Portrait of Health, Well-Being in California's Latino Children

Just over half of all children in California are Latino -- that's more than 4.7 million kids under age 18. In a major new analysis, researchers found a diverse picture of their health and well-being, not just when compared against white children, but also within the Latino population itself.

More than 94 percent of California's Latino children were born in the U.S., and most of them were born in California.

Fewer Latino children overall achieve a minimum standard of basic health care or family and community environment when compared against white children, and children in households where Spanish is spoken at home have even lower rates.

Still, most parents of these children report that their children are in "good" or "excellent" health.

The study was commissioned by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health in Palo Alto and was conducted by the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative based at Johns Hopkins University.

Researchers found that about a fourth of Spanish-speaking households are considered "linguistically isolated," meaning no one in the household who is 14 or older speaks English well.

Other findings:

• 370,000 Latino children in California do not have health insurance, even though they are eligible for government programs such as Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance program for people who are low income.
• Nearly a third (30 percent) of Latino children living in a primarily Spanish-speaking home lives in a working poor household, where parents work full time, but earn less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level.
• 58 percent of children in primarily Spanish-speaking homes use a community clinic or hospital or a government clinic as their usual source of health care, significantly higher than white children do (15 percent) off Latino children in primarily English-speaking families (18 percent).
• While nearly all Latino children were born in the U.S., nearly half (46 percent) of their mothers were born outside of the U.S.

The researchers said their California findings were consistent with a recent national study of Latino children, which also found lower rates of health insurance as well as health disparities.

To address disparities, the researchers recommended the following policies:

• Improved access to and quality of health care
• Improved early childhood education for every Latino child "as a pathway to school readiness."