Kids are not as healthy as they once were in the U.S., according to a study published in the journal JAMA. Several health metrics have shown a marked decline since 2007, including the prevalence of chronic conditions, obesity and mental health concerns. And environmental factors and government policies are also likely to cause further health declines. “Kids are the canaries in the coal mine,” said Christopher Forrest, an author of the study, to The Associated Press. “When kids’ health changes, it’s because they’re at increased vulnerability, and it reflects what’s happening in society at large.”
Infant and child mortality
The rates of death among children and infants have increased. In the 1960s, U.S. children were “dying at about the same rate as in countries with similar incomes,” said CNN. However, the U.S. now has “about 54 excess child deaths per day compared with 18 other wealthy countries.” In infants, the increase is largely attributed to prematurity and sudden death. In children and adolescents, the “gap was fueled by gun violence, motor-vehicle crashes and substance abuse,” said NPR. Firearms became the leading cause of death among children in the U.S. in 2020 and have remained that way ever since, according to a report by Johns Hopkins.
Mental conditions
Among children ages 3 to 17, the “prevalence of chronic conditions increased from 39.9% to 45.7% in pediatric health systems and from 25.8% to 31.0% in the general population,” said a news release about the study. These conditions include “anxiety (which had the highest level of increase), autism, behavioral/conduct problems, developmental delay, depression, speech/language disorder, vision problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,” the study said.
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Many of these mental conditions could be eased through proper intervention. “Schools could restrict mobile phones so kids interact more, easing problems with loneliness, anxiety and depression,” said CNN. “Parents can also encourage kids to play outside and engage in more unstructured time to be social and develop their imaginations.” Ensuring proper amounts of sleep and physical activity could also help.
Physical conditions
Poor health has also manifested physically. From 2007 to 2023, “childhood obesity rates for 2- to 19-year-old individuals significantly increased from 17.0% to 20.9%,” said the study. Obesity, especially in childhood, can increase the risk for future health problems, including “heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver disease, sleep apnea and certain cancers,” said the Mayo Clinic.
The early onset of menstruation, which is when menstruation starts before the age of 12, also rose from 9.1% to 14.8%. This can lead to both mental problems, including depression and anxiety, as well as physical problems like diabetes and heart disease. It can also “cause early fusion of the epiphyseal growth plates; therefore, the young woman’s final adult height may be shorter than her potential genetic height,” said an editorial in the journal Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics.
The future
There’s no single reason for the decline of children’s health, but it “may be linked to broader environmental, nutritional and societal stressors that are yet to be fully understood,” said Newsweek. These stressors are not likely to go away. “Our kids are being raised in a very toxic environment, and it’s not just the chemicals. It’s not just the food and the iPhones. It’s much broader,” Forrest said to CNN. “It’s what we call the developmental ecosystem, and it makes it very challenging to change it.”
The health of the country has been the focus of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. It is “drawing welcome attention to chronic diseases and important root causes such as ultra-processed foods,” said an editorial published alongside the JAMA study. However, MAHA is “pursuing other policies that will work against the health interests of children,” including promoting vaccine skepticism. Funding cuts to Medicaid as well as other federal programs, like those in the “big, beautiful bill,” also spell trouble.
