Are Our Children Better Than Last Year?

I work with a team of lawyers who try hard every day to improve the lives of children. Through legal representation of families who care about children, we hope to help those specific children while also effecting systemic change.

The government today released its biannual full report on the status of children and families in the United States. I'll mine the data over the next few weeks in this blog. Here are some initial highlights of indicators which increased over the past year:

• the percentage of children served by community water systems that did not meet all applicable standards for healthy drinking water;
  
  
• the percentage of children living in physically inadequate or crowded housing or housing that cost more than 30 percent of household income;
  
  
• the percentage of low birth weight infants;
  
  
• the percentage of births to unmarried women;
  
  
• the rate at which youth were perpetrators of serious violent crime;
  
  
• the number of young people finishing high school;
  
  
• the number of little children being read to.
  
  

The report was released by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a consortium of federal agencies that includes the National Institute of Child Heath and Human Development, the Census Bureau and the Administration for Children and Families.