It is easier to build strong children, statesman Frederick Douglass once observed, than to repair broken men.
We have a decidedly mixed report card on this front in Orange County, as the county’s latest “Annual Report on the Conditions of Children” illustrates in dispassionate — if somewhat passion-inducing — facts and figures.
There are several positive signs. More than 90% of all pregnancies include prenatal care; vaccination rates are high; kids have more access to emotional support; lower income students are doing better in math and language; foster kids are getting more timely permanent placements, and local kids are less likely than their peers around the state to get arrested, with fewer local cases leading to serious legal outcomes.
The negative signs, though, are blinking red. Child poverty is rising, as seen by increases in food assistance and free lunch programs. A higher percentage of local kids face “insecure housing” (read: homelessness). There are more preterm births and low birth weight babies. Teen pregnancies and dropout rates are both rising. There are, among children and teens, more “accidental deaths” — which include drug overdoses. More kids born drug-exposed and more are reporting that they suffer from depression. And child abuse, locally, remains a serious concern, with the county posting a higher rate of abuse than the state average.
Fourteen babies born between Dec. 23 and Dec. 26 at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital in Long Beach on Tuesday, December 23, 2025. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Press-Telegram/SCNG)
Some things in the report that are presented as as milestones worth celebrating strike us as particularly “meh.”
More than half of local high school graduates completed the courses required to apply to UC and CSU schools. More than half of littles were developmentally ready for kindergarten. That’s up, which is great, but is “more than half” enough? Also, there were more licensed childcare spaces – 84,842 last year, to be exact — but prices remain crazy high.
Vital to big-picture planning here: There are fewer and fewer kids in Orange County.
The birth rate in O.C. dropped almost 23% over a decade, from 38,610 in 2014 to 29,877 in 2023.
School enrollment also fell by about 13%, from 493,030 in 2015 to 429,869 in 2024.
This will have profound policy implications for a state where some 40% of general fund revenue is dedicated to K-12 schools and community colleges.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors accepted the 31st annual edition of the report on Dec. 16. Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said the report isn’t just a resource, it’s also a path to help shape public policy.
“We know that kids who are not healthy can’t learn. Kids who are hungry can’t learn. Kids who don’t have a home have a real difficult time learning. So all these pressures are on us to make sure we provide a good runway for students to be successful.”
Want
Poverty, the report notes, can have a profound impact on a child’s entire life.
It’s linked to higher risk for poor academic achievement, abuse and neglect, behavioral and social/emotional problems, physical health problems and developmental delays. It manifests as substandard and insecure housing, a lack of food, inadequate child care, difficult-to-access health care, unsafe neighborhoods and under-resourced schools.
More than half of Orange County’s kids were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in the last school year — 55.2% (up from 54.1% the year before, which was up from 48.3% in 2015). The local numbers are still lower than the state average of 62.8%, but the trend should make your mouth drop open.
When accounting for cost of living, family resources and social safety net benefits, the child poverty rate in Orange County hit 14.5%, exceeding the state child poverty rate of 13.8%, the report said.
More local children are also without the steady rudder of a fixed home.
“The high mobility, trauma and poverty associated with homelessness and insecure housing create educational barriers, low school attendance, and developmental, physical and emotional problems for students,” the report said. “A homeless student or one living in a crowded environment may experience a greater tendency for stress and anxiety not knowing where they are going to sleep each night nor having a consistent, quiet, permanent place to study or do their homework. Lack of secure housing may be associated with lower standardized test scores in all areas.”
In the 2023/24 school year, 6.7% of O.C. students “experienced insecure housing,” higher than the 5.2% in 2014/15.
School districts with the highest percentage of insecurely housed students were Magnolia School District (27.2%), Santa Ana Unified (18.7%) and Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified (14.7%). School districts with the lowest percentage were Fountain Valley School District (0.2%), Los Alamitos Unified (0.4%) and Laguna Beach Unified (0.4%).
Health, from drug exposure to infant mortality
Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the number of drug-exposed infants has increased in O.C. since 2015.
This can affect fetal and infant health development, potentially resulting in premature birth, low birth weight and a higher risk of congenital anomalies, the report said. Children exposed to substance use in utero may also face long-term developmental and behavioral challenges.
In 2023, there were 281 infant hospital admissions related to maternal alcohol and drug use.
In 2024, the County of Orange Social Services Agency received 217 substance exposed infant referrals for infants aged 0 to 7 days, which is a 17.9% increase from the 184 referrals in 2015.
And both of those numbers, which track related but distinct issues, are far from accurate: “The lack of universal verbal screening for perinatal substance use may contribute to under-diagnosis.” (See our “Born on Drugs” series for more on that.)
On the good news side, more pregnant women were getting prenatal care. In 2023, Orange County’s rate was 90.2%, exceeding both state and national averages.
