In the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)’s new report on The State of America’s Children® 2011, we give a comprehensive overview on the well-being of America’s children. But just who are America’s children and families today? Children make up almost one in four of the people living in the United States today. More than one-quarter of our nation’s children are young—infants, toddlers, or preschoolers. They are the poorest age group in America. And the younger they are the poorer they are—cheating them in the years of greatest brain development. In chapters on child population and family structure we take a closer look, and a national child and family portrait begins to emerge.
One of the most striking facts about America’s children is the rapidly blurring distinction between who is a “minority” child and who is in the “majority.” Today, almost 45 percent of America’s young are children of color, and by 2019—just eight years away—they will be the majority of our child population. In fact, the majority of children are already children of color in the District of Columbia and nine states—Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Maryland, and Georgia. Of the 74.5 million children in America, 41.2 million (55.3%) are White, non-Hispanic; 16.8 million (22.5%) are Hispanic; 11.3 million (15.1%) are Black; 3.5 million (4.7%) are Asian/Pacific Islander; and 951,000 (1.3%) are American Indian/Alaska Native. The number of Hispanic children has increased every year since 1980, rising from 5.3 million in 1980 to 17 million in 2009. The number of White children has decreased every year since 1994, and the number of Black children has remained steady over the past two decades.
Behind these numbers and statistics is an urgent call to action. Throughout America’s history and still today, children’s life chances have always been unequal based on color, although God did not make two classes of children and every child is sacred. But practicality will force what morality has been unable to achieve. We can’t afford to keep leaving whole groups of children of color behind who are becoming our nation’s majority without condemning our entire nation to failure. Right now The State of America’s Children 2011 tells us children of color are behind on virtually every measure of child well-being. They face multiple risks that put them in grave danger of entering the pipeline to prison rather than the pipeline to college, productive employment, and successful futures. Children of color are at increased risk of being born at low birth weight and with late or no prenatal care, living in poverty and extreme poverty, lacking family stability, facing greater health risks, lacking a quality education, being stuck in foster care without permanent families, ending up in the juvenile justice system, being caught in the college completion gap, being unemployed, and being killed by guns.
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