Report Suggest US Children Left Behind in Economic Recovery

“The stark reality is too many African American and Latino children live on the edge of poverty”. Almost a third of children are living in families where no parent has full-time employment.

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2015 KIDS COUNT report, which measures and assesses family and child-well-being, 22 percent of Oregon’s children, about 182,000, were living in poverty in 2013, an increase from 18 percent in 2008, when the country was in the depths of the recession.

The report says Michigan’s child poverty rate is getting worse. The report showed significant improvements in seven of eight categories in children’s education and health.

“That’s where you see a difference in day-to-day lives”, he said. We can and must do better: “we can make policy choices to lift more families into economic stability”.

The state ranks 20th for the number of high school students who graduate on time – only 17 percent who do not – and Tennessee is tied with 15 states for having the lowest percentage of students who abuse alcohol or drugs.

The Kids Count report says 54 percent of the state’s eligible children did not go to preschool in 2013.

Minnesota ranks first among states in a national poll on the well-being of children. The Casey Foundation report finds that the rising tide of recovery, with both increased employment and more concentrated wealth, has left stagnant pockets of low-income, struggling communities and families, where a child’s future is anchored in scarcity and hardship. The latest numbers show a quarter of kids in Michigan are living below the poverty line which is a slight rise from 2008 when a fifth of the state’s children were living in poverty. Though that percentage is comparable to the 7 percent without coverage nationally, or about 5.2 million, Huddleston said it’s proof that state efforts have been successful.

“It’s going to take a two-generation strategy”, Huddleston said.

If Arkansas is to improve in the rankings in future years, the state is “going to have to address the economic factors”, he said.

Zalkind said some of them are not surprising, like in the major cities, “but some of our rural counties have them as well, Salem Gloucester, Atlantic, Cape May all have very high levels of poverty”.