Below are statistics of different issues that affect the communites on Long Island and New York.
Child Abuse and Neglect || Early Childhood Education/Child Care || Incarcerated Parents || Quality Child Care || After-School Programs || Child Poverty || Rx for Healthy Children || Homeless || Hunger
Quick Facts about Children in New York
Children in New York
4,424,083 children live in New York
A child is abused or neglected every 6 minutes.
A child dies before his or her first birthday every 6 hours.
A child or teen is killed by gunfire every 3 days.
Child Poverty in New YorkNumber of poor children (and percent poor) 868,354 (20.0%)
Number of children living in extreme poverty (and percent in extreme poverty) 418,433 (9.6%)
Number of adults and children receiving cash assistance from Temporary
Child Health in New YorkNumber of children without health insurance (and percent uninsured) 382,000 (8.1%)
Number of children enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)* 532,635**
Number of children enrolled in Medicaid 1,797,053**
Percent of two-year-olds not fully immunized 30.9%
Child Hunger in New YorkNumber of children who receive food stamps 779,428
Percent of eligible persons who receive food stamps 61%
Number of children in the School Lunch Program (free and reduced price only) 1,144,225
Number of children in the Summer Food Service Program 441,500
Number of women and children receiving WIC (Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) 497,327
Early Childhood Development in New York
Percent of children under age 6 with all parents in the labor force 61.9%
Number of children served by Head Start 56,368
Number of children served by the Child Care Development Fund/CCDBG 120,700
Average annual cost of child care for a four-year-old in a center $10,541
Percent of 3-year-olds enrolled in state pre-k, Head Start, or special education programs 14.7%
Percent of 4-year-olds enrolled in state pre-k, Head Start, or special education programs 56.6%
Education in New York
Annual expenditure per prisoner $31,968
Annual expenditure per public school pupil $14,615
Percent of public school fourth graders:
unable to read at grade level 64%
unable to do math at grade level 60%
Percent of public school eighth graders:
unable to read at grade level 67%
unable to do math at grade level 66%
Number of high school students who drop out of school annually 61,388
Child Welfare in New York
Number of children who are victims of abuse and neglect 90,031
Number of children in foster care 27,992
Number of children adopted from foster care 2,398
Number of grandparents raising grandchildren 129,522
Youth at Risk in New York
Percent of 16- to 19-year-olds not enrolled in school who are not high school graduates 5.5%
Averaged freshman high school graduation rate 70.8%
Percent of 16- to 19-year-olds unemployed 26.7%
Number of juvenile arrests 41,671
Number of children and teens in juvenile residential facilities 3,612
Ratio of cost per prisoner to cost per public school pupil 2.2
Number of children and teens killed by firearms: 107
93 homicides; 13 suicides; 1 accident; and 0 undetermined
For the complete Children's Defense Fund factsheet report, click here.
Child Abuse & Neglect
In 2006, at least 1,530 children died as a result of abuse or neglect at home. The true number may be double that figure.11 78% of the fatalities were children under age four — mostly infants and toddlers.
With three million reports of abuse and neglect each year, it isn’t surprising that polls show deep public concern about the problem. But stopping child abuse is not a political priority even though it claims the lives of thousands, ruins the lives of millions, and costs taxpayers more than $100 billion annually on related crime, imprisonment, mental health, special education, medical care, and drug abuse.
The amount of help an abused child receives is largely an accident of geography; some states do a much better job than others. No states are in full compliance with federal child welfare standards.
According to the New York State Office of Family and Children Services, in 2009, there were almost 17,000 Child Protective Service Reports on Long Island (Nassau: 6,688, Suffolk: 10,053)
Last summer, Newsday reported that incidents of child abuse had reached new highs on Long Island.
For the first time, more than 1,000 cases were reported in a month - and this statistic of course makes one wonder how many incidents went unreported.
To learn more about how you can prevent child abuse and neglect on Long Island, visit the website of Long Island's Coalition Against Child Abuse and Neglect.
Statewide, visit Prevent Child Abuse New York's website.
In particular, visit the "Resource Room" for valuable information.
Early Childhood Education/Child Care
Too many children, both middle and low-income, enter kindergarten without the skills needed to succeed. Only half of eligible three- and four-year-olds are served by Head Start, the government’s early childhood development program. Early Head Start, for infants and toddlers under three, serves only 1 in 20 of those eligible. Millions more children are not enrolled in any pre-k program or are enrolled in ones that do not meet standards for quality.
Research tells us that young children are eager learners and that what and how much they learn before school matters a great deal. Children who begin kindergarten familiar with letters, numbers, and shapes are much more likely to grasp the foundational math and reading concepts needed to become successful learners. Children denied exposure to these basic skills begin school far behind their peers – and are likely to remain behind.
