Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 1999. Included are six contextual measures that describe the changing population and family context in which children are living, and 23 indicators of well-being in the areas of economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education. Who Have Difficulty Performing Everyday Activities. Hispanic children slightly outnumber black, non-Hispanic children. These shifts reflect a growing income disparity among children.
Teenagers are also less likely than younger children to have a usual source of medical care.
While the mortality rate for almost all groups of children continues to fall, it has fallen most dramatically among black children ages 1 to 4, from 67.6 per 100,000 in 1996 to 59.2 in 1997, according to preliminary data. This rate, however, remains almost twice the rate for whites, at 31.5 per 100,000 according to 1997 preliminary data. Death rates among adolescents, particularly among black males, have dropped dramatically after rising rapidly during the early 1990s. The birth rate for teenagers ages 15 to 17 dropped from 1991 to 1997, after rising during the late 1980s. In 1997, the rate was 32.1 live births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 17, down from 38.7 in 1991.