How Children Are Doing: The Mismatch between Public Perception and Statistical Reality

Child Trends and the Annie E. Casey Foundation recently conducted a series of polls to get a better understanding of what American adults know about how children in the U.S. are faring. The findings show that the public is generally misinformed about the well-being of children in the United States. Specifically, the public regularly overestimates social and economic problems among American children and is generally unaware of progress made during the last decade on several key indicators of well-being.

The poll asked participants about their perceptions of indicators and trends in child well-being, including the number of children receiving welfare, the percent of children without health insurance, the percent of children in poverty, teen crime rates, teen birth rates, and the percent of children living in single-parents. To see the findings from this series of polls summarized in a new Child Trends research brief, visit http://www.childtrends.org/PDF/PublicPerceptionsRB.pdf

Media Analysis

The Casey Foundation also commissioned a media analysis to look more closely at the kind of newspaper coverage people were reading on these issues. The analyses found relatively few articles on the topics covered by this poll, and very few articles provided even basic statistics or trend data. A report based on this analysis, Perceptions and Misperceptions of America's Children: The Role of the Print Media, can be found at www.aecf.org/kidscount/ohare_paper_on_media_6_26_03_final.pdf

Implications

The findings indicate that much good news about children and youth is not filtering to the public - the facts that child poverty has declined or that fewer teens are having babies, for example. Because the public is unaware of such successes, they may be less willing to continue investing in the programs or supporting the policies that helped to bring about these positive changes.

As long as public perceptions dwell on the negative, policy and program development will tend to focus on addressing negative outcomes, rather than investing in efforts that can boost positive outcomes. If this occurs, the ultimate losers are America's children.

Organizations that produce statistical data on children need to be more resourceful and innovative in working with the media. More effort must occur to get statistical data to mainstream media.