The State Department recently released information on the number of international adoptions during 2002. More children were adopted from abroad than during any other year records have been kept, 20,099, more than twice the number during 1989, the first year the State Department began keeping these records. For the third straight year, China led all other countries with the number of children adopted by US families, with 5,053. The top 20 countries from which children were adopted were:
| Rank | Country | Number of children |
| 1 | China | 5,053 |
| 2 | Russia | 4,939 |
| 3 | Guatemala | 2,219 |
| 4 | South Korea | 1,779 |
| 5 | Ukraine | 1,106 |
| 6 | Kazakhstan | 819 |
| 7 | Vietnam | 766 |
| 8 | India | 466 |
| 9 | Colombia | 334 |
| 10 | Bulgaria | 260 |
| 11 | Cambodia | 254 |
| 12 | Philippines | 221 |
| 13 | Haiti | 187 |
| 14 | Belarus | 169 |
| 15 | Romania | 168 |
| 16 | Ethiopia | 105 |
| 17 | Poland | 101 |
| 18 | Thailand | 67 |
| 19 | Peru | 65 |
| 20 | Mexico | 61 |
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