What is the Forum?

Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics

In 1994, the Chief Statistician at OMB and the leaders of six agencies created the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. The Forum, which now has participants from across government as well as partners in private research organizations, fosters coordination, collaboration, and integration of collection and reporting of Federal data on child and family issues and conditions. The Forum was formally established by Executive Order No. 13045 in April 1997. Its members work to:

• Develop priorities for collecting enhanced data on children and youth.
• Improve the reporting and dissemination of information on the status of children to the policy community and the general public.

Every year, as required by the Executive Order, the Forum releases its annual monitoring report, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. This report presents the most important indicators of the well-being of the nation's children, based on data currently available. The indicators were chosen through a careful examination of available data drawn from national surveys and vital records. Indicators were chosen that are: easy to understand by broad audiences; objectively based on substantial research connecting them to child well-being and based on reliance data; balanced so that no single area of children's lives dominates the report; measured regularly so that they can be updated to show trends over time; and representative of large segments of the population rather than one particular group. The report also presents a challenge to Federal statistical agencies by describing needed indicators for which data are either not available or are not of sufficiently high quality.

Forum mission and description

2000 Forum Activities

1998 Forum Activities

Planning Committee description and membership

Reporting Committee description and membership

Data Collection Committee description and membership