Black Child National Agenda, Policy 4
Expand Family and Medical Leave Act
The period following childbirth is a crucial time for ensuring optimal health of both the child and mother. The fourth policy of the Black Child National Agenda advocates expanding access to family and medical leave to mandate 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave. This would allow parents and other caregivers to provide safe and nurturing care while addressing unexpected physical health, mental health, or developmental challenges. The data dashboard below shows statistical information relevant to births, infant death, fetal death, and maternal mortality.
Key Insights & Analysis
- The average income of Black Americans is significantly less than that of other Americans.
- Black American children age 0-5 experience poverty at higher rates than other Americans.
- Unemployment rates for Black Americans are higher than other races/ethnicities.
- Black children experience poverty at almost double the rate of all other races/ethnicities in the US.
About the Data
The data used in the above dashboards are from the following sources:
IPUMS USA, American Community Survey – https://usa.ipums.org/usa/
Bureau of Labor Statistics – https://www.bls.gov/
US Census Bureau – https://www.census.gov/
Child Opportunity Index – https://www.diversitydatakids.org/child-opportunity-index
When working with data from the American Community Survey, because Chinese & Japanese are the two largest subgroups of Asian-Americans, those two groups were isolated & combined in order to present a more concise representation. As a result, the label “Chinese & Japanese” was used in the data visualizations rather than “Asian”.
Race/Ethnic Descriptors
We use the term “Black” as a pan-ethnic description of anyone having any ancestral heritage from Africa. This includes individuals who identify as African American—those who were primarily born in America and are descendants of enslaved Africans—as well as those living in America who identify as Black African or Afro-Caribbean. “Black” also includes those who reported being Black alone or in combination with one or more races or ethnicities in their responses to the U.S. Census, such as Afro-Latine.
Consistent with experts in the field, we use Latine to refer to individuals whose cultural background originated in Latin America. While Latinx is being used as a gender-inclusive term to refer to people with Latin American backgrounds, Spanish-speakers find that Latinx is unpronounceable in Spanish. Therefore, we have opted to use the gender-inclusive term Latine, commonly used throughout Spanish-speaking Latin American.