Children Left Behind Report Features New Web Site Data

The Harvard School of Public Health in partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Health will launch a website that brings together a wide range of indicators of how people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds live in U.S. metropolitan areas. The web site, www.DiversityData.org includes comparative data about housing, neighborhood conditions, residential integration, and education, and goes beyond many similar websites by including information on health factors such as disability rates, health insurance, births to teenager mothers, births to unmarried mothers, prenatal care, smoking during pregnancy, preterm births, and low birthweight rates.

The launch will be accompanied by the online publication of the first report in a series of data analyses drawn from DiversityData.org. The report, “Children Left Behind: How Metropolitan Areas Are Failing American Children,” examines the well-being of children in the 100 largest metropolitan areas — where about two-thirds of American children live. The report scores metropolitan areas for the living conditions they provide to white, black, Hispanic, and Asian children based on indicators of health, family income, home ownership, residential and school segregation, and neighborhood and school socioeconomic environment. Using a summary measure of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, the report shows the metropolitan areas with worst and best neighborhood environments for children of different racial/ethnic groups.