Study Sees Grim Future for Growing Group of Children

A large and growing minority of California children face a grim future of poverty, poor education and health problems unless social services deal better with immigration and the changing nature of families, according to a new study by a think-tank composed of education experts from Stanford University, UC Berkeley and USC.

While most California children are better off than ever before, there remains an alarming number of children “whose condition is bad and probably going to get much worse,” said Michael Kirst, a Stanford education professor and co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), which issued the report Monday.

The study recommends, among other things, that:

- Many social services be provided at schools to ensure better coordination.

- More attention and more money be provided for preventive programs, such as prenatal medical care and preschool centers.

- Teachers be given better training about health and child abuse.

- More attention be paid to the needs of Latino and Asian immigrant families.

Services for children offered by the state, counties and cities are often fragmented, inefficient and too late, Kirst said.

“The system is weak on prevention and basically responds only when the kid is in deep trouble,” he said at a press conference at USC.

The report, called “Conditions of Children in California,” projected worrisome trends linked mainly to immigration, population growth and changing families. Among those:

- In 1988, the state had 7.3 million children, or one of nine of all children under 18 in the nation. By the year 2000, the figure will rise to 8.7 million or one out of eight. The growth will increase school costs by $20.6 billion in the next decade, not including costs for school buildings.

- The percentage of California children living in poverty has jumped from 15% in 1980 to 23% in 1987, and further increases are expected. Poor children are more likely to die in infancy, become pregnant as teen-agers or drop out of school, the study says.

- Half of all children in the state will live at some time in a single-parent household. One in four is born to an unmarried mother, and more than half the black children in California are born to single mothers. Such factors tend to be accompanied by increased health, academic and social problems for youngsters.

- New waves of immigrants and their relatively high birth rate will strain social services in unexpected ways. By the year 2000, 36% of California children will be Latino, 13% Asian, 9% black and the remaining 42% Anglo. The relatively quick economic adaptation by Japanese and Chinese immigrants may not be duplicated by more recent ones from war-torn nations such as Laos and Cambodia, the study suggests.

- California incarcerates juvenile offenders at a rate twice the national average. On any given day, about 430 per 100,000 California juveniles are incarcerated, compared to 230 for Ohio and 125 for Texas. California facilities for young offenders are badly overcrowded, and juvenile probation officers are overworked.

- One in 10 of California’s pregnant teen-agers receive no prenatal medical care or do not begin care until the third trimester. The absence of such care is linked to lower birth weights, which in turn can lead to lengthy hospitalizations for infants and a greater incidence of disabilities.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, California was regarded as a leader among states in its children’s health, child-care and anti-delinquency programs, the report states.

“While California retains leadership in some areas, that leadership has faded over the past 10 years. Despite the changing contexts in which children live, few new initiatives have been mounted,” wrote Michael S. Wald, a Stanford law professor who helped prepare the report.

At the press conference, Kirst said he could not estimate how much money is needed to improve the lives of poor children, but he advocated changing constitutional limits on spending, such as the Gann Amendment.

“Some way the voters got us into this, and some way the voters are going to get us out of it,” said Kirst, who served as president of the state Board of Education during former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s Administration.

However, Kirst added that some of the problems could be solved with better organization, rather than more money, and that current levels of spending would be more effective if focused on preventive programs.

In many ways, social services are based on the experiences of whites and blacks, but those models no longer fit California, according to Policy Analysis for California Education. Even recreation for children is outdated--there are plenty of baseball diamonds in the Los Angeles area but not enough fields for soccer, the predominant sport in Latino culture.

The two-year, $350,000 study was funded by the James Irvine Foundation and the Stuart Foundation. In the past, Policy Analysis for California Education has studied a variety of education topics, but the current project reflected a belief among the consortium’s leaders that a wider look at children’s problems was needed. Researchers from Policy Analysis for California Education’s three sponsoring universities took part, along with experts at UC San Francisco and Oakland Children’s Hospital.