Nearly 1 in 10 Kids Have a Developmental Disability

SAVE THE CHILDREN –

July 13, 2023 – Thursday’s report is the first since then released by the center focusing on this topic.

From 2019 to 2021, rates of intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder did not increase by a statistically significant amount. The report found 1.65% of children had an intellectual disability and 3.05% had autism.

The only category that increased significantly was parents reporting having been told their child had an “other developmental delay” — a grouping that can include a range of other issues, like cerebral palsy or struggles forming words. That group increased from 5.08% of kids in 2019 to 6.06% in 2021.

“A lot of times developmental delays might be temporary diagnoses that evolve into something like autism, potentially, or intellectual disability. But also a lot of times children do age out of those,” said Zablotsky.

Previous questions focusing on the specific prevalence of some less common conditions, like cerebral palsy, have been dropped from the survey effort.

“When we are deciding what questions to include in the survey, if you don’t get enough of a sample back, meaning the prevalence is pretty low, you can’t then look at any estimates in subgroups because they’re unreliable, and our center does not want to release estimates we can’t stand behind,” said Zablotsky.