International Adoption of US Parents is Decreasing – After going through several stages of the screening process, we are finally able to enhance the article we have collected with data from reliable sources that discuss the decline in the percentage of international adoption of US parents.
The US State Department said the number of foreign children adopted by US parents fell by more than 12 percent, last year.
The State Department report, released Friday (24/3) and includes data from the 2017 fiscal year, attributed the decline in adoption to changes in two countries: China and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report says the countries are making legal changes that make it more difficult for international adoption.
The report shows 4,714 adoptions from abroad in fiscal 2017, down from 5,372 in 2016 and almost 80 percent below a high of 22,884 in 2004.
The report said China still made up the largest number of origins of adopted children internationally, 1,905 although it was down nearly 15 percent from 2016.
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China changed its domestic laws related to governance of nongovernmental organizations, and although those changes were not specifically targeted at adoption, the laws negatively affected adoption agencies, the report said.
The State Department says 98 percent of interstate adoptions from China involve children with special needs. The State Department said that US officials had spoken with their Chinese counterparts to try to resolve the issue.
Adoption in Congo fell from 359 in 2016 to just four in 2017 as the Congolese government stopped international adoption over fraud fears.
There were no adoptions from Russia for the third year in a row after Russia imposed a US adoption ban that took effect in 2014.
US parents adopted children from 42 countries in 2017. After China, the largest number of adopted children came from Ethiopia, followed by South Korea, Haiti, India, Ukraine, Colombia and Nigeria.