The Status of Children: Perception vs. Official Statistics

• Activity Number: 297
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2003 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Laura Lippman*+ and Lina Guzman and William P. O'Hare and Kristin A. Moore
• Companies: Child Trends, Inc. and Child Trends, Inc. and The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Child Trends, Inc.
• Keywords: federal statistics ; public perception ; child well-being ; media analysis

Abstract

Although more data are available on child well-being, it is unknown whether these data are improving the public's understanding of children. We assess public perception of child well-being through a series of representative polls. Responses are compared to the best available data to determine how well public perceptions track with reality. We then consider one possible source of the public's misunderstanding, the print media, by analyzing a set of newspaper articles that appeared in five major papers from September 2002 to September 2003. We find that the public is misinformed on a number of important indicators of child well-being and about children's basic social and demographic characteristics. In addition, the results suggest that the public is unaware of the extent to which government programs and public policy impact children's lives. Analysis of newspaper articles reveals that child related topics are not covered very often and when they are covered, the stories usually do not include statistical data; moreover, articles containing statistical data tend to focus on current levels rather than long term trends.