Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that more children across the nation are being diagnosed with autism and other developmental disabilities.
Between 2019 and 2024, the number of parents who said that their child had a developmental disability rose from 16.7% to 20.5%.
The findings published recently in the journal Pediatrics come from a study looking at data collected through the National Health Interview Survey, an annual government questionnaire asking people from across the country about their healthcare experiences.
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As part of the survey, parents were asked if they had ever been told by a healthcare professional if their child had developmental disabilities including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disability or any other developmental delay. They were also asked if they had ever been told by a school representative or health professional that their child had a learning disability. For the study, children were considered to have “any developmental disability” if their parents indicated that they had any of these five conditions.
Among children ages 3 to 17, prevalence rose across all diagnoses, with substantial increases for every category except intellectual disability, the study found.
Autism alone jumped more than 42%, with sizable growth among children ages 3 to 5, girls, those living outside of metropolitan areas and kids from low-income families.
Meanwhile, the number of parents reporting that their child had ADHD climbed 26%. Learning disabilities and other developmental delay each grew by about 16% while intellectual disability was up more than 6%.
Overall, the researchers found that the percentage of children diagnosed with developmental disabilities “increased significantly” in the years studied culminating with an estimated 1 in 5 children ages 3 to 17 being diagnosed when the 2023-2024 survey was conducted.
Benjamin Zablotsky, a statistician at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics who led the study, said that the uptick observed for some groups of kids — particularly among young children — hadn’t been seen in previous reports.
“We believe these new increases could be related to earlier detection and awareness,” he said.
Scott Landes, a sociology professor at Syracuse University who was not involved in the study, said the rise in prevalence should be seen as a positive development.
“Research suggests that better screening, greater awareness and reduced stigma explain at least part of the increase, which means that more children are being identified and connected to services they previously would have missed,” he said. “A higher reported prevalence rate by parents is best understood, at least in part, as progress in finding and serving disabled children who were always there but were not receiving needed services.”
