This report on the well-being of America's children highlights the critical need for renewed commitment to children by all sectors of society. The introduction describes health and educational outcomes for poor children and maintains that preparing all of the nation's children for the future and protecting them in the present is the greatest human rights and moral challenge facing the nation. The six chapters of the report focus on the following: (1) family income, including the pervasiveness of child poverty, the working poor, and legislative progress; (2) child health, including the problem of uninsured children and the Child Health Insurance Program; (3) child care, describing federal, state, and local initiatives, and presenting an action agenda; (4) education, including the Goals 2000 initiative, lagging international performance, reform efforts, and early and higher education; (5) children and families in crisis, including incidence estimates, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, attending to older teens in foster care, and increasing the emphasis on prevention; and (6) juvenile justice and youth development, including drops in violent crime rates, children and guns, nature of juvenile crime, school violence, juveniles in confinement, and successful community initiatives. Each chapter concludes with a proposed action agenda for 1999. The report's two appendices provide tabulated data on children nationwide and by state, covering areas such as poverty, maternal and infant health, adolescent childbearing, youth unemployment, government aid participation, child support, Head Start enrollment, child abuse and neglect, and firearm deaths. World Wide Web sites of interest to child advocates are also listed. (KB)