The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
These Snapshots of America's Families offer a first look at the well-being of children and adults through the lens of the 1997 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF). Individually, the Snapshots highlight social and economic issues that are indicative of well-being. Together, they capture a picture of family life on the eve of policy changes, such as federal welfare reform, that are affecting how social services, health, and income support programs are designed and administered.
The NSAF is one of only a few surveys to provide reliable estimates for selected states as well as for the nation as a whole, adding interest and comparability to its findings. Moreover, because the survey pays particular attention to low-income families, the Snapshots reveal important aspects of their lives and of how they differ from the lives of children and adults in families with higher incomes. In addition to describing the well-being of America's families from a range of perspectives, the information gathered in the 1997 survey serves as a baseline. When the survey is repeated in 1999, researchers will be able to measure changes over time and explore the effects of welfare reform and other policy changes on family life.
Two conclusions are immediately clear from these Snapshots. First, the circumstances of the 43 percent of children living in households with low incomes (less than $31,822 in 1996 for a family with two parents and two children) are markedly different from those of children in higher-income households. Every Snapshot, whether it discusses health care, parental employment, social engagement, or factors related to child development, shows that low-income children face more difficulties than higher-income children do.
Second, the status of children and adults differs greatly around the country. Variation is dramatic among some indicators but relatively small among others. For example, poverty varied considerably among the 13 states studied: Approximately one-tenth of children in Wisconsin lived in poverty, while in Mississippi more than one-third of children did. As another illustration of the disparity among states, only 3 percent of low-income children in Minnesota had no usual source of health care, whereas almost 20 percent of low-income children in Texas lacked a usual source. In contrast, approximately 10 percent of low-income children age 6 to 11 in all 13 states had high levels of behavioral and emotional problems.
Issues Covered by the Survey
The NSAF examined employment, earnings and income, educational attainment, participation in training activities, economic hardship, family structure, housing arrangements and cost, health insurance coverage, access to and use of health services, health status, psychological well-being, participation in religious and volunteer activities, knowledge about availability of social services, and attitudes about work, welfare, health care, and childbearing.
The survey also asked respondents about participation in government programs, such as welfare and Medicaid, and about children's education, parent-child interactions, child care arrangements, participation in work and recreational activities, behavioral problems, child support, and contact with noncustodial parents.
Since the survey included summer and school-year months, it will take additional time to create weights to assess the child-care data. These Snapshots do not include information on child care, but future reports will.
Organization of the Snapshots
The Snapshots are organized into four subject areas.
- Income and Hardship includes poverty among adults and children, employment, affordability of housing, and food concerns and affordability.
- Health includes health insurance coverage of children and of adults, parents' confidence in their ability to get medical care for their children, the number of children and adults with no usual source of health care, and health status of adults and children.
- Children's Environment and Behavior covers family structure, birth outside of marriage, degree of engagement in school, the frequency of reading and telling stories to young children, participation in extracurricular activities, and behavioral and emotional problems.
- Adults' Environment and Behavior includes participation in volunteer or religious activities, aggravation in parenting, mental health, and attitudes toward welfare and working mothers.
Survey Design
The 13 states surveyed are Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Together, these states are home to more than half the nation's population and represent a broad range of fiscal capacity, child well-being, and approaches to government programs.
The survey was conducted from February to November 1997. Some questions covered the family's circumstances at the time of the survey; others were about the previous 12 months or about calendar year 1996.
Detailed information was obtained on 75,437 adults and 34,439 children in 44,461 households. The primary sampling method for the NSAF was a random selection of telephone numbers; a sample of households without telephones was also included. The survey was designed to oversample people with low incomes so that analysts could obtain a more detailed picture of this portion of the population.
To obtain information on children, researchers surveyed the adult most knowledgeable about the children in the household. In 95 percent of cases, this was the biological, adoptive, or stepparent of the child on whom the survey focused. In the Snapshots, these respondents are referred to as "parents," even though a small percentage are not the child's parent.
For More Information
Other publications based on survey data will be issued regularly and will include briefs as well as more detailed reports. The survey's raw data files will be made available for public use.
Additional information on the Snapshots appears in the Appendix in this folder. Data tables that include standard errors can be downloaded from the Urban Institute Web site (http://www.urban.org). Additional methodological discussions and papers will also be posted on the site.
Assessing the New Federalism
The NSAF is part of Assessing the New Federalism, a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states. The survey focuses primarily on health, income security, job training, and social services. The project aims to provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decision makers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.
Partner Organizations
Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to studying children, youth, and families through research, data collection, and data analysis. In Assessing the New Federalism, Child Trends has responsibility for conceptualizing and designing ways to measure changes in children's well-being.
Westat is administering the NSAF under subcontract to the Urban Institute.
Funders
Assessing the New Federalism is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Fund for New Jersey, the Stuart Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Joyce Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation through grants to the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Credits
Genevieve Kenney is the survey director, and Kevin Wang is the survey manager. Alyssa Wigton is the Snapshots project leader, and Blair Burns Potter is editor of the Snapshots. Alan Weil is director of Assessing the New Federalism. This product would not have been possible without the extraordinary effort of these and many other people.
Gray-scale copies of Snapshots of America's Families are available for photocopying. For more information about the National Survey of America's Families or the Assessing the New Federalism project, write to: Assessing the New Federalism, Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037. Phone: 202-261-5709. E-mail: paffairs@ui.urban.org. Web site: http://www.urban.org.
Copyright © January 1999. Urban Institute. Permission is granted to reproduce this document with attribution to the Urban Institute. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Urban Institute, its board, its sponsors, or other authors in the series.
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