New Report: Black children doing better than ever

From the Chicago Defender. Apparently Black kids still lag behind white kids in quality of life...

Black children are doing better than ever, but still have a long way to go before closing the racialethnic gap in quality of life, according to a report released last month by the Foundation for Child Development. The report was the first ever to analyze and compare trends in the well-being of Black, white, and Hispanic children over a span of nearly two decades.

According to the report, all children experienced overall improvements in quality of life between 1985 and 2004. However, because improvements were greater for Black and Hispanic children during this time span - particularly after 1993 - the gap between them and whites is narrowing. But even if trends continue at their current pace, it will take at least an entire generation to fully eliminate these gaps.

“Even if we manage to continue to make progress towards closing the racial-ethnic gaps in children’s well-being at the same rate we have been, it would take another 18 years before Black children essentially caught up with white children,” Ruby Takanishi, president and CEO of FCD, said. “As a leading world superpower, America can do and should do better than this,” Takanishi continued. The report is entitled “Racial- Ethnic Inequality in Child Well- Being from 1985-2004: Gaps Narrowing but Persist.”

The researchers pulled data from several years of the FCD Child Well-Being Index-an annual analysis of the quality of life for all American children. It found that the gap in the overall quality of life separating Black children from white children narrowed by 26 percent- a change driven largely by promising improvements in safety, economic security and health for children of color.

Some other good news mentioned is that black children are less likely to commit a crime, Black youth are more likely to vote in fact it's better than white youth, obesity rates rose less for Blacks and Hispanics, and also gaps in family well-being narrowed as parents have gained employment and health insurance. The improvement is still needed in education!

There are still gaps in reading and math and there is also a gap between black & white in completing undergrad studies.