Millions of U.S. children recently experienced chronic absenteeism from school due to injury, illness or disability, with data indicating white and Hispanic children and those from the lowest-income households were more likely to miss class because of such factors.
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The findings come from a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The report says that in 2022, an estimated 5.5% of boys and 6% of girls between 5 and 17 years old missed at least 15 days of school over the past 12 months for health-related reasons, amounting to 5.8% of children overall. That equates to around 3 million kids, the CDC confirms.
Researchers said such children were categorized as chronically absent from school based on a U.S. Department of Education definition. The difference in absenteeism between boys and girls was not significant, according to the report, and neither were differences by age group. Yet researchers found non-Hispanic white children and Hispanic children were chronically absent for health reasons at higher rates than other groups at 6.6% and 6.2%, respectively.
Comparatively, 3.3% of Black children and 1.4% of Asian children experienced chronic school absenteeism due to health in 2022.
Children living in households in the study’s lowest-income bracket were also more likely to be chronically absent for health-related reasons. The rate was 7.9% among children with family incomes less than 100% of the federal poverty level, compared with 4.7% among those with family incomes that were 200% of the poverty threshold or higher.
The largest disparities were tied to children’s disability and health status. Nearly 15% of children with disabilities experienced chronic school absenteeism for health-related reasons compared with 4.4% of children without disabilities.
And those in either “fair” or “poor” health were more likely to chronically miss school for health-related reasons at 29%, compared with just 5.1% of kids in “excellent,” “very good” or “good” health.
“Chronic school absenteeism can lead to poorer academic performance and school engagement for students,” the report says. “It is also a risk factor for school dropout, which is associated with many long-term health impacts.”
Concerns over chronic school absenteeism and its effects on the development of children have been growing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which relatedly saw an estimated 230,000 students go “missing” from public schools across 21 states, according to an Associated Press and Stanford University analysis.
Another analysis by Stanford professor Thomas Dee found that chronic absenteeism among public school students in the U.S. grew by more than 90% between the 2018-2019 and 2021-20222 school years.
“Given that the public-schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia served roughly 48 million students in the 2021 to 2022 school year, these results imply an additional 6.5 million students became chronically absent during the recent return to in-person instruction,” Dee’s study states.
In September, the White House noted a potential connection between student absenteeism and test score declines in math and reading, and pointed to efforts that could help curb the issue.
“Targeted interventions such as early warning systems, mailing outreach, and text nudges have shown promise in increasing attendance, especially among students who would have otherwise have been chronically absent from school,” the administration said.
Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of the organization Attendance Works, which works to reduce school absenteeism, says a lack of health care access for families can have a large impact on the ability of kids to get to school, even when the child is not the one who is sick.
“It’s not just about illness challenges among kids, it’s also about illness challenges among their family members,” Chang says. “Young kids get to school because their parents can take them. If their parents don’t have access and then the parents get sick, they can’t take their kid to school.”
Her organization points to school nurses, school-based health clinics and telehealth as “proven strategies for improving attendance.”
