Statistics

U.N. Study:  “Children on the Brink 2002” – 106 million children worldwide will have lost one parent by 2010.

1.9 million children in the U.S. receive Social Security survivor’s benefits – this means that it is likely that over 1 million children in the US (age 20 and under) have lost a father.

Grief Experiences Varying with a Child’s Age

Over 5% of children will lose one parent by the time they reach age 16 (A synopsis of what children are likely to go through in the grieving process at various age ranges - fact sheet produced by the Ohio State University Extension).

An interview with Columbia University Professor Grace Christ regarding her study of children who lose a parent to cancer, with detailed descriptions of her findings of how children in different age ranges typically react.  The corresponding book is titled: Healing Children's Grief: Surviving a Parent's Death from Cancer

Sesame Workshop video:  When Families Grieve, featuring Katie Couric and the Sesame Street Muppets (video and kit expected to be available in April 2010, geared toward military families)

The case for the Establishment and Funding of Daddy’s Spirit’s College Scholarship Program:

A case study from South Africa (paper titled "The Impact of Parental Death on School Enrollment and Achievement: Longitudinal Evidence from South Africa" by Case and Ardington, Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies) illustrating that while the child’s education suffers when their mother dies, the family’s socioeconomic status suffers when their father dies.  Daddy’s Spirit’s mission to provide the funding to make up for the socioeconomic loss could allow the surviving mother to sustain the children’s education, which suffers from the loss of a father for primarily socioeconomic reasons.

Similar findings from Indonesia (paper titled "Schooling and Parental Death" by Gertler, Levine and Ames, University of California at Berkeley)

Similar findings from Tanzania (paper titled "Orphanhood and the Long-run Impact on Children" by Kathleen Beegle, et al., The World Bank)

Findings where surviving daughters are more adversely affected than surviving sons (In the USA, children born 1931-1941 who lost a parent) (CDE Working Paper No 2002-01, Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin - Madison)

Other links:

Children coping with a parent’s terminal illness (American Cancer Society)

Interventions with Teens: UCLA’s Project TALC (Teens and Parents Learning to Communicate)