[Lmresearch] New Child Trends Brief--Cumulative Risks Among American Children

[Russell W. Rumberger]

UC LMRI Email Announcement
       UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute 


            UC LMRI Home Page
            Events
            Research
            Publications
            Resources
            Educators
            Education Policy Center
            En Español

           
           Cumulative Risks Among American Children

            How many American children are developing poorly? If you asked the average American, you'd probably get a pretty pessimistic assessment. Indeed, polls suggest that the public tends to overestimate the problems faced by America's children. For example, the public believes that the number of children who lack health insurance is three times larger than the actual number This tendency to overestimate problems affects public perceptions about the magnitude of the health insurance problem and the cost of addressing it.

            This pessimistic tendency is surprisingly pervasive, with polls by Public Agenda indicating that the public has quite negative perceptions of adolescents. However, it is important for policy makers, taxpayers, and the media to recognize the diversity in children's circumstances, because this recognition affects the number of children believed to need varied services or opportunities and the magnitude of the challenge of meeting that need.

            To describe the circumstances of children, a number of researchers have developed indices of risk.3 Building on this work, Child Trends has developed a measure with a clunky name but an important meaning: the "Sociodemographic Risk Index".  Of course, family income is often used alone as the critical marker of risk. However, many low-income families have no other risk factors, while some higher income families experience multiple risk factors. Based on a review of research, we identified five widely and readily measured factors as indicators of risk for children's development:

              a.. poverty,
              b.. single-parent family,
              c.. parents or parent with a low level of education
              d.. large family, and
              e.. family not able to own or buy a home.
            More (PDF) >>

            [Report/Demographics]


--------------------------------------------------------------------
            Lmresearch is a mailing list to distribute research information affecting linguistic, ethnic, and racial minorities and immigrants.
            To subscribe:  http://lists.isber.ucsb.edu/mailman/listinfo 

           
     
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.isber.ucsb.edu/pipermail/lmresearch/attachments/20061029/648fd234/attachment-0001.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 13220 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.isber.ucsb.edu/pipermail/lmresearch/attachments/20061029/648fd234/attachment-0001.gif