The Children of America - Diversity Of Children, Living Arrangements Of Children, Adopted And Foster Children, Children In School

Since the mid-1960s, the proportion of children as part of the total U.S. population has decreased. The percentage of the population under age eighteen peaked in 1960 at 36% and began a decline to 26% by 1990. While the seventy-two million children under age eighteen still represented 26% of the population in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that by 2020 only 24% of the population would be children under age eighteen (America's Children in Brief: Key Indicators of Well-Being, 2004, Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2004). As the child population decreased through lower birth rates, the number of Americans over the age of sixty-five began to claim an increasing percentage of the overall population.