Research Children Now believes we need to make smart investments in our children now: because we want them to have happy, healthy childhoods and because they will help us build a stronger society and a better future. We monitor federal and California budgets, legislation, and regulation for their impact on children, and advocate to ensure that children are the top priority in budget and policy decisions. We also provide policymakers and the public with reliable, current data about the status of children, helping to ensure that dollars are spent wisely and children get what they need. California Report Card The 2008 California Report Card: The State of the State's Children highlights the generally poor health and education status of the state's children by assigning letter grades to key individual determinants, such as a C in health insurance, a C- in K-12 education and a D+ in obesity. These issues are undermining children's optimal development and putting the state's future at undue risk by dramatically increasing the financial costs and societal problems faced by future generations. The report also shows, however, that real progress on these issues can and should be made in 2008. California County Data Book Since 1989, Children Now has provided current, reliable data on children for local community members, policymakers, advocates and the media. Published every two years, the California County Data Book contains county-level statistics about California children’s health, education, family economics and child welfare. Children in Immigrant Families: A California Data Brief Children in Immigrant Families: A California Data Brief corrects misperceptions about children in immigrant families. For example, 85% of children from immigrant families in California are U.S. citizens, and three-quarters of them are bilingual. The report also highlights the difficult, additional challenges faced by immigrant children and their families, such as barriers to English language acquisition and lower rates of health insurance coverage versus their non-immigrant peers. The Unique Challenges to the Well-Being of California's Border Kids Only half of all border kids come from immigrant families--families with at least one parent born abroad. Moreover, 93% of all border kids live in families with at least one working parent, which mirrors the statewide percentage, and the vast majority of children of immigrants living on the border--81%--are U.S. citizens, a rate on par with the rest of California. These are a few of many clarifying data points included in this report. Children on the California-Mexico Border A Snapshot of Children on the California-Mexico Border found that Latino children in California’s two border counties, San Diego and Imperial, are less likely to be poor than those in neighboring states’ border counties;  however, their poverty rate is still four times higher than that of their non-Latino white counterparts. This report, produced by Children Now, is part of a new four-state report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that provides a picture of how all children along the U.S.-Mexico Border are faring, comparing California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Children on the San Diego-Mexico Border A Snapshot of Children on the San Diego-Mexico Border analyzed key measures of children's family economic status, health and education on a community level in San Diego County, unveiling disparities in child well-being in several areas with highly concentrated Latino residents and Mexican immigrants compared to the rest of the county. The report defines a "border community" not by its physical location on the border with Mexico, but by its higher concentration of residents from Mexico and who identify as Latino, in an attempt to highlight border communities' unique set of social factors and challenges.