Crisis Worsening for State Youths, Report Shows : Children: Teen pregnancy, incarceration and unemployment rise, advocacy group finds. One of few pluses is decline in dropout rate.

California’s teen-agers are far more likely to become pregnant, be jailed or be killed than they were four years ago, and they are less likely to have a job and to live with a parent, according to a report issued Wednesday by a children’s advocacy group.

The annual report card prepared by the nonprofit Children Now gives the state a symbolic “D minus” and notes that California’s youth have experienced a 23% rise in teen birth rates, a 25% jump in youth incarceration rates and a 45% rise in juvenile homicide rates in the past four years. In the past year alone, the report found, unemployment among teen-agers rose from 15.6% to 20.1%.

For three years in a row, California merited a “D” in its overall policies toward children--a “strong warning signal . . . which clearly was not heeded,” said James P. Steyer, President of Children Now. “When it comes to teen-agers, the state has fallen from a ‘D’ to a disgraceful ‘U’, or Unsatisfactory grade.”

In some areas, the condition of children has improved slightly. The report found that the school dropout rate between 10th and 12th grades declined between 1987-88 to 1990-91, from 22.3% to 18.2%. The improvement, however, masks rising dropout rates in some low-income communities.

The report tracked the well-being of children across the state over the past year by measuring 27 benchmarks of health, safety and welfare.

A companion report, “Saving the Dream,” looked at the past two decades and concluded that the dream of a good life for children in this state has faded for many.

“All parents hope to provide their children with a comfortable home, a safe neighborhood and a good education. . . . Today, the realization of this dream is out of reach for millions of California children and families,” the report said.

California families, for instance, are far less able to provide homes for their children than they were two decades ago. Between 1969 and 1989, the report said, the median family income rose 7%, to $40,559 a year, whereas median house prices in the state rose 123%, to $193,360.

The supply of affordable rental housing fell behind demand. In 1990, according to the Department of Housing and Community Development, 20% of the state’s rental housing units were considered overcrowded--nearly double the number in 1980.

In Orange County, while the average income for a family increased by 10%, the cost of rents leaped from an average of $587 to $790 per month.

Providing children with adequate medical care also has become more difficult for more families. During the past decade, the Children Now study found, there has been a 41% increase in the proportion of California children who do not have health insurance. Now one in four children lack health coverage.

Children are spending less time with their families than in the past.

Compared to 1960, they now spend an average of 10-12 hours less per week with their parents, partly because of a continuing rise in the number of working women. Half of mothers with children ages 6 to 17 worked outside the home in 1970, 65% in 1980 and 72% in 1990. A recent study also found that families are working longer hours and more days of the year.

Even when families are together, “too often” they continue to equate “family time” with “TV time,” the study said. In 1989, the average household watched about 7 hours of television per day--an hour more than in 1970. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 53% of 13-year-olds watched three to five hours of television a day, compared to 39% in 1982.

What has touched children’s lives most profoundly, however, is poverty and violence.

In 45 of the state’s 58 counties, the child poverty rate increased between 1970 and 1989. By 1989, the study found, 18.2% of the state’s children--or 1.4 million--lived below the poverty line.

The percentage of children living in poverty in Orange County grew from 9% in 1979 to 11.4% in 1989, the report states.

“The county has been getting richer, but the percentage of children living in poverty has grown,” said Wendy Lazarus, vice president for policy at Children Now. “Most people assume that Orange County is an affluent community where you don’t have poor children.”

Similarly, more than twice as many young people were victims of homicide in California in 1990 than in 1974. By 1990, the study said, homicide was the second leading cause of death among young people, following traffic accidents.

The number of reported child abuse and neglect cases deemed serious enough to warrant emergency response also rose, from 50.8 per 1,000 children in 1987 to 70.2 in 1991, the study said. In extreme and continued cases of abuse or neglect, children are removed from their homes and placed in institutions or foster care. The rate at which that happened climbed from 8.8 cases per 1,000 youths to 10 per 1,000, the study found.

Children Now did not provide Orange County statistics for most of the categories cited in their report, including homicide, abuse and neglect cases.

Despite an improvement in dropout rates, California continued to rank low in public school student-teacher ratio--49th of 51 states in 1990. While the average national spending on education was $4,952 per student, California spent only $4,645, which put it in 25th place nationwide, up from 31st place in 1989.

“This is probably the first time in history that we are leaving the next generation with a worse legacy than our parents left us. . . . There is no one single cause of these problems . . . or one person or set of policies that can be blamed,” said Wendy Lazarus, vice president for policy at Children Now.

Yet the solution, Lazarus said, is clear.

“We must put children first,” she said. “We are now paying the price in the 1990s of our neglect of children in the 1970s and 1980s. . . . Taxpayers must force lawmakers to make tough choices.”

For example, Lazarus said, the state could save $2 billion by closing “loopholes in tax regulations governing the transfer of business property, which would just about cover Gov. Wilson’s proposed cuts to the education budget next year.” And she said that by reducing or eliminating business meal deductions, the state could increase its annual revenue by $200 million to $600 million, which would help avert proposed cuts in Aid to Families with Dependent Children grants.

SCHOOL BUDGET STANDOFF: Assembly passes education cuts, but not deep enough for Gov. Wilson. A26