But despite that, there have been increases in preterm births (to 8.8%) and low birth weights (to 7.4%). “Both preterm and low birth-weight infants face severe, lifelong risks such as developmental delays, serious illnesses and disabilities and early death,” the report said. Using the March of Dimes grading criteria for preterm birth rate, California had a B- and Orange County a B in 2023.
On the mixed-news front, health insurance coverage for kids has yo-yoed. In 2023, 3.4% of children in Orange County were uninsured, an increase from 3.2% in 2022, but down from 5% in 2014.
The number of O.C. kids having kids — technically, the teen birth rate — also has bounced around. Local teens had 599 babies in 2023, down dramatically from 1,570 babies in 2014. But the latest number — 6.2 births per thousand teens ages 15 to 19 — is up from the all-time low of 5.5 births per thousand in 2021.
Infant mortality has shifted in a similar way. In 2023, there were 102 infant deaths in Orange County, equating to 3.2 deaths per 1,000births. That’s down from recent years, but up from 3.0 a decade earlier.
But despite the anti-vax chatter that’s become so fashionable lately, more local kids are being immunized against preventable diseases.
In 2024, 96.0% of Orange County public school kindergartners had up-to-date immunizations, up from 92.5% in 2015 (and higher than California’s recent average of 93.7%). Capistrano Unified School District had the lowest percentage of kindergartners with up-to-date immunization levels (93.1% in 2023), followed by Savanna School District at (93.8%). Laguna Beach Unified had the highest percentage at 98.9%.
“The widespread use of safe, effective childhood vaccinations has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions in the U.S. and globally,” the report said.
Reading and writing
Things are improving for kids in O.C.’s schools, though the gap between haves and have-nots continues to yawn.
In third grade, kids shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Kids who aren’t proficient by third grade are four times more likely to drop out later, the report said.
Slightly more than half (52.7%) of Orange County third graders met or exceeded the statewide achievement standard for English Language Arts in 2023/24. That’s up from 46% in 2014/15, and higher than California’s recent average of 42.8%.
Among kids with financial resources, 69.9% met or exceeded the achievement standards. Among economically disadvantaged students, 39.8% met or exceeded standards.
Silver lining: Over a decade, the percentage of economically disadvantaged students who met or exceeded academic standards jumped from 25% to 39.8%.
The school districts with the highest percentage of thriving third graders were Fountain Valley Elementary (78.3%), Los Alamitos Unified (77.5%), Laguna Beach Unified (71.7%) and Huntington Beach City Elementary at 69.0%.
The school districts with the lowest percentages were Santa Ana Unified (25.4%), Anaheim City (27.3%) and La Habra City Elementary (40.2%).
The story was much the same for math. More than half (57.1%) of Orange County third grade students met or exceeded the standard in 2023/24, up from 2014/15 (51.0%), and much higher than California at 45.6%.
Among third graders with financial resources, 75% met or exceeded the standards. Among disadvantaged kids, it was 43.6%.
The school districts with the highest percentage of third graders exceeding or meeting standards were Fountain Valley Elementary (86.1%), Los Alamitos Unified (80.8%) and Laguna Beach Unified (79.5%).
The school districts with the lowest percentage were Santa Ana Unified (29.3%), Anaheim City (33.1%) and Magnolia Elementary (45.8%).
Meanwhile, dropout rates are low but rising. O.C.’s dropout rate was 4.9% in 2023/24, much lower than California’s (8.9%) but up from O.C.’s recent low of 4% in 2020/21. 
Child abuse, crime
Reports of child abuse in O.C. are down over time, but still higher than the state average.
“Studies indicate that victims of child abuse are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, become homeless as adults, engage in violence against others and be incarcerated,” the report said.
Last year, 26,726 local children were the focus of one or more child abuse allegations.
Of those, 16.5% of the allegations were substantiated. That’s a rate of 6.8 per thousand children younger than 18, a decrease from 2015 (7.9), but higher than California’s recent rate of 5.4 per thousand.
Childhood mortality
is a solid indicator of poverty, the report said. There were 113 deaths among those aged 1 to 19 in Orange County in 2023, for a mortality rate of 15.4 deaths per 100,000.
A subset of that is the “unintentional injury death rate” — including accidental poisonings (drug overdose), car accidents and drowning. That increased from 5.5 per 100,000 in 2014 to 5.9 per 100,000 in 2023.
Tragically, 21 substance use related deaths for children ages 1 to 19 years were reported in 2023, triple the number of child overdoses (7) reported in 2014.
Juvenile crime and prosecution are down dramatically over a decade — changes in law to make gang affiliation harder to prove playing a part — but felony arrests among juveniles accounted for 43.4% of child arrests in 2023, up from 25.2% in 2014.
Overall, said Supervisor Katrina Foley, kids are seeing improvement to the quality of life in Orange County.
But there’s work to do, and the data will help guide initiatives for the coming year.