One in 36 (2.8 percent) 8-year-old children has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to an analysis published last week in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ‒CDC, for its acronym in English‒.
The new findings are higher than the previous estimate from 2018 that found a prevalence of 1 in 44 — 2.3 percent. The data comes from 11 communities in the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM) and is not representative of the entire United States.
A second report on 4-year-olds in the same 11 communities highlights the impact of COVID-19 and shows disruptions in progress in early detection of autism.
The study notes that in the early months of the pandemic, 4-year-olds were less likely to be screened for or identified with ASD than 8-year-olds were when they were the same age. This coincides with disruptions in childcare and health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Disruptions due to the pandemic in timely assessments of children and delays in connecting children to the services and supports they need could have lasting effects,” said Karen Remley, director of CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
“The data in this report can help communities better understand how the pandemic impacted early identification of autism in young children and anticipate future needs as these children grow older,” she added.
Demographic changes among children identified with autism
The prevalence of ASD among Asian, African American, and Hispanic children was at least 30 percent higher in 2020 than in 2018, while among white children it was 14.6 percent higher than in 2018.
For the first time, the percentage of Asian/Pacific Islander (3.3 percent), Hispanic (3.2 percent), and African American (2.9 percent) children identified with autism was higher than among white 8-year-olds (2.4 percent). This is the opposite of racial and ethnic differences seen in previous ADDM reports for 8-year-olds. However, these changes may reflect improved detection, awareness, and access to services among historically underserved groups.
Furthermore, the analysis notes that disparities due to concurrent intellectual disabilities have persisted, with a higher percentage of African-American children identified with autism and intellectual disabilities compared to white, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander children with autism.
These differences, she said, could be partly related to access to services that diagnose and support children with autism.
Overall, the prevalence of autism within ADDM sites was nearly four times higher for boys than for girls. Still, this is the first ADDM report in which the prevalence of autism among 8-year-old girls has exceeded 1 percent.
Notably, the prevalence of autism in the 11 ADDM communities ranged from 1 in 43 (2.3 percent) in children in Maryland to 1 in 22 (4.5 percent) in California.
Established in 2000, the ADDM Network is the only network that tracks the number and characteristics of children with autism and other developmental disabilities in multiple communities across the United States. It provides estimates of the prevalence and characteristics of autism among 8- and 4-year-old children in 11 communities in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.
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