A simple measure of societal progress is: “Will the next generation be better off than the current one.” Right now, we seem to be going backwards on that metric. A child born today has around the same chance of growing up in poverty as one born in 1990. “We haven’t seen the progress we’ve wanted to see on reducing child poverty, and part of that is to do with the way our economy is working—even though it’s technically growing, we haven’t seen really significant wage growth,” says Noah Berger, director of policy reform and advocacy at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which works to improve outcomes for children and families.

Some other challenges facing children born today: A likelihood that they’ll be born with low birth weight, which has been increasing for the past three years; questionable access to insurance, which, though drastically improved since 1990, is starting to slip; an educational system that is not preparing them adequately for the workplace (two-thirds of today’s fourth graders are not proficient in reading); being born at a time when more and more families are struggling to accumulate wealth that could help set kids up for success in their own lives.

In the 30th edition of the Kids Count Data Book, which compiles annual statistics about our nation’s children, the Casey Foundation enumerates the challenges facing us–and the changing demographics of our younger generation. The number of children in the U.S. rose from 64 million to nearly 74 million, and the proportion of children of color increased from 31% to 49%. Around 18 million children in the U.S. now have immigrant parents, or are immigrants themselves. “Clearly, the nation’s future depends on creating opportunity for all kids,” Casey Foundation CEO and president Lisa M. Hamilton writes in the report.