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"If you have minority children from low-income families in very enriched preschool settings ... we see they make very big gains," Smith said. "But how many classrooms are very enriched to the point that we see kids making these very big gains? Not nearly enough." Compounding the issue, experts say, is immigration status. About 4.5 million children of all races born in the U.S. have at least one parent not legally in the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center. More than two-thirds of impoverished Latino children are the children of at least one immigrant parent, the center reported. Latino and Asian immigrants over past two decades are driving a significant portion of the demographic change, and ensuring their children can succeed is critical, said Brookings Institution demographer William Frey. "They're the future of our labor force. They're the future of our economy," Frey said. "They're the people who white baby boomers are going to have to depend on for their Social Security, for their Medicare and just for a productive economy to keep all of us going in the future." The picture isn't all bleak. History and recent data show improvements for the next generations of immigrant families. The Pew Research Center found second-generation Americans, some 20 million U.S.-born children of 20th century immigrants, are better off than their immigrant parents. They have higher incomes, more graduate from college and are homeowners and fewer live in poverty, the study found. Many experts on low-income children see good health as one more building block for education and prosperity. Children are less likely to learn if they are ill and missing school and unable to see a doctor.
On a recent weekday, 9-month-old Anderson sat on his mother's lap in the waiting room of the clinic at Mary's Center, a community organization in the nation's capital. He had struggled for three days with diarrhea, cold symptoms and vomiting. He and his two siblings are American citizens, but their father and mother, Alba, who did not want her last names revealed because neither parent is in the country legally, are not. The children's health care is covered by Medicaid, and Alba says she wants them to be healthy so they can have a better life. "They have to go to college," said Alba, originally from El Salvador. "They have to do better, since their mother can't." Anderson's generation will be the first to fully grow up under the new federal health insurance mandate taking effect next year. The act requires free preventive services and also extends money for the Children's Health Insurance Program through 2015. In 2011, about 94 percent of black children, 92.3 percent of Asian/Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children and 95 percent of white children had health insurance coverage, while 87.2 percent of Hispanic children and 83.4 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native children had some form of health insurance coverage, according to a study by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families. The numbers of uninsured children are at a historic low -- just 7.5 percent, said Joan Alker, the center's executive director. While 73.1 percent of white children had private coverage, more than half of black and Hispanic children got health care through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Programs and similar federal and state subsidized programs, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics reported. "We have the increasing rates of childhood asthma, childhood obesity and these are going to lead to problems later in life, so it's far better to make sure those kids have health insurance so you can address those issues as much as possible now," Alker said.
___ Online: America Healing: http://tinyurl.com/32gh45l National Center for Children in Poverty:
http://nccp.org/
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