America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2010
Family and Social Environment
This section presents information on children's families and the social environment in which they live, beginning with indicators on children's family composition and births to unmarried women. The indicators in this section also examine nativity, home language, child maltreatment, and adolescent births.
Family composition is dynamic and is associated with critical parental and economic resources. In 2009, 70 percent of children ages 0–17 lived with two parents,1 26 percent with one parent, and 4 percent with no parents (Figure 2). Among children living with two parents, 88 percent lived with two married parents (biological or adoptive). Among children living with one parent, 79 percent lived with their single mother (without a cohabiting partner). Among children living with neither parent, 52 percent lived with a grandparent. Six percent of all children ages 0–17 lived with a parent or parents who were cohabiting.
Figure 2: Percentage of children ages 0–17 living in various family arrangements, 2009
a Includes children living with two stepparents.
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
A mother's marital status affects the family structure and economic security of her children.2 The percentage of all births that were to unmarried women more than doubled between 1980 and 2008. In 2008, 41 percent of births were to unmarried women, up from 40 percent in 2007. Increases have occurred for women in all age groups, with the largest increases measured for women in their twenties.
While the percentage of all births that are to unmarried women has increased, the birth rate among unmarried women ages 15–44, a measure of the risk of a birth to an unmarried woman, decreased from 53 births per 1,000 unmarried women in 2007 to 52 births per 1,000 in 2008. During the years 2002–2007, the rate had increased more than one-fifth (44 to 53 births per 1,000), following relative stability between the mid-1990s and 2002.
In 2009, 19 percent of children ages 0–17 were native-born children with at least one foreign-born parent, and 3 percent were foreign-born children with at least one foreign-born parent. Overall, the percentage of all children living in the United States with at least one parent who was foreign-born rose from 15 percent in 1994 to 22 percent in 2009.
Children who have difficulty speaking English may face greater challenges progressing in school and in the labor market. In 2008, 21 percent of children ages 5–17 spoke a language other than English at home, unchanged from 2007. The percentage of children who both spoke a language other than English at home and had difficulty speaking English (speak less than "very well") was 5.1 percent, down from 5.5 percent in 2000. In 2008, 16 percent of school-age Asian children and 17 percent of Hispanic children both spoke a language other than English at home and had difficulty speaking English.3
Child maltreatment comprises neglect (including medical neglect), as well as overt physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. In 2008, the rate of substantiated reports of child maltreatment4 was 10 per 1,000 children ages 0–17. Children under age 1 experienced the highest rates of maltreatment: in 2008, there were 22 substantiated child maltreatment reports per 1,000 children under age 1.
In 2008, the adolescent birth rate5 was 21.7 births per 1,000 young women ages 15–17 (135,733 births), down significantly from 22.2 births per 1,000 in 2007 (Figure 3). The rate had increased from 2005 to 2007, but from 1991 to 2005 the rate of adolescent childbearing had declined continuously (from 39 to 21 births per 1,000). Between 2007 and 2008, the adolescent birth rate declined for most race and ethnicity groups. The largest decline was reported for Hispanic adolescents, from 47.8 to 46.1 per 1,000, a record low. The rate for Black, non-Hispanic adolescents ages 15–17 decreased from 35.8 to 34.9 per 1,000 and the rate for White, non-Hispanic adolescents declined from 11.8 to 11.6 per 1,000. Changes for other groups were not statistically significant.
Figure 3: Birth rates for females ages 15–17 by race and Hispanic origin, 1980–2008
NOTE: Data for 2007 and 2008 are preliminary. Race refers to mother's race. The 1977 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Standards for Data on Race and Ethnicity were used to classify persons into one of the following four racial groups: White, Black, American Indian or Alaskan Native, or Asian or Pacific Islander. Although state reporting of birth certificate data is transitioning to comply with the 1997 OMB standard for race and ethnicity statistics, data from states reporting multiple races were bridged to the single-race categories of the 1977 OMB standards for comparability with other states and for trend analysis. Rates for 1980–1989 are not shown for Hispanics; White, non-Hispanics; or Black, non-Hispanics because information on Hispanic origin of the mother was not reported on birth certificates of most states and because population estimates by Hispanic ethnicity for the reporting states were not available. Data on race and Hispanic origin are collected and reported separately. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.
SOURCE: National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System.
1 Parents can be biological, step, or adoptive.
2 National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1995, September). Report to Congress on out-of-wedlock childbearing (DHHS Pub. No. [PHS] 95-1257). Hyattsville, MD: Author. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/wedlock.pdf.
3 In this survey, respondents were asked to choose one or more races. All race groups discussed in this paragraph refer to people who indicated only one racial identity. Hispanic children may be of any race.
4 The count of child victims is based on the number of investigations by Child Protective Services that found the child to be a victim of one or more types of maltreatment. The count of victims is, therefore, a report-based count and is a "duplicated count," since an individual child may have been maltreated more than once.
5 The birth rate for adolescents ages 15–17 includes married and unmarried teenagers.