North Carolina’s Children of Color and Immigrant Children Continue to Face Barriers to Opportunity

2017 Race for Results report reveals little progress in ensuring health, education and economic equity for all children in the state.

RALEIGH, N.C., October 24, 2017 — For North Carolina to prosper in the future, all children must have the opportunity to succeed. Yet children of color, who will soon make up the majority of children in North Carolina, face persistent barriers to achieving their full potential. Children living in immigrant families, 86 percent of whom are children of color in North Carolina, also face substantial and disproportionate barriers to success.

According to the 2017 Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, children of color face significant hurdles in health, education and economic security. The report shows that African-American, American Indian, and Hispanic and Latino children in North Carolina are more likely to be born underweight, less likely to live in financially stable neighborhoods and less likely to graduate high school than white children.

“Children of color and children of immigrant families are the future of our state. All of us —policymakers, the business community, child advocates, and others — must prioritize improving outcomes for these children.” said Rob Thompson, senior policy and communications adviser at NC Child.

This is the second Race for Results report by the Casey Foundation; the Foundation released the first report in 2014. The report measures children’s progress on the national and state levels on key education, health and economic milestones by racial and ethnic groups. The report’s index uses a composite score of these milestones on a scale of one (lowest) to 1,000 (highest) to make comparisons. The chart below shows how different racial and ethnic groups scored:

The 2017 Race for Results report shows little progress across many indicators compared to the 2014 report. Importantly, key indicators of economic security stayed about the same or worsened for African-American and Hispanic and Latino children. The percentage of children who live in low poverty neighborhoods worsened significantly—51 percent to 46 percent for African American children and 57 percent to 50 percent for Hispanic and Latino children. The percentage of children living above 200 percent of the federal poverty line increased slightly for both groups—32 percent to 33 percent for African Americans and 23 percent to 24 percent for Hispanic and Latino children.

To address these persistent inequities in North Carolina, NC Child has teamed up with the North Carolina Division of Public Health Women’s Branch and the state’s Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities to develop a tool, the Health Equity Impact Assessment (HEIA), that enables decision-makers to intentionally focus and align policies and programs to improve equity and address social determinants of health, such as economic security. Implementation of the HEIA is currently being piloted in several projects across the state.

The report’s bright spot features two indicators related to older youth and young adults. Young women ages 15-19 are delaying childbirth at a much higher rate: 89 percent to 94 percent for African-American youth, 86 percent to 92 percent for American Indians, and 84 percent to 92 percent for Hispanic and Latino youth. Additionally, the percentage of young adults 19-26 who are either working on in school has also improved significantly for African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics and Latinos in North Carolina.

The 2017 Race for Results report has a special focus on children in immigrant families, many of whom are at a crossroads given the potential repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The report lays bare a stark gulf in prosperity for children living in immigrant families, many of whom are children of color:

• 414,000 kids and youth in North Carolina are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Of those, 86 percent are children of color.
• Only 36 percent of North Carolina children in immigrant families live above 200 percent of the poverty line ($49,200 / year for a family of four) compared to 54 percent of children in U.S. born families.
• 61 percent of North Carolina children in immigrant families live with a householder that has at least a high school degree compared to 92 percent of children in U.S.-born families.

The Race for Results report makes three recommendations to help ensure all children and their families are afforded opportunities to reach their full potential:

• Keep families together and in their communities—Helping to keep children with their families enables them to meet developmental milestones and for parents to meet the needs of their children.
• Help children in immigrant families meet key developmental milestones—The overall well-being of children is key to our nation’s future and is influenced by their environments. We can and must choose policies that make those environments more supportive and healthy.
• Increase economic opportunity for immigrant parents—Meaningful programs and policies that improve opportunities for low-income workers and deal with the needs of parents and their children save taxpayers by reducing the costs of safety-net programs.

Release Information

The 2017 Race for Results report will be available October 24 at 12:01 a.m. EDT at www.aecf.org/raceforresults/. Additional information is available at www.aecf.org/. The website also contains the most recent national, state and local data on numerous indicators of child well-being. Journalists interested in creating maps, graphs and rankings in stories about Race for Results can use the Data Center at datacenter.kidscount.org.

About NC Child

NC Child builds a strong North Carolina by advancing public policies to ensure all children—regardless of race, ethnicity, or place of birth—have the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

About the Annie E. Casey Foundation

The Annie E. Casey Foundation creates a brighter future for the nation’s children by developing solutions to strengthen families, build paths to economic opportunity and transform struggling communities into safer and healthier places to live, work and grow. For more information, visit www.aecf.org. KIDS COUNT is a registered trademark of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.