CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network is the only collaborative network to track the number and characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in multiple communities in the United States. CDC encourages partners to use information from ADDM in their local communities and across the country to move forward initiatives, policies, and research that help children and families living with ASD.

What Do ADDM Data Tell Us About ASD?

About 1 in 54 or 1.85% of children have been identified with ASD in 2016, based on tracking in multiple areas of the United States. It is important to remember that this estimate is based on 8-year-old children living in 11 communities. It does not represent the entire population of children in the United States.

ASD occurs among all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. For the first time, ADDM found no overall difference in the number of black children identified with ASD compared to white children. However, the number of Hispanic children identified with ASD is still lower compared to white or black children. Boys are more than 4 times as likely to be identified with ASD than girls .

Overall, progress has been made toward the Healthy People 2020 goal of increasing the percentage of children with ASD who receive their first developmental evaluation by 36 months of age.

Further, more children who were born in 2012 received an ASD diagnosis by 4 years of age compared to children born in 2008. The picture of ASD in communities continues to change. Almost half of children identified with ASD have average or above average intellectual ability. This is higher than a decade ago, when one-third of children identified with ASD had average or above average intellectual ability.

Content source: National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention