Volume 12, No.4, October 2001

Where Missouri Children Are Living

Data from the 2000 Census released on June 27, 2001 reports where Missouri children are living and with whom. The proportion of children living in single parent homes continued to increase during the 1990s along with an increase in such family housholds as discussed in the July issue of Step by Step. In this issue we provide more detailed data regarding living arrangements of children by county.

• Of the 1,427,692 children under age 18, virtually all reside in private households (99.6%). The remaining 6,258 reside in group quarters. About half of the children in group quarters are in institutional settings and half in noninstitutional settings such as private dormitories.

• A very small minority of children under 18 (0.1%) are themselves either the householder or spouse.

• The majority of all children (97.3%) live with either their parents or other relatives.

Of these, 947,052, two-thirds, (66.3%) live with both parents (natural, step or adoptive) in married-couple families.

• By 2000, almost one of four children lived in a single parent home compared to less than one of five in 1990. The number of children in single parent homes headed by a male increased by 78.2 percent. Nationally, single fathers with primary custody of their children has risen about 50 percent from 1990 to 2000. In Missouri, single parent families now account for 24.3 percent of children up from 18.7 percent in 1990. Of these, 72,199 are living in father-only families (5.1%), and 274,155 (19.2%) in mother-only families.

An increase in births to unmarried mothers is one of the contributors to the increase in children living with just one parent. According to a 1995 report to Congress on out-of-wedlock childbearing, this increase "reflects changes in marital behavior as much or more than changes in fertility behavior."

 • Most of the children living with "other relatives" are living with grandparents (77,857). There has been a growing number of children living with grandparents across the country. Nationally, 5.6 percent of all U.S. children lived in a home maintained by a grandparent in 1998 compared to just 3.2 percent in 1970.

 • About 30,000 children live with nonrelatives (2.1%). This would include but is not limited to foster children. To some these are considered our most vulnerable children.The 1997 National Survey of America's Children reports that the "Percent of Children ages 6-17 Who Care to Do Well in School" was 55.8 percent for children living with two biological/adoptive parents, 43.7 percent in one-parent homes, and 40.6 percent of those with no parents.

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Table 1

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