Here’s How Florida Ranks For Child Well-Being: Report

Florida ranks 34th in the country for overall child well-being, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s new report. The organization released its annual KIDS COUNT Data Book last week. The report measures child well-being in four areas: economic, education, health, and family and community.

Here’s how Florida ranks in each category:

• Economic well-being: 42
• Education: 24
• Health: 34
• Family and community: 34

Florencia Gutierrez, a senior research associate at the foundation, told Patch that there has been significant progress in child well-being, particularly in states that consistently invested in children and programs and enacted policies that support kids and families.

“The states that provide quality education, access to healthcare, access to nutrition programs, those are really the states where we would all want our children to live and thrive,” Gutierrez said. “Investing in kids gets results.”

The report found that nearly one in every five American children — more than 14 million — lived in poverty in 2016. In Florida, that number was 859,000, or 21 percent. Furthermore, 30 percent of children were living with parents who don’t have secure employment.

The report also found that many fourth-graders were not reading at a proficient level. Nationwide that number was 65 percent. In Florida, that number was 59 percent.

Here are some other key rankings in Florida:
Economic

• Teens not in school and not working: 7 percent

Education

• Eighth-graders not proficient in math 71 percent

Health

• Rate of child and teen deaths per 100,000: 28 percent
• Teens who abuse alcohol or drugs: 4 percent

Family and community

• Children living with single parents: 40 percent
• Children living in families where no one has a high school diploma: 12 percent

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, based in Baltimore, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building better futures for disadvantaged children and their families. The group’s report looked at 16 indicators of child well-being, each derived from the latest available state and national data. The authors emphasized that readers focus on the “relatively large differences” between states, rather than any small differences.

New England states claimed two of the top three spots for overall child well-being. New Hampshire ranked first followed by Massachusetts and New Jersey. Half of the top 10 states were northeastern states.

On the flip side, New Mexico, Louisiana and Mississippi were the three lowest-ranked states, in that order. Nevada and Alaska rounded out the bottom five.

Even though certain states might perform well overall, the report highlights where they can do better through policy changes.

Gutierrez highlighted California an example of a state that was able to drastically improve its number of uninsured kids by expanding its comprehensive medical program to cover all income-eligible children regardless of their immigration status. The percent of children without health insurance fell from 9 percent in 2010 to just 3 percent in 2016.

“This is incredible progress and they’re on their way to making sure that all kids in California have access to health insurance,” she said.

The report highlighted America’s racial inequalities that remain “deep, systemic and stubbornly persistent.” On nearly every measure, African-American, American Indian and Latino kids continue to fare worse than their peers, the report said.

“As a result of generational inequities and systemic barriers, children of color face hurdles to success on many indicators,” the authors wrote.

African-American children were significantly more likely to live in one-parent families and high-poverty neighborhoods. Latino kids were most likely to live with a head of household who doesn’t have a high school diploma and not be in school when they’re young. Latinas had the highest teen birth rate.

The report also issued a warning for the future: about 1 million children under 5 years old will likely be undercounted in the 2020 census. Low-income children, children of color and kids living in immigrant families are most likely to be missed, Gutierrez said.

That undercount could result in troubling consequences for children over the next decade, because the count is used to distribute billions of federal dollars to the states for programs critical to family stability and opportunity, the report said.

“This is money that supports education programs, school lunches, health care access, nutrition programs,” Gutierrez said. “It supports programs that allow children to thrive. So if a child is not counted, if a young child isn't included in the form by their parents, then in the eyes of the government, that child does not exist.”

Patch reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock