Several major demographic shifts over the past half-century have transformed who we are and how we live in this country in many ways. Most striking, however, is the fact that children today are much more likely to be a member of an ethnic or racial minority group. Racial/ethnic minorities are destined, in aggregate, to become the numerical majority within the next few decades. This article presents a wide range of statistics reflecting cultural, family, social, economic, and housing circumstances across various race/ethnic and country-of-origin groups. Key observations include:• Children in immigrant families are much less likely than children in native-born families to have only one parent in the home, and they are nearly twice as likely as those in native-born families to be living with grandparents, other relatives, and non-relatives.• Parental educational attainment is perhaps the most central feature of family circumstances relevant to overall child well-being and development, regardless of race/ethnicity or immigrant origins.• Children in immigrant families were only slightly less likely than children in native-born families to have a father who worked during the past year, but many of their fathers worked less than full-time year-round.• Official poverty rates for children in immigrant families are substantially higher than for children in native-born families (21% versus 14%).The author concludes that these results point to a growing need for policies and programs to assure the health, educational success, and well-being of all children across the varied race/ethnic and immigrant-origin groups who now live in this country.Over the past half-century, our nation has experienced major demographic shifts that have transformed who we are and how we live. This is especially true for children. To start,proportionately, there are fewer of them. Children today make up only 25% of the U.S.population, compared with 36% in 1960. And children today are being reared differently. They are more likely to have a working mother, 67% compared to only 15% in 1950, and most spend significant amounts of time in out-of-home care. Many are also likely to live in or near poverty (26%), and to spend at least part of their childhood living with fewer than two parents (nearly 50%). At the same time, children today are healthier and have better-educated parents. Most striking, however, children today are much more likely to be a member of an ethnic or racial minority group, and the diversity of our nation's children is increasing at a dramatic rate.

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his brief highlights the life circumstances of young children age 0 to 8 growing up in immigrant families. 1 Immigration Trends The number of young children of immigrants has doubled since 1990; this increase accounts for the entire growth in the U.S. population of young children since 1990 Ⅲ Currently, 8.7 million U.S. children age 0 to 8 have at least one foreign-born parent, a doubling from 4.3 million in 1990. 2 By contrast, the number of children with native-born parents has declined slightly from 27.8 million in 1990 to 27.3 million in 2008. Thus, children of immigrants accounted for the entire growth in the number of young children in the United States between 1990 and 2008 (figure 1). Ⅲ Nearly one in four children (24 percent) younger than age 8 have immigrant parents. The share has steadily increased over time, rising from 13 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2000 and to 24 percent in 2008. Ⅲ Young children are more likely to have immigrant parents than older children. In 2008, 25 percent of children age 0-2 have immigrant parents; the share is 24 percent for children age 3-5 and 23 percent for those age 6-8. Young children of immigrants have diverse origins Ⅲ Forty-three percent of young children of immigrants age 0-8 (more than two of every five) have Mexican parents (figure 2). Looking beyond Mexican origin, however, immigrant origins are very diverse, with no more than 10 percent of children having parents from any of the other 10 broad regions of the world. Combining three regions, 20 percent have origins in the countries of Central America (8 percent), the Caribbean (7 percent), or South America (6 percent). Another 22 percent of children have parents born in Asia or the Middle East: East Asia and Pacific (or "East Asia," 9 percent), South Central Asia (5 percent), Southeast Asia (4 percent), and the Middle East (3 percent). The remaining 15 percent of children have parents born in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe (or "Central Europe"), and Western Europe, Canada, and Australia (or "Western Europe"). Ⅲ The shares of preschool-age children of African or Central American origin are likely to increase in the near

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Children of immigrants often are viewed as posing challenges to the American health and education systems because of various circumstances that disadvantage them, such as lack of fluency in English. But first-and secondgeneration children in many immigrant groups are, in fact, doing about as well as or better than their peers in native-born families along many dimensions, a phenomenon which has been referred to as the immigrant paradox because it is contrary to the broadly held view just described. In this context, the purpose of this chapter is threefold.In this chapter, we first present new results for children in immigrant families from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) for 2005-2007 to describe important family and socioeconomic circumstances separately for children whose parents differ in their English fluency. These circumstances reflect resources, constraints, and opportunities available in families and communities that shape the developmental progress of children and that are influenced by public policies. (See http://www.albany.edu/csda/ children for more detailed results from the ACS.) Insofar as the aim is to portray important features of the demographic circumstances of children in immigrant families as a backdrop for this and subsequent chapters in this volume,

This article provides background information and a practical guide for including demographic information in developmental research. First, it portrays historic demographic trends reflecting critical ways in which the family and economic environments of children have been, and continue to be, transformed in the United States. Second, it presents current demographic statistics to provide a basis for researchers to compare their special study population to the general population of children and to formulate specific hypotheses about ways in which their result might differ for children in various demographic situations. Third, it offers an Appendix with standardized wording for a minimum set of questions needed to measure the demographic characteristics and environments of children. The Appendix provides researchers the technical capacity to collect such data, so they can develop and test hypotheses about how family and econmic environments shape child development processes and outcomes.