Over 9 million low-income children who don’t qualify for Medicaid use CHIP—the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Forty-two states with certain types of CHIP programs must take steps to minimize or prevent “crowd-out”—when families substitute CHIP for private health insurance. We found that there isn’t much information on how often substitution occurs. All 42 states have at least...

According to the CDC, obesity affects about 14 million U.S. children aged 2 to 19, with higher rates in children from low-income families. CDC awarded grants to universities and others to implement strategies for reducing childhood obesity in low-income families. The grants were awarded in three phases; the first of which is complete. In that phase, grantees found some small but positive changes,...

Young people who leave foster care at age 18 are often ill-prepared to live on their own. To assist them, states can use federal funds to extend foster care to age 21. States can also allow these young people to practice living independently, such as in a private apartment with monthly check-ins with a case worker. The 26 states approved to use federal funds to extend foster care reported allowin...

Discretionary funding for the Child Care and Development Fund—a significant source of federal funding for child care subsidies—was approximately doubled in 2018 to $5.2 billion. States must use some of the money they get to improve the quality of their child care services. In fiscal year 2017, a majority of states put their funds toward major state activities such as consumer education and es...

Trauma is a widespread, harmful, and costly public health problem, and is especially detrimental to children. Any frightening, dangerous, or violent event that threatens a child or their loved ones may be traumatic. While not every child suffers lasting effects, trauma significantly increases the risk of mental health and other problems. Among other things, we interviewed and surveyed officials i...

The U.S. government allocated about $30 billion for child nutrition programs in FY 2018, including about $14 billion for the school lunch program. USDA oversees the programs. States contract with schools and others to provide the services. In prior work, we have recommended ways USDA can improve its oversight of the programs. This testimony discusses steps USDA has taken, or is planning to take,...

The Attorney General's April 2018 "zero tolerance" memo on prosecuting immigration offenses prompted federal officials to increase the rate of family separations, placing considerably more children in custody. In June, a federal judge ordered reunifications. In response to the court order, the government identified 2,654 children for potential reunification. As of September 10th, 437 remained in...

Federal reports on Native American youth found challenges—such as poverty and exposure to violence—that can make them susceptible to being arrested, charged, or sentenced in the justice system. Among other things, we found: Overall rates of Native American juvenile delinquency declined 2010-2016. While most of the Native American youth in the system were at the state or local level, they we...

Nationwide, the total number of meals served to children in low-income areas through the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) increased from 113 to 149 million (about 32 percent) from fiscal year 2007 through 2016. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) directs states to use the number of meals served, along with other data, to estimate the number of children participating in the SFSP. However, p...

States employ a range of strategies to recruit foster families and nearly all use private providers to recruit, particularly for therapeutic foster care (TFC) services, in which parents receive training and support to care for children who need a higher level of care. Recruitment strategies include searching for relatives, conducting outreach to the community, targeting certain populations, and ob...

The long-term success of a nation depends in large part on how well families and society care for their children. Child well-being can be measured through various indicators that reflect a child’s family, physical, and social environments, health, and education. This report examines what is known about the state of child well-being and discusses selected experts’ views on what policymakers cou...

According to GAO's analysis of nationwide data for an average month in 2011-2012 approximately 8.6 million children under age 13 were estimated to be eligible for subsidies under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program based on policies in their states, and about 1.5 million received them. When compared with all eligible children, those receiving subsidies tended to be younger (under ag...