A Profile of Youth and Young Adults in Baltimore

The age span from 14 through 24 marks a crit­i­cal stage of devel­op­ment. Dur­ing this phase, young peo­ple expe­ri­ence pro­found phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes and must nav­i­gate increas­ing auton­o­my while form­ing their iden­ti­ty, expand­ing their socio-emo­tion­al and life skills, advanc­ing their edu­ca­tion, acquir­ing job train­ing and more. This peri­od of time is also a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty for par­ents, care­givers and car­ing adults — as well as for pro­grams and poli­cies — to sup­port young peo­ple and their future.

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The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT^® Data Cen­ter, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with local part­ners, pro­vides data on the well-being of youth and young adults in Bal­ti­more. This data is wide-rang­ing and explores demo­graph­ics, pover­ty, edu­ca­tion, employ­ment, health, teen births and more.

Key Find­ings on Baltimore’s Youth

Issues such as pover­ty, men­tal health and dat­ing vio­lence remain seri­ous chal­lenges for young peo­ple in Bal­ti­more. At the same time, the city has made mean­ing­ful improve­ments in oth­er areas, includ­ing reduc­ing juve­nile arrests, teen births and tobac­co use. Addi­tion­al­ly, while Bal­ti­more has achieved long-term progress on youth edu­ca­tion­al out­comes and the tran­si­tion to adult­hood, the lat­est data show sev­er­al indi­ca­tors tak­ing a turn in the wrong direc­tion, such as high school dropout rates and col­lege enroll­ment or com­ple­tion. Below is a selec­tion of some key find­ings by topic.

Demo­graph­ics

• Bal­ti­more has 26,094 youth ages 14 to 17. These res­i­dents rep­re­sent­ed 22% of the city’s child pop­u­la­tion in 2023 

Pover­ty

• Pover­ty increased among Baltimore’s school-age kids in 2023. The city’s pover­ty rate for chil­dren and youth ages 6 to 17 jumped from 24% in 2022 to 28% in 2023. This rate had pre­vi­ous­ly spiked between 2018 and 2021 — reach­ing 32% — then fell by 8 per­cent­age points in 2022, before ris­ing again in the lat­est year. The city’s 2023 rate is near­ly three times the statewide rate of 10% and well above the nation­al rate of 16%.

• In 2022, at least 1 in 5 young adults in Bal­ti­more lived in pover­ty, a decrease from pre­vi­ous years. While young Bal­ti­more­ans ages 18 to 24 expe­ri­enced high pover­ty rates (about 30% or high­er) for much of the past decade, the rate has gen­er­al­ly declined since 2014 — from 35% to 21% in 2022, with the excep­tion of a surge in 2021. Sim­i­lar to fig­ures for chil­dren, Baltimore’s young adult pover­ty rate remains above the Mary­land (14% in 2022) and U.S. (19%) rates.

Edu­ca­tion

• Baltimore’s high school dropout rate jumped by more than 5 per­cent­age points in 2022. After falling to 12.5% in 2021, the city’s four-year adjust­ed high school dropout rate rose to 17.8% in 2022, the high­est rate since 2010 and more than dou­ble the statewide rate. Maryland’s dropout rate also increased from 7.4% in 2021 to 8.5% in 2022. The city’s four-year adjust­ed grad­u­a­tion rate, on the oth­er hand, has been rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble over the last decade but grad­u­al­ly decreased from 72.2% in 2018 to 68.7% in 2022. This sta­tis­tic is avail­able by racial and eth­nic group and illus­trates that some stu­dents of col­or con­sis­tent­ly face more hur­dles to time­ly grad­u­a­tion, local­ly and statewide.
• Bal­ti­more saw a small rise in teens ages 16 to 19 who were out of school and with­out a high school degree in 2022. The city’s share of teens who were both out of school and lacked a high school diplo­ma increased from 2% in 2021 to 5% in 2022, just above the state (3%) and nation­al (4%) aver­ages. Over­all, how­ev­er, Bal­ti­more has made sub­stan­tial progress on this mea­sure since 2005, when the fig­ure was 13%.

The Tran­si­tion to Adulthood

• After six years of progress, Bal­ti­more saw an uptick in teens not in school and not work­ing. The share of young peo­ple ages 16 to 19 who were not in school (full- or part-time) or employed (full- or part-time) inched up from 7% to 8% between 2021 and 2022, after a large improve­ment from 15% in 2015. This sta­tis­tic was sit­ting well above state and nation­al aver­ages for more than a decade, but Baltimore’s rate is now close to both the nation­al rate of 7% and the state rate of 6%.
• In 2022, near­ly 1 in 6 young adults across Bal­ti­more were not in school, not employed and had only a high school diplo­ma degree. This sta­tis­tic helps to gauge if young peo­ple ages 18 to 24 are strug­gling to tran­si­tion to adult­hood. The share of young adults in this cat­e­go­ry fell from a high of 25% in 2009 to 14% in 2019 before slight­ly increas­ing to and hold­ing at 16% in 2021 and 2022.
  
