Child safety includes more than preventing accidents. Recent U.S. figures cover children’s health, access to care, abuse and neglect, medication and lead hazards, vehicle restraints, and nursery products. The measures below come from the CDC, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with each period and age range kept explicit.
Contents
- Health and access to care
- Deaths, abuse, and adverse childhood experiences
- Medication, lead, and poisoning hazards
- Child passenger safety
- Nursery-product deaths
- Nursery-product injuries
Health and access to care
The CDC’s FastStats—Child Health data provide context for safety decisions. In 2024, 1.9% of children ages 0–4 were reported to be in fair or poor health. The same share, 1.9%, applied to children ages 5–11. These are population health measures, rather than counts of specific safety incidents.
School attendance can show how illness, injury, or disability affects daily life. In 2024, 5.9% of children ages 5–11 missed 11 or more school days during the previous 12 months because of illness, injury, or disability. The period is retrospective: it refers to the 12 months before the 2024 measurement.
Weight-related health is another part of a child’s longer-term safety and well-being. During August 2021–August 2023, obesity affected 14.9% of children ages 2–5 and 22.1% of children ages 6–11. These estimates cover different age groups within the same measurement period, so they should not be treated as a trend across time.
Health coverage and a regular point of care also shape how quickly families can respond to health concerns. The CDC reported that 5.1% of children younger than 18 lacked health insurance. In 2024, 97.7% of children ages 0–4 had a usual source of health care, compared with 96.3% of children ages 5–11.
| Child-health measure | Age group | Period | Share or count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fair or poor health | 0–4 | 2024 | 1.9% |
| Fair or poor health | 5–11 | 2024 | 1.9% |
| 11+ school days missed because of illness, injury, or disability | 5–11 | Previous 12 months, measured in 2024 | 5.9% |
| Usual source of health care | 0–4 | 2024 | 97.7% |
| Usual source of health care | 5–11 | 2024 | 96.3% |
| No health insurance | Younger than 18 | Measurement reported by CDC | 5.1% |
Deaths, abuse, and adverse childhood experiences
Mortality statistics help identify the broad scale of risk, although they do not describe the circumstances of every death. Children ages 1–4 had 3,843 deaths in 2024, with a death rate of 25.6 per 100,000 population. For children ages 5–14, the CDC reported 5,940 deaths and a death rate of 14.5 per 100,000 population in 2024.
Accidents, also called unintentional injuries, were among the leading causes of death in 2024 for children ages 1–4, ages 5–9, and ages 10–14. The statement applies to each of those age bands; it does not mean that every accident was fatal or that the same accident types ranked identically in each group.
The CDC’s About Child Abuse and Neglect figures show both prevalence and consequences. In the United States, at least one in seven children experienced child abuse or neglect in the past year. In 2021, 1,820 children died from abuse and neglect. Rates were five times higher for children in families with low socioeconomic status than for families with higher socioeconomic status. The reported lifetime economic burden associated with child abuse and neglect was about $592 billion in 2018.
Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, can affect safety and health well beyond the original event. The CDC reports that ACEs can increase risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, and involvement in sex trafficking. They can also increase risks of teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death. Other reported risks include cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide. These are risk associations described by the CDC, not predictions that a particular child will experience any outcome.
Medication, lead, and poisoning hazards
Young children’s access to household medicines is a specific, measurable safety concern. In 2024, the CDC reported that finding and eating or drinking medicines without adult supervision was the main cause of emergency visits for adverse drug events among children aged 5 years and younger.
Lead exposure is monitored with a reference value rather than a claim that exposure below the value is harmless. Using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data for children ages 1–5, the CDC determined a childhood lead reference value of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL).
The CPSC’s Pediatric Poisoning Report 2025 gives both observed and estimated figures for 2023. CPSC staff found 2,370 cases of unintentional pediatric poisonings among children younger than 5 in the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). From its surveillance methods, CPSC estimated 67,000 emergency-department-treated unintentional poisoning injuries for that age group. The 95% confidence interval around the estimate was 48,200 to 85,800.
