ChildStats.gov (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics)

ChildStats.gov is the public website of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a group of federal agencies that pool and publish official data on the well-being of children and youth in the United States. The site gathers indicators drawn from across the government into one place, presents them as reports, tables, and charts, and points visitors to the agencies that produce the underlying numbers. It functions as a reference gateway for anyone who needs verified national statistics about children, teenagers, and families.

What the Forum is

The Forum is a collaboration of 23 federal government agencies whose work touches children and families. It was founded in 1994 and formally established in April 1997 under Executive Order 13045. Its stated purpose is to improve coordination among these agencies, to make the collection and reporting of federal data on children and families more consistent, and to widen public access to that information. Rather than running its own surveys, the Forum brings together statistics that member agencies already collect and agrees on a common set of measures so the picture holds together across sources.

The member agencies come from many parts of the government. They include the Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, several institutes and offices within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, among others. The Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Defense also take part, which reflects how many parts of federal policy touch the lives of children. Each agency contributes data and staff time, and decisions about what to measure are made jointly.

America's Children and its indicators

The main product of the Forum is a recurring report titled America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. First issued in 1997, it has appeared regularly since, in recent years on a two-year cycle, with a shorter companion volume called America's Children in Brief filling the alternating years. Each edition tracks a fixed set of indicators over time so that readers can see whether conditions for children are improving or declining. The report is written in plain language and is meant for policymakers, journalists, researchers, teachers, and the general public rather than only for statisticians.

The seven domains

The indicators in America's Children are organized into seven broad areas that together describe childhood in the country:

• Family and social environment
• Economic circumstances
• Health care
• Physical environment and safety
• Behavior
• Education
• Health

Within these areas sit specific measures such as the share of children living in poverty, rates of health insurance coverage, reading and mathematics achievement, adolescent birth rates, air quality where children live, and childhood mortality. Because the same indicators return edition after edition, the report doubles as a long time series that shows change across decades.

Special and supplemental reports

Alongside the main indicator report the Forum issues occasional special editions that concentrate on a single subject. A 2024 special issue, for example, focused on maternal and infant health and well-being and presented fifteen indicators covering topics such as maternal vaccination, maternal mortality, and postpartum depressive symptoms. Past and supplemental reports remain available on the site, so a user can compare figures from earlier years with the current release.

Administration and using the site

The Forum is run by a director and a small support staff, and the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides that staffing and administers the group's funding. Standing committees handle planning and the production of each report, and membership is open to federal agencies that produce or support statistics on children and families and that take part in the Forum's meetings and work groups.

What visitors can find

The website presents each indicator with a short explanation, one or more data tables, and figures that can be viewed on screen. Full reports are available to download, and the indicator pages are grouped under the same seven domains used in the printed volumes. Because every figure is sourced to a named federal agency and survey, a reader can trace a number back to its origin and, if needed, follow it to the producing agency for more detail. The site carries no advertising and presents the data without commentary on policy.

The value of ChildStats.gov for a directory of children's and teens' resources lies in what it consolidates. Statistics about young people are otherwise scattered across dozens of separate agencies and surveys, each with its own format and schedule. This site collects the most important of those measures, arranges them under consistent headings, and keeps a record that reaches back to the late 1990s. A student writing a paper, a reporter checking a claim, a nonprofit planning a program, or a parent curious about national trends can all begin at the same organized federal source and find data on the health, education, safety, and circumstances of American children.

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