• The share of young Bal­ti­more­ans who had com­plet­ed or were enrolled in col­lege decreased by sev­en per­cent­age points in one year. While the per­cent­age of young res­i­dents ages 18 to 24 who fit this sta­tis­tic sub­stan­tial­ly increased from 43% in 2006 (first year avail­able) to 58% in 2021, it dropped to 51% in 2022. This rate now falls in between the statewide aver­age of 53% and the nation­al aver­age of 48%. 

Safe­ty

• Baltimore’s juve­nile arrest rate plunged by near­ly 90% from 2005 to 2020. The city’s arrest rate for juve­niles ages 10 to 17 fell sharply — from 1,522.3 arrests per 10,000 youth to 175.9 arrests per 10,000 — over the 15-year peri­od where data is avail­able. The city’s 2020 rate, which cov­ers arrests for both vio­lent and non­vi­o­lent crimes, was slight­ly above the 2020 state rate (171.8 arrests per 10,000 youth) after best­ing the state rate in 2019 for the first time in the years avail­able on the KIDS COUNT Data Center.
  
  

• About 1 in 8 Bal­ti­more high school­ers report expe­ri­enc­ing phys­i­cal dat­ing vio­lence. In 2022–2023, 13.3% of high school stu­dents city­wide report­ed being phys­i­cal­ly hurt by some­one they were dat­ing. This rate exceeds the statewide rate, which was 11.5% for 2022–23. In 2013, the rates were low­er for high school stu­dents in both the city (12.8%) and the state (11.1%).

• Across Bal­ti­more, 35 teens ages 15 to 19 died in 2021. While the city’s annu­al count fluc­tu­ates, it has hov­ered between 22 and 41 deaths per year over the last decade. Although this num­ber increased from 2018 to 2020, it decreased in 2021.

Health

• Tobac­co use fell by almost 50% among Baltimore’s high school­ers. In pos­i­tive trends for the city: The share of high school stu­dents who were active­ly using tobac­co prod­ucts (at least once in the past month) declined from 29% in 2014–2015 to 15% in 2021–2022. Dur­ing this same peri­od, mar­i­jua­na use also decreased (23% to 19%), while alco­hol use ini­tial­ly increased and then declined (from 19% to 22%, then down to 16%).

• The share of unin­sured chil­dren and youth in Bal­ti­more grew in 2023. After see­ing a slight improve­ment between 2021 and 2022, the share of unin­sured kids reversed course and jumped 1 per­cent­age point to 5% in 2023. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this rate trans­lates to 1,000 more kids lack­ing health insur­ance city­wide in 2023. For com­par­i­son: 5% of kids and youth across both Mary­land and the Unit­ed States were unin­sured in 2023.
  

Men­tal Health

• Per­sis­tent feel­ings of sad­ness and hope­less­ness have surged among Bal­ti­more high school­ers. This sta­tis­tic rose from 28% in 2013 to near­ly 41% in 2022–2023. Stu­dents who fit this sta­tis­tic report­ed feel­ing sad or hope­less almost dai­ly for at least two weeks and ceased some of their usu­al activ­i­ties as a result. This same sta­tis­tic jumped 9 per­cent­age points among high school­ers statewide (increas­ing from 27% in 2013 to 36% in 2022–2023).

• Near­ly 1 in 4 high school stu­dents across Bal­ti­more seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered attempt­ing sui­cide in the pre­vi­ous year. This sta­tis­tic increased from 16% in 2013 to near­ly 21% in 2022–2023. This rate is high­er than the statewide rate of in 17.9% 2022–2023.

Teen Births

• The teen birth count has plum­met­ed across Bal­ti­more over the past decade. In a con­sis­tent trend since 2007, the num­ber of births to teenagers ages 15 to 19 has fall­en by more than half — from 818 in 2013 to 390 in 2022. See births for younger teens com­pared to old­er teens.

• The teen birth rate across Bal­ti­more has also fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the ear­ly 2000s. The rate of live births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19 has dropped by 64% — start­ing at 71.1 in 2003 and last report­ed as 25.4 in 2021. Despite this progress, the city­wide rate still sits at near­ly two times the statewide rate of 13.4 live births per 1,000 teens.

• The city’s share of teen births to women who were moms rose slight­ly in recent years. In 2022, 16% of teen births were to young women under age 20 who were already moth­ers. This rate is up from 14% in 2020 but remains well below the city’s first fig­ure avail­able, which was 34% in 1990. The lat­est city rate is now just above the state and nation­al aver­ages — both 14% in 2022. 

More Data and Resources on Bal­ti­more Youth and Young Adults

Go to the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter for more data on how youth and young adults are far­ing in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land and nation­al­ly. Learn more about the chal­lenges youth face, as well as oppor­tu­ni­ties to sup­port them, in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Thrive by 25^® announcement.

Baltimore’s Promise Launch­es Expand­ed Career Path­ways Pro­gram (Blog)

Youth Works Cre­ates Lead­er­ship Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Young Work­ers in Bal­ti­more (Blog)

How Bal­ti­more Is Help­ing Stu­dents Tran­si­tion From High School (Blog)

How Young Adults View Social Con­nect­ed­ness and Access Resources (Report)

The Ben­e­fits of Work­force Expo­sure and Career Pro­gram­ming for Youth and Young Adults (Blog)