More of America's children are academically on track and have their TV viewing habits controlled by a parent than was the case more than a decade ago.

And more than 40 percent of America's children participate in the National School Lunch Program.

Those were key findings in the U.S. Census Bureau report "A Child's Day: 2003 (Selected Indicators of a Child's Well-Being)," which looks at children's well-being and daily activities based on the census bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation.

By tracking changes in a variety of children's daily activities -- from whether they have breakfast with a parent or are in gifted-student classes to whether they're read to at night or watch a lot of TV -- the government gains invaluable insight into the well-being of America's children, said the report's authors, Jane Lawler Dye and Tallese D. Johnson.

The census data is based on a sample of more than 9,900 parents, or adults designated as parents, who were interviewed from February to May 2003 about the 18,400-plus children in their care. The sample represents more than 72.7 million children nationwide living with at least one parent.

Nationally, about 75 percent of children 12 to 17 enrolled in schools were academically on track -- at or above the grade level for peers their age -- compared with 69 percent of children in 1994.

Girls were more likely to be on track than boys, and children 12 to 17 with married parents were more likely to be on track than children with separated, divorced, widowed or never-married parents. Also, close to 25 percent of children 12 to 17 were in gifted-student classes or did advanced work in a school subject, the report indicated.

In the TV viewing realm, about 67 percent of children 3 to 5 had limits on what shows they could watch, when they could watch and how long they could watch in 2003, up from only 54 percent in 1994. About 68 percent of children 6 to 11 years old had TV limits in 2003, compared with 60 percent in 1994. The change wasn't as great for children 12 to 17. Only about 44 percent of them had TV limits in 2003, compared with 40 percent in 1994.

A third major finding the authors identified was that 41 percent of children participate in the National School Lunch Program.

"Our last major finding is new to the 2003 report," said co-author Ms. Johnson. "In addition to poverty, we wanted to see if aid made an impact on child well-being."

"A Child's Day: 2003" examines numerous other indicators of children's well-being, looking specifically at children's living arrangements, early child-care experiences, daily interaction with parents, extracurricular activity, academic experience and parents' educational expectations.

Other report findings include:

Children under 6 are more likely to eat with a parent than teenagers are. About 57 percent of children under 6 eat breakfast with mom or dad and 79 percent eat dinner with a parent. Only 24 percent of children 12 to 17 ate breakfast with a parent each day while 58 percent ate dinner with a parent.

Seventy-two percent of children under 6 received parental praise three or more times a day compared with 51 percent of children 6 to 11 years old and 37 percent of children 12 to 17 years old.

Children 1 to 2 were read to an average of 7.8 times in the previous week of the survey while children 3 to 5 were read to an average of 6.8 times the previous week.

Although America's children overall are doing better in some key areas, the report also shows how poor children, minority children and children from single-parent families generally aren't doing as well as their wealthier, nonminority, two-parent home counterparts in a variety of areas from the percentage of children in gifted classes to the percentage involved in extracurricular activities.

Dr. Bill O'Hare, a demographer with the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, was most struck by the differences in well-being between advantaged and disadvantaged children in the census report.

"Blacks and Hispanics do worse than whites, city kids do worse than suburban kids, poor kids do worse than rich kids," said Dr. O'Hare, who coordinates the foundation's Kids Count Initiative, which annually has issued its own report on the well-being of children state-by-state for 15 years.

"If we look at only one of those disadvantages, we don't see the effect of the combination of concentrated disadvantages," he said. "It's not just one thing, it's everything and this report kind of says that. When you put it all together, it paints a very grim picture."

However, he said the report does a good job of painting a fuller picture of the concentration of disadvantage in some children's daily lives.

"This report undergirds what we've been doing in our Making Connections Initiative because it highlights the interconnection of disadvantages," he says.

Through the Making Connections Initiative, the foundation is working in 10 communities nationwide to improve schools and health care access, connect parents with jobs, and increase home ownership and savings rates to help improve the lives of disadvantaged families.

For more information visit: www.census.gov and www.kidscount.org.