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ChildStats is an accessible resource on the condition of children and their families in the United States. Statistics from 22 government agencies about 41 areas of well-being are compiled by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and family Statistics and made available for public use. Each statistic is described as an indicator of one of seven domains of well-being: family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health.

The 41 statistical indicators are updated annually and made accessible on the ChildStats Web site: http://childstats.gov. These statistics and others relating to children are mandated by former president Bill Clinton's Executive Order No. 13045 (1997), which required the monitoring of children's well-being. Attention to the needs of children is a long-standing social value in the United States, as analyzed by scholars such as Joel Best. The forum responds to these needs by providing a yearly report, “America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being,” available online. In these reports, the 41 well-being indicators are presented, summarized, and monitored for changes over time, with attention paid to changes that are statistically significant or that differ from previous years. These reports are useful resources that summarize massive amounts of government data in a single place.

In addition to the sumMary statistics presented at the ChildStats Web site, the site provides links to the 22 selected federal agencies that publish statistics related to children's well-being, allowing the user to access each of the hundreds of statistics available in detail. The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and family Statistics, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, selects the indicators for each domain of coverage from the various federal agencies in forms that are regularly measured, easy to understand, and serve as useful measures of the state of American children and families. It is important to recognize that the validity of the statistics is uneven, and some areas are covered thoroughly while others are less so. Because the sources for the statistics for each area of well-being are divided among different agencies, each domain has indicator statistics of varying validity.

Analyzing the Statistics

The user should keep in mind that statistics are a social construction, and are no more valid than the processes used to create them. Some are direct counts, as is done by the U.S. Census. These are the gold standard of social measurements. Other than the census, surveys using a random sampling technique may be the most practical way to estimate the characteristics of a population. But surveys have their own characteristic limitations. Social science research has demonstrated how surveys about admissions of behavior do not produce the same results as direct measures of behavior. This research has revealed that reports of behavior based on interviews and surveys systematically underreport deviant and other socially disapproved behaviors. Thus, the domain of behavior, which includes youths’ responses to survey questions about smoking, alcohol use, illicit drug use, and sexual activity, must be taken with caution. Declines in some statistics in recent reports may represent behavioral change, but may also represent changes in social norms and willingness to admit socially undesirable behavior.

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