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THE STATE OF AMERICA'S CHILDREN YEARBOOK 1998 Table 1 Poor Outcom•• for Poor Children Outcome Health Death in childhood Stunted growth Iron deficiency in preschool years Partial or complete deafness Partial or complete blindness Serious physical or mental disabilities Fatal accidental injuries Pneumonia Education Average IQ score at age 5 Average achievement scores at age 3 and above Learning disabilities Placement in special education Below-usual grade for child's age Dropping out between ages 16 and 24 Poor children's higher risk relative to nonpoor children 1.5 to 3 times more likely 2.7 times more likely 3 to 4 times more likely 1.5 to 2 times more likely 1.2 to 1.8 times more likely About 2 times more likely 2 to 3 times more likely 1.6 times more likely 9 points lower 11 to 25 percentiles lower 1.3 times more likely 2 or 3 percentage points more likely 2 percentage points more likely for each year of childhood spent in poverty 2 times more likely than middle-income youths; 11 times more likely than wealthy youths Source: Arloc Sherman, Poverty Matters: The Cost of Child Poverty in America (CDF, 1997), p. 4. love you, or only through desperate screams of violence, gangs, guns, sexual promiscuity, and substance abuse? Does what we do every day really matter for anyone besides ourselves and our immediate family? Is our example one we would like our children to emulate and pass on to our grandchildren and the children of the world? Will we leave them a country and Earth more just, virtuous, and safe than we inherited? What messages do our lives convey about the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity? How will each of us add to or subtract from America's moral bank account when the God of the universe asks for an accounting? Will God care how many times our excessive nuclear stockpiles can blow up humankind? Will God be proud that we sell more weapons to other nations than any other country, which fuel wars all over the globe that kill mostly women and children? Will God ask how many billionaires and millionaires we created with the land and water and talents God blessed us with and praise us for developing the cleverest ads to sell tobacco's deadly poisons to our children? Will God agree that a child's life in Bangladesh is less precious than one in Bangor, Maine, as America's tobacco industry markets its deadly wares to developing nations? Or will God ask did we feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, protect the widow, orphan, and stranger? How will America answer? How will you and I answer? How will we teach our children to answer as citizens of the richest nation on earth blessed with the opportunity to abolish want and disease? America's children will make or break America's greatness and future. One in four current Americans is a child. Children are the future tense of our humanity. Its quality will depend largely upon our present-tense care of them. The Rev. Dr. Gardner Taylor, the dean of American preachers, says: If we do not bequeath to them something worth calling life, then we cannot expect of them any lives that are worthwhile. . .. Might it be that this land with all of its richness, with all ofits opportunity for true xiv CHI L D R EN' S D E FEN S E FUN D
INTRODUCTION Key Facts About American Children in 2 in 2 1 in 2 1 in 3 1 in 3 1 in 3 1 in 4 1 in 4 1 in 4 1 in 5 1 in 5 1 in 5 in 6 in 7 in 7 in 8 in 8 1 in 11 1 in 12 1 in 13 1 in 24 1 in 25 1 in 132 1 in 680 preschoolers has a mother in the labor force. will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood. never completes a single year of college. is born to unmarried parents. will be poor at some point in childhood. is a year or more behind in school. is born poor. is born to a mother who did not graduate from high school. lives with only one parent. is poor now. lives in a family receiving food stamps. is born to a mother who received no prenatal care in the first three months of pregnancy. has a foreign-born mother. has no health insurance. lives with a working relative but is poor nonetheless. never graduates from high school. is born to a teenage mother. lives at less than half the poverty level. has a disability. is born at low birthweight. is born to a mother who received late or no prenatal care. lives with neither parent. dies before age 1. is killed by gunfire before age 20. greatness, its opportunity to present itself before the world as what a nation ought to be, might now be sowing the seeds of its very destruction in abandonment of its children? I believe so. That is why the Children's Defense Fund has been struggling for 25 years to plant seeds for a massive moral movement to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child of every race born in every place in America a healthy, fair, safe, and moral start in life and a successful passage to adulthood, with the help of caring families and communities. Children are life, power, hope, and the chance for renewal and immortality. Children will carryon our families, communities, institutions, and values. How then do we honestly examine and transform the values and priorities of the wealthiest nation in history, which lets its children be the poorest group of Americans and lets a child be killed by guns every hour and a half? How do we reverse the prevailing political calculus that would rather pay three times more to lock children up after they get into trouble than to give them incentives to stay in school and out of trouble, through good afterschool and summer programs, jobs, and service opportunities? How do we make it easier rather than harder for parents to balance work and family responsibilities and to get the community and financial support they need to carry out the most important role in America? CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND XV
Page 2 and 3: About CDF he Children's Defense Fun
Page 4 and 5: Copyright © 1998 by Children's Def
Page 6 and 7: Acknowledgments Susanne Martinez, d
Page 8 and 9: THE STATE OF AMERICA'S CHILDREN YEA
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CHAPTER CHILD NUTRITION any America
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CHAPTER ADOLESCENT PREGNANCY fter r
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106 CHI L D R EN' S D E FEN S E FUN
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THE STATE OF AMERICA'S CHILDRE YEAR
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THE STATE OF AMERICA'S HILDREN YEAR
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