Definition

Children ages 6 to 17 who missed 11 or more days of school per year due to illness or injury by age group.

Information on each child is based on responses of the parent or guardian in the household who was most knowledgeable about the sampled child. Survey did not have response options to indicate whether the child was home-schooled or did not go to school in the past 12 months. Additionally, response options were reported in continuous numbers in the 2011/12 NSCH, but were reported in five categorical ranges of missed school days starting in the 2016 NSCH.

Data Source

Child Trends analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, National Survey of Children’s Health.

The state-level data used here come from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). The NSCH includes information on approximately 50,000 children under age 18, with representative samples for each state. For more information on the NSCH, see http://childhealthdata.org/learn/NSCH

Notes

S - Estimates suppressed when the 95% confidence interval is greater than 20 percentage points or 1.2 times the estimate.

N.A. – Data not available.

Percentages exclude missing data. Weighted percentages were applied to the estimates of those missing to derive overall estimates for the number of children.

Last Updated

2025-04