Poverty, Violence Haunt State’s Youths : Society: Study finds California teen-agers had a 15% increase in the violent death rate between 1988 and 1989. Children nationwide are also more vulnerable than ever to crime and pregnancy.

America’s youth are more likely to live in poverty and die because of violence than ever before, according to a report to be issued today by a Washington think tank.

Clearly worse off than a decade or five years ago, California’s teen-agers are especially vulnerable to crime, poverty and other stresses of urban life.

The report prepared by the Center for the Study of Social Policy found that between 1988 and 1989, California experienced a 15% increase in the violent death rate among teen-agers, a 4% increase in juvenile incarcerations, and a 6% increase in teen-age pregnancies. Nationwide, the teen-ager death rate rose 11%, driven almost entirely by a rise in suicides and homicides.

By the beginning of the 1990s, more than 20% of the nation’s youth--including 1.5 million young Californians--were living below the poverty line. That represented a 22% increase for the country during the 1980s and a 33% increase in California.

On five of nine benchmarks used to measure child well-being, the conditions for America’s youth deteriorated over the past 10 years. For California’s 7.7 million children, six of the nine benchmarks worsened, putting the state in 32nd place, just ahead of Texas and Missouri, and just behind West Virginia and South Dakota. New York, with problems similar to California’s, ranked 36th. North Dakota ranked first and Mississippi last.

Though the plight of the nation’s children is “profoundly disturbing,” the details no longer have much shock value because a “national pattern of child neglect was firmly established years ago,” said Judith H. Weitz, coordinator of the study.

“What is troubling now is how little is being done to stem the tide of neglect,” Weitz said. “Children are at risk, the risk is rising in every part of the country and we are doing little, if anything, to stop it.

“Even the ‘good news’ (in the report) is not so good,” Weitz said in a telephone interview from her Washington office.

For instance, more than half the states, including California, made modest improvements in high school graduation rates. According to the study, 69.6% of ninth-graders nationwide graduated in four years (the figure was 64.4% in California), yet only 51.6% of Latino youths graduated on time, making Latinos the ethnic group least likely to complete high school in four years.

Other comparatively good news was that in every state, fewer babies died during their first year in 1989 than they did in 1980. California, which ranked 12th in the nation, did especially well in improving its infant mortality rate, from 11.1 deaths to 8.5 deaths per 1,000 births. Yet in California, as in the nation, black babies were twice as likely as white babies to die in their first year. The black infant mortality rate was about the same in 1989 as the white infant mortality rate had been in 1970, the study found.

Minority children did not fare well on other health issues. Last year, about 18% of all white children in the United States did not have any public or private health insurance, but nearly 25% of black children and almost 35% of Latino children were not covered. Nearly 23% of California’s youths went without private or public health coverage--an increase of 11% in 10 years.

Families and income continued to change over the decade, and that also had an impact on children.

During the ‘80s, the study found, wealthy families got wealthier and poor families got poorer. In the top income bracket, family earnings rose 9.2% to an average of $79,000, whereas families in the bottom income bracket dropped nearly 13% to $9,190.

On average, the study found, families had less income to spend on bringing up their children. Between 1979 and 1990, real median income of families with children fell by 5%, while incomes of adults without children rose 7%.

The number and proportion of children living with their parents declined during the past decade. By 1990, more than 7% of the nation’s children lived with other relatives and 2.3% lived outside the family--with neighbors, friends or in institutions. The figures were even higher in California, where nearly 9% of children were living with other relatives and 3.3% were living outside the family.

As in previous decades, there continued to be a striking increase in the number of women in the work force. In 1970, 39% of U.S. children had working mothers. In 1980, the number had risen to 53%, and in 1990 it was 61%.

“For most parents, raising their kids remains a central and important part of their lives,” Weitz said. “Yet they have fewer financial resources, less time, more stress, fewer outside support systems to fall back on.

“It is becoming less and less clear,” she said, “what it means to be a responsible parent.”