• About 1 in 59 children have been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network.
• ASDs are reported to occur in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.
• ASDs are almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 54) than among girls (1 in 252).
• Studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have identified individuals with an ASD with an average prevalence of about 1%. A recent study in South Korea reported a prevalence of 2.6%.
• About 1 in 6 children in the U.S. had a developmental disability in 2006-2008, ranging from mild disabilities such as speech and language impairments to serious developmental disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism.
• Studies have shown that among identical twins, if one child has an ASD, then the other will be affected about 36-95% of the time. In non-identical twins, if one child has an ASD, then the other is affected about 0-31% of the time.
• Parents who have a child with an ASD have a 2%–18% chance of having a second child who is also affected.
• ASDs tend to occur more often in people who have certain genetic or chromosomal conditions. About 10% of children with autism are also identified as having Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, tuberous sclerosis, and other genetic and chromosomal disorders.
• The majority (62%) of children the ADDM Network identified as having ASDs did not have intellectual disability (intelligence quotient <=70).
• ASD commonly co-occurs with other developmental, psychiatric, neurologic, chromosomal, and genetic diagnoses. The co-occurrence of one or more non-ASD developmental diagnoses is 83%. The co-occurrence of one or more psychiatric diagnoses is 10%.
• Individuals with an ASD had average medical expenditures that exceeded those without an ASD by $4,110 to $6,200 per year. On average, medical expenditures for individuals with an ASD were 4.1 to 6.2 times greaterthan for those without an ASD. Differences in median expenditures ranged from $2,240 to $3,360 per year with median expenditures 8.4 to 9.5 times greater.
• In addition to medical costs, intensive behavioral interventions for children with ASDs cost $40,000 to $60,000per child per year.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).