The Kids Are All Right

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Even the good numbers tell only part of the story. If 88% of kids have adequate health insurance, that means 12%--or a whopping 8.8 million--don't. "There's really no reason for kids not to be covered," says Emil Parker, director of the health division of the nonprofit Children's Defense Fund. "Kids are the least expensive group to cover because they're generally healthy."

Children are slipping through other cracks in the government's optimistic report. The infant-mortality rate, for example, is twice as high among blacks as among whites. Children living in poverty are at greater risk for violent crime. And while the U.S. may boast of soaring high-school-graduation rates, children in poor families are still six times as likely as those in wealthier families to drop out. "So much of this is driven by child poverty," says Parker. "In 2002, more than 12 million children were poor, and those figures were up from both 2000 and 2001."

To be sure, nobody, including the Children's Defense Fund, denies that the thrust of the survey is welcome news. It's far too early to say that no child is being left behind, but it seems that more and more are being brought along.