A Child’s Day: 2003

This report highlights many aspects of children’s lives that are related to their well-being, such as children’s living arrangements and their family’s characteristics, early child care experiences, daily interaction with parents, extracurricular activities, academic experience, and parents’ educational expectations. These data show that income and family structure affect various aspects of children’s everyday life. Children living in families below the poverty level, children whose parents have lower levels of educational attainment, and children in families with single parents tend to have less daily interaction with their parents, such as talking, being read to, or sharing daily meals, than their counterparts in other situations. Children whose families live below poverty and with lower levels of family income are less likely to participate in extracurricular activities and to be academically on-track than children living in families above poverty and with higher levels of family income.