Where do adopted and stepchildren live?

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This is an html transcription of the original Special Report document, authored by Rose M. Kreider, which can be found on the Census Bureau Web site in .pdf format at www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-6.pdf.

The proportion of children under 18 who were adopted - who make up three-quarters of adopted children of all ages - hardly varied by region or state in 2000 (see Table 2).¹⁰ The percent in the Midwest (2.6 percent) was slightly higher than in the other three regions (each 2.4 percent). By state, this percentage ranged from about 2.0 in Delaware, California, Texas, and Louisiana to 3.9 percent in Alaska. As previously noted, information adoption has been found to common among some Alaskan Native groups,¹¹ which may have contributed to the higher percentage in Alaska.

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Although the state inset maps in Figure 3 seem to indicate that a relatively higher percentage of adopted children were found in a broad geographic band ranging diagonally across the country from Florida to Washington, it should be noted that both the levels and the range of these percentages are only a few percentage points. The most important observation about geographic patterns in the percentage of children who were adopted is that adoption is a family-building process which takes place in all states in about the same proportions. As mentioned previously, counties in Alaska with the highest percentages of children of the householder who were adopted likely reflect Alaskan Native communities in which the meaning and practice of adoption may differ from that in other communities. The fact that Census 2000 data include various types of adoption, each of which may have its own geographic pattern, may also contribute to the lack of a distinct geographic pattern when all types of adoptions are considered jointly.

WHERE DO STEPCHILDREN LIVE?

Nationally, 5 percent of children of the householder under age 18 in 2000 were stepchildren. At the regional level, percentages of children of the householder under 18 who were stepchildren varied more than the corresponding percentages for adopted children, ranging from 3.3 percent in the Northeast to 6.1 percent in the South, with both the Midwest and West at about the national average of 5.1 percent. For children under 18, the state with the highest percentage of children of the householder who were stepchildren was Arkansas (8.5 percent), followed by Oklahoma (8.0 percent) and Tennessee (7.0 percent). Two states with percentages just under 3 percent were Massachusetts (2.7 percent) and New York (2.9 percent). Two percent of the children of the householder under 18 in the District of Columbia were stepchildren. The differences in these state percentages are affected by the likelihood that parents remarry after divorce, whether the child lives with the father or the mother after a divorce, and the gender of the householder in remarried-couple families. Since most children continue to live their mothers rather than their fathers, remarried-couple households with the husband as the householder will tend to create more householder-stepchild relationships than remarried couples with the wife as the householder.¹²

¹⁰ The Northeast region includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The Midwest region includes the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The South region includes the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, a state equivalent. The West region includes the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

¹¹ Amy Craver. "Complex Inupiaq Eskimo Households and Relationships in Two Northwest Alaska Rural Communities," Alaska Native Science Commission. University of Alaska, Anchorage, 2001.

¹² The percentage of children of the householder under 18 in married couple households with male householders, by state, was also strongly correlated (r-47) with the percentage of children of the householder who were stepchildren.

Credits: CENSR-6
by Rose M. Kreider

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