Use of Multiracial Category Underestimates Disproportionate Representation of Black and Indigenous Children in Foster Care

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When we include children who are Black or Black in combination with another race(s), 35 percent of the foster care population is identified as Black, compared to only 16 percent of children in the general population—a 19 percentage point difference. But when we look at the same statistic for children who identify only as Black (and therefore exclude children who are both Black and another race, as is common practice in the field), this disproportionately gap is still large, although considerably less. In this scenario, 22 percent of the foster care population would be considered Black, compared to 14 percent of the general child population—an 8 percentage point difference.

This trend exists for Indigenous children as well: Using the typical methods of examining disproportionality, the single-race-only definition, 2 percent of the foster care population and 1 percent of the general child population would be considered Indigenous. However, when we examine the data for children who are Indigenous or Indigenous in combination with another race/ethnicity, 2 percent of children in the general population are identified as being Indigenous alone or in combination, compared to 5 percent of the foster care population, widening the disproportionality gap significantly.

Why it’s critical to have accurate data on foster care demographics

An accurate reflection of the changing demographic landscape would allow child welfare administrators and policymakers to develop policy and practice solutions that move toward more equitable systems. Better capturing the racial identities of multiracial children and families will support better analyses of disproportionality in child welfare and more accurate understanding of the needs and experiences of children and families.

While the child welfare field generally acknowledges that Black and Indigenous children are overrepresented in foster care compared to their proportion of the general population, the methods used to categorize children into racial/ethnic groups result in an underestimation of the scope of the disproportionality. The undercount in current data is primarily due to how multiracial children are counted. The gap between the percentage of Black and Indigenous youth in foster care relative to their proportion in the general population widens considerably when we include both children who are only Black and only Indigenous or Black and Indigenous in combination with another race(s) in the calculation—rather than look only at single-race categories.

For this reason, current single-race-only categorization and analysis techniques do not accurately capture the extent of the disproportionality within the child welfare system for Black and Indigenous children alone, and do not account for multiracial individuals in a way that allows us to understand their diverse and unique experiences. Despite previous federal guidance that encourages inclusive and detailed approaches when presenting data for multiracial individuals, these practices remain uncommon in child welfare data reporting. Given the recently published revisions to the OMB standards for data collection on race and ethnicity—which explicitly recommend encouraging all respondents to select all relevant options when responding to questions about race and ethnicity—researchers and public sector leaders now have clearer guidance on how to incorporate more inclusive approaches a part of regular data reporting.

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Methodology

To obtain a better estimate of the magnitude of Black and Indigenous children’s overrepresentation in foster care, we used two methods to calculate the percentage of Black and Indigenous children in foster care and in the general population. First, we used the method aligned with what is typically used in research (single-race categorization); then, we used a new method that includes multiracial children who identified as Black in combination with another race(s) or as Indigenous in combination another race(s).

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The author thanks Child Trends staff members for their reviews and feedback on this blog: Rachel Rosenberg, Sarah Catherine Williams, Jody Franklin, Brent Franklin, and Kristen Harper.

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Footnotes

[1] As this piece will show, much analysis excludes multiracial children from measurements of Black or Indigenous children.

[2] Data for the general child population are sourced from the U. S. Census Bureau and are publicly available on the U.S. Census Bureau website (NC-EST2021-ALLDATA). Foster care data are sourced from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), Foster Care File 2021.

[3] The disproportionality index is the ratio of the percentage of each racial/ethnic group in foster care compared to the same racial/ethnic group percentage in the general population. For example, a disproportionality index of 2 would indicate that racial/ethnic group was twice as represented in foster care as in the general population.