Not only do children benefit from high-quality pre-kindergarten education, we all do. Quality programs improve the education, employment, and earnings of students. They also reduce crime. The U.S. could see a $2 to $4 return on every dollar invested if preschool programs were extended to all children. Preschool investments for just one age group of students could generate as much as $150 billion in benefits to the U.S. over a lifetime.These investments improve the economies of states and the nation by reducing education and criminal justice costs while boosting income-tax revenues. Early learning creates smarter kids and a stronger economy – a smart investment that benefits all Americans
Home Visiting Saves Money, Prevents Child Abuse, Helps Children Learn
New York State offers a number of voluntary home visiting programs that have documented outcomes and cost-savings. These programs include Healthy Families New York (HFNY), Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), and The Parent-Child Home Program (PCHP). The results promote economic stability, improve child safety—NFP shows a 48% decrease in child abuse--and save New York State millions of dollars.
Healthy Families New York:
· Reduces child abuse and decreases foster care placements. The average cost to provide HFNY services to a family is about $4,600. The average annual cost for one child in foster care is more than $24,000. Federal, state, and local expenditures on child welfare services in New York State are approximately $2.7 billion.
· Reduces low birth weight by 50%, saving Medicaid and state sponsored health insurance plans about $2.4 million.
· 50% of families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits upon entering HFNY no longer need those services after participating in HFNY.
· 81% of HFNY participants are enrolled in job training or education by the child’s first birthday.
· 57% of HFNY participants under age 21 have received a high school degree or GED by the child’s first birthday.
Nurse-Family Partnership Program
· Saves New York State and local governments an average of $5,920 by the child’s fifth birthday.
· Saves the Federal government $4,264 in Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Child Care Development Block Grant costs by that age.
· Increases earnings, on average, more than $14,250 over the 5-year period. Savings continue to accrue thereafter from additional tax revenue and reduced spending in TANF, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and child abuse.
· Saves an additional $1,232 per family from a reduction in offending youth and associated criminal justice costs.
The Parent-Child Home Program:
· Saves $210,000 per child from the reduced need for special education.
· Increases state residents’ earnings by 5.66% by increasing the high school graduation rate.
· Estimated to increase lifetime earnings by between $600,000 and $1 million.
One home visiting program—Healthy Families New York (HFNY)—and a funding stream that supports NFP—Community Optional Preventive Services (COPS)—are in danger of elimination because of their inclusion in the Primary Prevention Incentive Program (PPIP) proposed in the 2011 Executive Budget.
The PPIP would only reinvest 50% of the savings from restructuring to support statewide front-end prevention services. This reduction will not only negatively impact children and families, it will disqualify New York State from applying for millions in federal aid by not meeting Maintenance of Effort (MOE) requirements. In addition, counties are required to come up with a 38% match, money that they will find hard to come by.
For the complete listing of statistic credits, click here.
Incarcerated Parents
The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population and 24%
of the world’s prisoners, yet it continues to have much higher crime rates
than the other rich democracies.
The U.S. prison population increased nearly 700% between 1980 and 2005, rising from 320,000 to almost 2.2 million in a single generation. Imprisonment has become a costly and ineffectual substitute for addressing substance abuse, poverty, mental illness, and educational failure. It also jeopardizes the life chances of millions of children who have a parent in prison.
Despite its much greater reliance on incarceration, the U.S. homicide rate is three times the United Kingdom’s and eight times Japan’s.
There is a high correlation between problems in childhood and incarceration. Childhood trauma does not excuse a future criminal act. But it can explain how bad behavior is manufactured. It can begin in utero when a fetus is exposed to a mother’s substance abuse, or when a toddler is victimized by a father’s unrestrained violence.
Violent offenders belong in prison. But instead of funding smart policies proven to deter crime in the first place, as in other democracies, U.S. policy favors locking up ever more offenders, including the 1.2 million non-violent offenders on whom nearly $24 billion was spent in 2000.
Present prison policies weigh most heavily on African-Americans:
• Black males are 44% of all inmates with sentences
of more than a year — but they are only 6.5% of the U.S. population.
• The incarceration rate for American black men is four times higher than it was in South Africa during its apartheid era.
Imprisonment of women has skyrocketed, from 12,000 women in 1980 to 104,000 in 2004 — an increase of almost 900%. Most women prisoners are poor. Their crimes often include credit card abuse or check forgery. About one-third are serving mandatory sentences for drug offenses.
Quality Child Care
The American economy cannot function efficiently without quality child care. For millions of families such care is either unavailable or unaffordable. As a consequence, millions of children are in sub-standard care and not receiving the full benefit of an early learning opportunity.
Quality child care is in everyone’s best interest. In one survey, 62 percent of employers offering quality child care say their employees have higher morale and 52 percent report increased productivity.47
Child care costs are high compared to other household expenses, ranging from about $3,800 to $11,000 for a 4-year-old. Infant care is substantially higher. Child care costs are typically higher than what households spend on food, and care for two children exceeds average rent costs. In 43 states, attendance at a public university for a year is less than the cost of placing an infant in child care.48
Child care is not a luxury for children, parents, and employers. Children in quality programs receive educational and social benefits that endure for life, and they are in safe environments while parents work.
