Injury rates vary and are correlated to a child’s age, gender, race and socioeconomic status.  Males, minorities and poor children are also at highest risk.

Accidental childhood injury rates vary with a child’s age, gender, race and socioeconomic status. Poverty is the primary predictor of injury risk. Despite an overall decline in injury-related death, death rates for children of low-income families continue to increase.

Injuries to children of low-income families result in more fatalities than injuries to children with greater economic resources. Children from low-income families are twice as likely to die in a motor vehicle crash, four times more likely to drown and five times more likely to die in a fire.

Low-income families are less likely to use safety devices (such as bicycle helmets, child car seats, stairway gates) due to lack of money, lack of transportation to obtain safety devices, lack of control over housing conditions or all of these. 

https://www.safekidsyorkcounty.org/fact-sheets/At%20risk%20facts.pdf

Racial disparities in unintentional injury rates appear to have a greater association with living in impoverished environments than with ethnicity. Strategies that reduce financial barriers to acquiring safety devices, increase education efforts and improve the safety of the environment are effective at reducing death and injury among populations at risk.

 SAFETY FACTS:

• Properly-fitted helmets can reduce the risk of head injuries by at least 45 percent – yet less than half of children 14 and under usually wear a bike helmet.
• Road injuries are the leading cause of preventable deaths and injuries to children in the United States. Correctly used child safety seats can reduce the risk of death by as much as 71 percent. More than half of car seats are not used or installed correctly. 
• Medicines are the leading cause of child poisoning. In 2017, nearly 52,000 children under the age of six were seen in the emergency room for medicine poisoning. That’s one child every ten minutes.
• Drowning is the leading cause of injury-related death among children between 1 and 4 years old. And it’s the third leading cause of unintentional injury-related death among children 19 and under.
• Among children treated in emergency rooms for non-fatal choking incidents, almost 60 percent were food-related. Overall, 13 percent of cases involved swallowing coins and 19 percent involved candy or gum.

New Jersey is fortunate to have established a pediatric medical emergency system (https://www.nj.gov/health/ems/ems-children/)which has resulted in the State having the nation’s second lowest rate of child mortality due to unintentional injuries.   However, many of the State’s youngest residents acquire permanent disabilities resulting from these injuries.