Of the estimated 67,000 injuries, 64,000 were coded as poisoning diagnoses, while 2,276 were associated with poisonings in the NEISS sample basis. These figures describe related but different reporting measures, so they should not be added together.
The estimated total also differed by sex. Male children accounted for 36,000 injuries, or 54%, and female children accounted for 31,000, or 46%. In CPSC’s Hispanic-origin category table, Hispanic-origin children represented 16.1% of estimated injuries and 26.8% of the under-5 population. The corresponding figures were 11.0% and 21.8% for White children, 0.7% and 2.0% for Black/African American children, 0% and 0.4% for Asian children, 0.2% and 1.1% for American Indian/Alaska Native children, 0.1% and 0.1% for Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander children, and 4.1% and 1.4% for children classified as other race. These category-table percentages should be read as reported, without assuming they form a complete comparison of risk across groups.
Child passenger safety
NHTSA’s Seat Belts and Child Restraints figures show how restraint use varies by age and seating recommendation. In 2021, 99.8% of children under age 13 were restrained in vehicles. Among children ages 1–12, the reported restraint-use figure for ages 8–12 was 86.8%.
Appropriate restraint use was lower in some age bands. In 2021, 91.8% of children under age 1 were in the appropriate rear-facing seat. The appropriate-restraint figure was 86.8% for children ages 1–3, 73.2% for children ages 4–7 using the appropriate forward-facing car seat or booster seat, and 85.8% for children ages 8–12.
| Passenger-safety measure | Period | Reported result |
|---|---|---|
| Children under 13 who were restrained | 2021 | 99.8% |
| Under age 1 in an appropriate rear-facing seat | 2021 | 91.8% |
| Ages 1–3 using the appropriate restraint | 2021 | 86.8% |
| Ages 4–7 using the appropriate forward-facing seat or booster | 2021 | 73.2% |
| Ages 8–12 appropriately restrained | 2021 | 85.8% |
Fatal-crash figures show why correct restraint use matters. In 2021, 863 children under age 15 died in passenger vehicles, and 40% were unrestrained. Among 26,325 fatally injured passenger-vehicle occupants with known restraint use, half were unrestrained. By crash timing, 57% of passenger-vehicle occupants killed in nighttime crashes were unrestrained, compared with 43% of fatally injured occupants in daytime crashes.
Nursery-product deaths
The CPSC’s Nursery Products Annual Report 2024 covers deaths associated with nursery products among children younger than 5. During 2019–2021, CPSC reported 523 such deaths, an annual average of 174.
Product categories accounted for different numbers of deaths during that three-year period. Cribs and mattresses were associated with 126 deaths, bassinets and cradles with 115, and playpens and play yards with 91. Infant inclined sleep products were associated with 38 deaths, and infant carriers with 30.
These category figures are associations reported by CPSC for nursery-product-related deaths. They are not a ranking of the danger of every product sold, and the category counts should not be combined with the annual average as though they measured the same denominator.
Nursery-product injuries
The same CPSC report estimated 60,400 emergency-department-treated nursery-product injuries among children younger than 5 in 2023. The 2023 injury rate was 327 injuries per 100,000 children under age 5. For comparison across the immediately preceding years, CPSC estimated 53,000 nursery-product injuries in 2021 and 59,500 in 2022.
| Nursery-product injury measure | Period | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency-department-treated injuries, under age 5 | 2021 | 53,000 |
| Nursery-product injuries, under age 5 | 2022 | 59,500 |
| Emergency-department-treated injuries, under age 5 | 2023 | 60,400 |
| Injury rate, under age 5 | 2023 | 327 per 100,000 children |
High chairs were associated with 14,200 nursery-product injuries in 2023. That figure is a product-specific count within the broader 2023 nursery-product estimate, so it should be interpreted as one component of the reported injury picture rather than added to the total.
Taken together, these statistics describe several different child-safety measures: population health, access to care, mortality, maltreatment, exposure hazards, restraint use, and product-related injuries. The age ranges, definitions, and measurement periods differ, so the most useful comparisons stay within each source and measure rather than treating every percentage or estimate as interchangeable.