Generations United is grateful to the sources of this data, the Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Center, the United States Census Bureau, and the United States Children’s Bureau Adoption and Foster Care Reporting System (AFCARS) for compiling and sharing this important information. All 52 fact sheets can be found at grandfactsheets.org.
Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Center
To see data on children in kinship care, go to the following link:
Table 10455- Children in Kinship Care in the United States
On the left side of the page there is a column with different filter options. Select “By State”. If you’d like to just see a certain state’s specific data, click “uncheck all” after selecting “By State”. Then select your desired state individually. You can select multiple states and years if you would like to compare data for this topic.
To see data on children being raised by kin in foster care by state, go to the following link:
Table 6247- Children in Foster Care by Placement
Repeat the same process as above to select a specific state. In the left-side column, select the year you’d like to view data from. You can select up to ten years at a time if you want to compare data. Generations United calculates the number of children being raised by kin in foster care as the number of children in the “Foster Family Home- Relative” category of the table.
Adoption and Foster Care Reporting System (AFCARS)
To see data on children being raised by kin in foster care nationwide, go to the following link:
National Adoption and Foster Care Statistics
Select the latest report. The statistic for children being raised by kin in foster care is on the first page, under the heading “Most Recent Placement Setting”.
United States Census Bureau
Go to one of the links listed below. This will take you to the national data. Once the data table loads, you will see a blue button on the right of the page that says, “Customize Table”. After clicking this, you will see a banner of filter options above the data, including “Geos” and “Yrs”. To see data from a specific state, click “Geos” and then select the State option from the drop down menu that appears. Select your state (or states, if you want to compare) and then click “Close”. If you’d like to see older data, you can repeat this process with the “Yrs” filter option.
To see data on children living in homes where a relative is head of household, visit:
Table S0901- Children Characteristics
Generations United calculates the number of children living in homes where a relative is head of household by using the combined percentages of the “Grandchild” and “Other relatives” designations under the “Relationship to Householder” category.
To see data on grandparents responsible for grandchildren, visit:
The number of grandparents responsible for their grandchildren is found by scrolling to the right in the table, in the “Grandparents living with own grandchildren under 18” line.
Generations United calculates the ratio of children being raised by kin in foster care to children being raised by kin outside the child welfare system by dividing the number of children in kinship care (Table 10455) by the number of children placed in foster homes with relatives (Table 6247).