Child Well-Being Index (CWI) 2008 Report
Source: The Foundation for Child Development

The quality of life of American children has been stalled since 2002, according to the Foundation for Child Development (FCD) 2008 Child Well-Being Index (CWI), an annual comprehensive measure of how children are faring in the United States. The CWI calculates the overall status of American children for every year since 1975, and finds less than a three percent improvement for kids over the past generation.

In addition to noting children’s stalled improvement since 2002, the 2008 CWI also compares the well-being of teenagers in the first part of this decade (2003-2005; “Echo Boomers”) with the well-being of teenagers in the early years of the study (1975-1977; “Late Baby Boomers”). The teenagers of 1975-1977 are likely to include many who are now the parents of teenagers.

The intergenerational comparisons show that Echo Boomer adolescents were:

• slightly more likely to live in families below the poverty line
• had test scores on reading and mathematics that are only slightly higher than those of their parents
• at much lower risk of death from accidents, violence, or disease
• substantially more likely to be overweight or obese, with associated health problems or risks
• much less likely to participate in risky behavior (bear children, be victims of violent crime or violent crime offenders, smoke cigarettes, binge drink, or consume illicit drugs).

+ Full Report (PDF; 197 KB)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 1:48 am and is filed under Children and families, Health and healthcare, Social and cultural issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.