Four times as likely to receive public assistance

Girls leaving foster care more likely to go on welfare
Agoura Hills Acorn, April 3, 2008.

According to the United Women's Leadership Council, women in the U.S. continue to make leaps and bounds both as professionals and as students.

By 2010, American women will account for $13 trillion of the country's private wealth.

Since 2002, women account for more than half of undergraduates in colleges and universities and make up 49 percent of law school and 50 percent of medical school students.

For girls in the foster youth programs across the U.S., however, the statistics are far more grim.

Of the 85 young women age 16 to 19 in Ventura County's foster care system, 16 are parents or pregnant. An estimated 25 to 30 will age out of the system this year. Once they leave the foster care system, they're four times more likely than the general public to receive public assistance.