Being a child in New York City can be tough – but according to a new report the safety, environment, and education of children in most neighborhoods are improving.

The report, released yesterday by the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York Inc., a private child-advocacy organization, found an 8% reduction in juvenile arrests between 2000 and 2003, a 2% drop in reports of child abuse and neglect between 2000 and 2003, and a 7-percentage-point increase in the proportion of children covered by health insurance between 2001 and 2004.

The data, which were culled from government statistics, also showed that teenage girls in the city are less likely to become mothers than teenagers in the rest of the nation, and that children in New York City were less likely to die a violent death than children in the rest of the state and the rest of the nation.

But the report demonstrated that life is far from perfect for children growing up in the five boroughs.

Only half of the city’s children graduate from high school in four years, compared to 60% of children in the state and 68% of children in America.

More children in the city live in poor families earning less than $15,020, than in the rest of the state or the country – 29% in the city versus 19% in the state and 18% in the country.

The data also show a persistent gap in quality of life between minority group children and white children.

Almost three-quarters of Latino children and two-thirds of black children live in poor families, compared to just one-fifth of white children. In education, about 30% of black children met the 2003 math and reading standards, compared to more than 60% of white children.

“There are challenges concentrated in particular neighborhoods and disparities across certain racial and ethnic groups,” the executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, Gail Nayowith, said.

She said the report, Keeping Track of New York City’s Children, has been completed every two years for the past 14 years. She said that its primary purpose is to aid policy-makers in decision-making, but that it could also help journalists, students, religious leaders, philanthropists, and others who want to find data on children in New York City or children in a certain neighborhood.

This year, for the first time, all of the information has been posted at one Web site, www.cccnewyork.org. That means a parent interested in finding out about the lives of children growing up in Coney Island, for example, can go online and find out everything from the percentage of children receiving emergency food assistance or the percentage of households with a car to the percentage of streets that are clean, the number of hospitalizations for asthma, or the prevalence of teenage pregnancy and juvenile arrests.

“We need fresh ideas and big new approaches to tackle risks to children in neighborhoods where progress lags,” Ms. Nayowith said. “And it’s not like we don’t know what it will take. New York City is where innovation happens.”