just the facts, ma'am

• About 60% of Americans have a personal connection to adoption. [source]
• Children adopted internationally tend to be younger than children adopted from foster care [source]
• Almost 90% of children adopted internationally are less than five years old. [source]
• The majority of those adopted from foster care are more than five years old. [source]
• Almost half of the children adopted internationally are infants. [source]
• 2% of the children adopted from foster care are infants. [source]
• It is estimated that 11% to 24% of couples who experience difficulty conceiving or carrying a pregnancy to term pursue adoption. [source]
• The number of American children in foster care rose steadily through most of the 1990s, peaking in 1999 at 567,000, and has declined since then to 510,000 in 2006. [source]
• In 2006, nearly half (46%) of all foster children lived in foster family homes with non-relatives. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) lived in family foster homes with relatives-often known as "kinship care." Seventeen percent of foster children lived in group homes or institutions, 3% lived in pre-adoptive families, and the rest lived in other types of facilities. [source]
• Almost one-third (31%) of all children who exited foster care in 2006 lived in foster care for less than six months. [source]
• Children are placed in foster care because a child protective services worker and a court have determined that it is not safe for the child to remain at home due to a risk of maltreatment, including neglect and physical or sexual abuse. [source]
• 50-70% of foster children are returned to their biological parents [source: The Complete Adoption Book]