- Reeve S. Kennedy, Marina H. Potter, and Sarah A. Font
- June 2023
- Focus-on-Poverty-391b
- Link to Focus-on-Poverty-39-1b (PDF)
- Link to 39-1-fop-classroom-supplement (PDF)
Reeve Kennedy, Marina Potter, and Sarah Font address the intersection of racial disparities, well-being outcomes, and youth experiences in foster care. The authors describe how outcomes related to education, employment, housing, and mental health correspond with demographic factors such as age, race and ethnicity, and geographic location to provide a more nuanced understanding of these important relationships.
Takeaways
- Youth with foster care experience may have more in common with each other across racial lines, compared to the general population, given the typically shared experiences of socioeconomic and other disadvantages among youth placed into foster care.
- Black youth with experience in foster care have 20% lower odds of achieving similar employment or substantial earnings, compared to White foster care youth.
Hispanic youth with foster care histories have 10% lower odds of achieving stable housing compared to non-Hispanic foster care youth. - Black and Indigenous youth remain historically over-represented in the foster care population.
Categories
Child Development & Well-Being, Children, Inequality & Mobility, Racial/Ethnic Inequality, Transition to Adulthood
Tags
Foster Care, National, Quantitative Research, Race/Ethnicity