Adoption is one of the oldest social institutions. Nevertheless, adoption still raises highly emotive issues because of its fundamental implications for the meaning of familial ties. Questions on whether adoption serves the best interests of children, who should be allowed to adopt and the role of Governments in regulating such decisions are frequent subjects of debate. Yet, despite the heightened attention to these issues, much of the information on adoption remains anecdotal. Data on the number of children adopted domestically are rarely available and when they are, they tend to be out-of-date. Similarly, comparable information on trends in intercountry adoptions—that is adoptions that involve a change of country of residence for the adopted person—is often lacking or is available for just a few countries.
This publication is an extract from the larger report entitled Child Adoption: Trends and Policies the first study of its kind undertaken by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. Guidelines for Improving Data on Child Adoption highlights some of the main findings of Child Adoption: Trends and Policies and provides guidelines on how to improve the collection, compilation and dissemination of information on adoption. This publication contains an introduction based on the Executive Summary of the larger report and a reproduction of its chapter VIII, which contains the guidelines proper. This report provides therefore a more immediate guide to strategies for the improvement of statistics on child adoption.