Disparities in Child Well-Being Across Income Groups: Trends in the U.S. from 1985 to 2008

The income available in children’s families can profoundly impact child well-being, and the recent economic recession has drawn renewed attention to income inequality in the U.S. The present research is the first-ever to assess changing disparities in well-being among U.S. children who live in families with vastly different incomes through the use of an overall composite index that incorporates wide ranging domains and indicators of child well-being. Annually since 2004, Kenneth Land and colleagues have developed new results and presented findings for the Foundation for Child Development Child Well-Being Index (CWI) to monitor changes in overall child well-being for the U.S. To study changing disparities in child well-being across five income groups from 1985 to 2008, the present research combines this general approach for calculating a national CWI with a methodology developed by Hernandez and Macartney for assessing both levels and disparities in child well-being. The primary aim is to track and describe these trends, but some attention is devoted to discussion of public policies relevant to several indicators. Results regarding trends in overall well-being show for every income group that the small to negligible changes occurring between 1985 and 1992 were followed by substantial increases in well-being to a historic peak in 2000 for the overall index, and for specific income groups in one of the years between 1998 and 2003. This in turn was followed changes that led to a decline in well-being by 2008 for every income group.