Almost one in five (19 percent) of Hispanic children
were in the high-risk category in 2000.
Children living in large cities and
rural areas are more likely than those living in
suburbs to be in the high-risk category (see Table
4). The most recent data show that 17 percent of
central-city children were in the high-risk category
compared to 9 percent in rural areas and only 6
percent in suburbs. In other words, children living
in central cities were almost three times as likely
as those in the suburbs to be in the high-risk
category.
The nation as a whole saw a
significant reduction in the share of children in
the high-risk category during the 1990s. In 2000, 10
percent of all children had four or more risk
factors, down from 13 percent in 1990. However the
greatest change actually occurred after 1994, which
is the year that the number and percent of kids in
the high risk category reached its peak nationally.
Between 1994 and 2000, the share of children with
four or more risk factors fell by one-third at the
national level (from 15 percent to 10 percent). (For
state changes between 1994 and 1999 see Table A1 in
Appendix A.)
State Data
While the CPS produces very reliable
national estimates each year, the sample is not
large enough to produce reliable state estimates for
all states every year.
Therefore the state -level figures
are produced using three-year rolling averages of
CPS data from 1989 through 2000. The three-year
averages were used to increase the accuracy and
reliable of the state estimates. We use the middle
year of each three year average to identify the
data.
Conclusion
Despite a significant decrease in
the share of children in the high-risk category
during the decade, in 2000 there were still more
than 7 million kids living in families with four or
more of the risk factors used in our Family Risk
Index. Minorities, central city dwellers, and those
living in rural area were the most likely to be in
the high-risk category.
There was significant variation
among the states in terms of the percentage of kids
in the high-risk category with the worst states
having rates that were three to four times the rates
seen in the best states. While most states improved
during the 1990s, the rate of improvement varied
across states and 7 states actually saw the share of
kids in the high-risk category increase during the
1990s.
|
