Dr. Southward said studies have shown that by the end of fifth grade disadvantaged children are almost three grade equivalents behind their more affluent peers in reading.
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Poverty is living in a home where the income is $23,000 or less a year for a two-parent family of four.
Minnesota ranked number one for overall child well-being. Education remains Utah’s lowest ranking in a domain indicator at 29.
The overall well-being of Missouri’s children appears to have improved according to the 2015 Kids Count Data Book released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, but local poverty experts warn against viewing the increase in rankings as an improvement.
However, the positive points were not enough to paint a handsome picture for many of American children. “We know people are working on these issues”. The number of children in families where no parent has full-time employment also is up, from 31 percent to 33 percent.
The report indicated nationwide about 16 million children lived in poverty in 2013, up from 2008’s numbers which was 13 million kids.
African-American children had the highest rate of poverty at 39 percent, which was more than double the rate for non-Hispanic whites at 14 percent.
“I don’t think anybody in Indiana is happy with where we are… we’re still trying to make sure that there are better opportunities for children”, he said.
McCarthy likened child poverty to a particularly pernicious form of cancer, and he prescribed a cocktail of economic policies and fixes to tackle it. “However, they just have not provided the kind of wages and benefits that families need to be able to lift themselves out of being low-income or poor”.
Will Carter is director of communications at the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, which in part helps facilitate and promote the building of healthy children and their families. There will be no magic bullet, but legislators can find approaches worthy of trying.
The data book examined children based on their economic well-being, education, health and family and community, during the recession and in the post-recession years.
“This should be a time of growing prosperity for Kansas children and families, but instead we are mostly stagnant”, she said.
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“That for the most part has to do with access to public health insurance programs, because that has been expanded in most states”.
