In its first-ever profile of America's adopted children, the U.S. Census Bureau said today that Census 2000 data show that adopted children under age 18 tended to live in households that were better off economically than those of biological children.

    For example, the bureau said, adopted children lived in households with a median income of $56,000 a year versus $48,000 for biological children, and 78 percent of adopted children lived in homes that were owned by their adoptive parents versus 67 percent of biological children.

    The report, Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2000, [PDF 529k] examines the characteristics of the nation's 2.1 million adopted children and 4.4 million stepchildren. For the first time, the Census 2000 questionnaire included "adopted son/daughter" as one of the options under the relationship- to-householder question separate from "natural born son/daughter" and "stepson/stepdaughter."

     According to the report, among the 1.7 million households with adopted children, 82 percent had just one adopted child while 15 percent had two adopted children. Just 3 percent had three or more adopted children.

     The proportion of children under 18 who were adopted showed little variation by region or state. The percentage in the Midwest (2.6 percent) was slightly higher than in the other three regions (2.4 percent each). By state, percentages ranged from about 2.0 percent in Delaware, California, Texas and Louisiana to 3.9 percent in Alaska (see attached table).

     Other highlights:

• About 7-in-10 adopted children under 18 were living with non-Hispanic white householders and nearly 2-in-10 were of a different race than the family householder.
• For children under 18, the householder parents of biological and stepchildren were, on average, 38 years old while householder parents of adopted children were about five years older.
• Thirteen percent of adopted children of all ages were foreign-born (258,000), with nearly half of them (48 percent) born in Asia, about one-third (33 percent) in Latin America and about one-sixth (16 percent) in Europe.
• Korea was the largest single-country source of foreign-born adopted children, accounting for about 57,000 or a little more than one-fifth (22 percent) of foreign-born adopted children of all ages.

     The report contains special tabulations not available in published Census 2000 summary files. The data are based on responses from the sample of households that received the census long form, about 1-in-6 nationally, and are subject to sampling and nonsampling error.

     The data are designed to assist agencies that serve adoptive families such as the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse of the Administration for Children and Families. The data also may inform policy-makers who develop legislation related to adoptive families such as the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993.