U.S. Families with Children from China: An Overview from the 2000 Census

Lin Guo, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)

Adoptions from China have been increasing rapidly in the United States since the 1990s. By the beginning of 2000, China had become one of the leading “sending” countries of adoptees to the United States and to other countries. The adopted children are mostly girls and are becoming one of the major streams of legal permanent residents from China to the U.S. This paper provides a review of past research on Chinese children adopted by U.S. families in recent years, discusses the reasons for the increasing number and uses U.S. Census 2000 data to describe the characteristics of those families, then makes some comparisons among families with transnational/transracial adopted children. Findings show that adopted Chinese children are the youngest among transracial/transnational adopted kids in the U.S., and they are now living in families with higher stability as well as better socio-economic status.