(theroot) As adults wrestle with rising foreclosure rates and disappearing jobs, child-development experts are reporting that children may end up shouldering some of the most severe, long-lasting consequences of the recession of 2008, according to the Foundation for Child Development (FCD). Working with an index of 28 indicators of quality of life called the Overall Composite Child Well-Being Index (CWI), the foundation looked at seven key areas to see how the nation's children are bearing up under the stress of the recession and how they will do in years to come. The results show that kids from preschool to age 19 may have to fight the detrimental impact of America's financial crisis for much of their lives. African-American kids will be "harder hit than their white counterparts because a larger proportion of children of color live in poverty," the report states. The CWI reveals that "virtually all of the progress made in family economic well-being since 1975 will be wiped out for many," as individuals, organizations and governments trim budgets. Kenneth C. Land, Ph.D., a professor of sociology and demography at Duke who conducted the research and wrote the CWI report, explains, "In order to measure the full impact of the recession, we looked at trend data from 1975 to 2008, then projected what may happen through 2012." The survey numbers revealed a host of challenges for children in middle- and lower-income families, "but in each category, the risks would be 1.5 percent to 2 percent higher for African-American children," he says. In almost every area measured -- health, community and family life, emotional well-being -- children have lost ground. Only educational attainment remained the same: frozen at 1975 levels. The most stunning numbers in the CWI report are those that assess poverty. "The percentage of children living below the poverty line is expected to peak at 21 percent in 2010, the highest rate in 20 years -- nearly 16 million kids. The rate of children living in extreme poverty (50 percent below the poverty line) is projected to climb 10.1 percent in 2010 to 7.41 million children," according to CWI figures. "This situation will be particularly hard on African-American children because they were already disproportionately affected by poverty before the recession began," says Alvin Poussaint, M.D., an expert on children's mental health and a professor at Harvard, after reviewing the CWI at The Root's request.

Join BBN for free to post a comment. If you already have an account, please login here to post a comment. You will be returned to this page after logging in.