Social Group Statistics: Families and Children

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for federal programs that promote the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities. Data covers topics including adoption, foster care, abuse, child care, and welfare.

The Data Center includes health topics covering birth outcomes, health insurance, vital statistics, indicators by race and ethnicity, and more.  Create tables, maps, graphs, or raw data by state or across states by topic. 

"All Census Bureau demographic surveys collect information about children. Some surveys allow a detailed look at the living arrangements of children, while others collect data about child well-being, and child care arrangements." (US Census Website)

"This section provides detailed information and statistics on Fertility and related subtopics. Find the latest news, data, publications, and other content that may include related sites, surveys/programs, videos, visualizations, and working papers." (US Census Website)

"The Census Bureau collects data about American families for the nation, states and communities. Our statistics describe trends in household and family composition, and show the number of children, young adults and couples living in the United States." (US Census Website)

A part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Annotated list of links to reports, databases, and other resources that provide access to statistics on child and family well-being, child abuse and neglect, child welfare/foster care, adoption, and related topics.

From Child Trends, a nonprofit. Provides statistics in charts and graphs for over 70 indicators (e.g. health, education, poverty) at many levels of geography--local, state, national and international. References and links to raw data are provided.

Children's Defense Fund is a nonprofit that seeks to "ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities." (From About Us).

From the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. "The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (Forum) is a collection of 23 Federal government agencies involved in research and activities related to children and families." (About the Forum).

The Institute produces a wide range of resources on topics pertaining to sexual and reproductive health, including International Family Planning Perspectives, The Guttmacher Policy Review and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. There is state and international data and includes information on abortion, adolescents, contraception, pregnancy, and state policies, services, and financing.

Publications from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention include the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children; National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence Series; and others.

This is the statistics page for UNICEF. "This website is a gateway to reliable and open data and analysis on the situation of children and women worldwide." (About Us).

Powered by ICPSR. "The Integrated Fertility Survey Series (IFSS) is a national resource that enhances knowledge about reproductive health, contraceptive use, pregnancy, and other issues vital to understanding and tracking the health of the U.S. population over five decades." (About the Project)

From the National Center for Children in Poverty and ICPSR. Funded by a grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

"The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) promotes secondary analysis of child abuse and neglect data by providing researchers with high quality datasets, documentation and technical support, and encourages collaboration within the scientific community." (About)

"The Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing Study is following a cohort of nearly 5,000 children born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000 (roughly three-quarters of whom were born to unmarried parents). We refer to unmarried parents and their children as “fragile families” to underscore that they are families and that they are at greater risk of breaking up and living in poverty than more traditional families." (About)

"The National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) is part of The Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism (ANF) multi-year research project. Its purpose is to track the effects of recent federal policy changes decentralizing many social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, job training, and social services. In collaboration with Child Trends, researchers from the Urban Institute monitor program changes and fiscal developments, along with changes in the well-being of children and families. The NSAF is a household survey that can be used to produce cross-sectional estimates for a wide variety of child, adult and family well-being indicators at the state level for 13 states and the nation as a whole. Data collection for the NSAF was carried out in 1997, 1999 and 2002 by Westat."

"The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) gathers information on family life, marriage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men’s and women’s health."