After-School Programs
As many as 14 million children are on their own after school. Among them are an estimated 40,000 kindergarteners. On school days, the hours from 3-6 pm are peak hours for kids to smoke, drink and experiment with drugs; to become crime victims; to be in car accidents; or to commit crimes. The millions of children and teens who begin self-care at young ages are at increased risk of poor educational and behavioral outcomes.
Quality afterschool programs can cut crime immediately and transform the prime hours for juvenile crime into hours of academic enrichment, wholesome fun, and community service.
Despite these positive outcomes, existing after-school programs meet only half the demand of elementary and middle school parents. Only one in ten K-12 grade children and youth participate in after-school programs. As many as 15 million would participate if a quality program was available in their community. But millions of families are unable to pay for afterschool programs and require a subsidy.
Child Poverty
In Washington, DC, the world’s most powerful capital, wretched poverty – and the drug use, violence and depression such poverty fosters – begins a few blocks from the U.S Congress. The capital’s 29.2% child poverty rate is higher than all but one state’s – and much higher than that of the other rich democracies.
Worse, recent data show not only that millions more children are entering poverty but that many are entering deep poverty, where household income is less than 50% of the poverty level. If the poverty rate for a family of two is 14,000, then a child in deep poverty is in a household where the income is 7,000 or less.
It has been decades since Congress had a serious debate about poverty. The welfare reform legislation of the 1990’s was not about reducing child poverty; it was about reducing the number of families on the welfare rolls, which it did — from 4.4 million families in 1996 to 1.8 million today. But there are still millions of children in working families living below the poverty level, with the number sure to grow during the current recession.
The U.S. has the worst child poverty rate among 24 rich countries. These countries have policies which reduce child poverty much more sharply than those in the United States. The U.S. does know how to reduce poverty among large groups: over the last 45 years, U.S. policies produced spectacular drops in elderly poverty rates; now the elderly are the least poor. During the same period, child poverty remained constant despite huge gains in America’s wealth. Federal spending in 2007 was nearly 7 times greater for persons over age 65 than under age 18 — $27,289 per person versus $4,000 per person, respectively.
The Girl Effect
The Girl Effect is the potential of 600 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world. It’s an untapped force in the fight against poverty, and it’s driven by champions around the globe: the Nike Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, the UN Foundation, the Coalition for Adolescent Girls, CARE, Plan, the Population Council, ICRW and the Center for Global Development – and many others.
Why Girls?
Because there’s poverty, and war, and hunger, and AIDS, and because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities, countries, and even the planet.
But while those 600 million adolescent girls are the most likely agents of change, they are often invisible to their societies and the world.
So what can you do about that? Help make girls visible. Stand up and be counted by becoming a fan of The Girl Effect, and getting your friends to do the same. Tell the world that you think the 600 million girls in the developing world deserve better – for themselves, and for the end of poverty.
For more info on The Girl Effect, click here.
Rx for Healthy Children
Eight million children at any moment are without health insurance. Almost all have at least one parent who works full-time. Over a two-year period, nearly 27 million children will have no coverage for at least some of the time. In no other rich country does such a condition exist.
Uninsured children are almost five times more likely to delay medical care and four to five times as likely to go without eyeglasses or medicines. Some lose their hearing because a preventable infection was not treated. Many are not immunized against easily preventable communicable diseases. Simple health problems become major ones.
The U.S. ranks last among the rich democracies on the two most important health measures—infant mortality and longevity—even though we spend much more on medical care. Virtually all citizens in the other rich democracies are insured. More than 47 million Americans are not, which helps explain why nearly half of all U.S. bankruptcies involve medical bills.
Homeless Statistics
| Homeless Numbers on Long Island |
|||
| July 2009 |
July 2010 |
Percentage Change |
|
| Nassau | |||
| Singles | 133 |
288 | 116.5% |
| Families |
74 | 179 | 141.9% |
| Total Homeless |
325 |
807 |
148.3% |
| Suffolk | |||
| Singles | 195 | 185 |
-5.1% |
| Families | 288 | 317 | 10.1% |
| Total Homeless |
1,126 |
1,280 | 13.7% |
All numbers represent homeless individuals placed in county shelters or motels. Numbers do not include those who are homeless and living on the streets or in the woods. Nassau data reflect homeless numbers as of July 24, 2009 and July 23, 2010; Suffolk data reflect numbers through the end of July in each year.
SOURCE: NASSAU AND SUFFOLK COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES
Hunger
What is food insecurity and what does it look like on Long Island?
Food insecurite refers to USDA's measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availablity of nutritionally adequate foods.
Food insecure households are not necessarily food insecure all the time. Food insecurity may reflect a household's need to make trade-offs between important basic needs, such as housing or medical bill, and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods. For more info on hunger statistics in your area, click here.
