Childhood Hunger

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Summary:

According to a federal report the overall health of American children is mixed with a growing number of children living in poverty with unemployed parents facing the threat of hunger.

July 13

American Children's Overall Health Mixed with Many Living in Poverty & Skipping Meals

Top News (Little Rock, Arkansas)
Jason Ramsey
July 11, 2009

The federal report titled America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009, is an annual compilation of statistics on child welfare from several government agencies, including the U. S. Census. It tracks trends in family life, health care, safety and education. According to the report as many as 18 % of children ages 17 and under were living in poverty in 2007, which was an increase from 17% in 2006. There was a fall in the percentage of children who had at least one parent working full time to 77% in 2007 from 78% in 2006.

The report said the number of children living in households with extremely low “food security”, where parents described children as being hungry or having skipped a meal or gone without eating for an entire day, increased from 0.6 % in 2006 to 0.9 % in 2007. Federal officials said the statistics pre-date the current economic downturn and forecast darker times for the country’s 74 million children 17 and under, when data on children’s lives during the recession become available.

Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Heath, one of the government agencies that participated in the study said, “It foreshadows greater changes we’ll see when we look at these figures next year.”

There were however areas that showed the brighter side of the picture and preterm births was one of them. The rate of preterm births at 12.7 % in 2007 decreased from 12.8 % in 2006 while rate of low birth weight also showed a decline from 8.3 % in 2006 to 8.2 % in 2007.

“The exciting thing is that in almost two decades, this is the first chance we’ve seen of a possible turnaround,” Alexander said. “We’ll watch it and hopefully the downward trend will continue.”

On a similar happy note was a decrease in the percentage of teens that had a major depressive episode from 9% in 2005 to 8% in 2007. While Alexander said 89 % of children had health insurance in 2007, up from 88 % in 2006.

The report showed racial and ethnic backgrounds and living circumstances are undergoing dramatic shifts with the percentage of children who are Hispanic, increasing faster than it has for any other racial or ethnic group, from 9 % of the population in 1980 to 22 % in 2008. Children born to unwed mothers showed a sharp increase from 34% in 2002 to 40% in 2007. After years of decline the teen pregnancy rate inched up slightly for the second year in a row to 22.2 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 17.

Commenting on the negative effect the current economic downturn could have on children’s health Daniel Armstrong, Ph. D., of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida said, “You have to look at the history of what has happened during other recessions,” he said, adding, “the history tells us that there will be areas that change.”

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