Education and health have improved for US children, says annual report

Child-wellness indicators like education and health came off better in the most recent Kid's Count Data Book report, which was released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. However, the number of children living in poverty rose between 2005 and 2012.

|
John Paul Henry/The Paducah Sun/AP
Kindergartners reported to class in August in Mayfield, Ky.

Broadly speaking, American children are making gains in health and education. 

Child-wellness indicators in four main areas – economic well-being, education, health, and family and community – reflected an overall increase in the well-being of America’s youths, as measured by the 2014 Kid’s Count Data Book report, released annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization in Baltimore, Md. Of the 16 categories, 10 improved, five worsened, and one remained the same.

The report compared the most recent data (2010 to 2013) with data from 2005, the first year of the economic recession, which hit low-income families particularly hard.

Areas of improvement included the drop in teen births per 1,000 (from 40 to 29) and a decrease in the number of children without health insurance (from 10 percent to 7 percent). All four education trouble spots addressed in the study – children not attending preschool, fourth-graders not proficient in reading, fourth-graders not proficient in math, and high school students not graduating on time – dipped at least slightly, between 2 and 8 percent. All health issues improved as well, with fewer low-birth-weight babies, fewer child and teen deaths, and fewer teenagers abusing drugs and alcohol.

Many of these advances reflect how the attitudes toward child-health issues have changed, says Patrick McCarthy, president and chief executive officer of the foundation.

“We’ve had policies about seat belts, and car seats and helmets, so it changes how we think about protecting our children,” he says of reduced mortality, “and all of that is about policy choices and investment choices we make.” The teen birthrate, now low by historical standards, is another example. “Between 1990 and 2012, the teen birthrate was cut in half,” Mr.

McCarthy says. “We think that was a result of good policy choices, making reproductive health and birth control more available, as well as education.”

The main setbacks in wellness were seen in the economic well-being sector. The number of children living in poverty rose from 19 percent to 23 percent between 2005 and 2012, a total of 16.4 million children. Children whose parents lack secure employment – more than 23 million – increased from 27 percent to 31 percent. Overall, 28 million children were reported as living in households with a high housing-cost burden.

Curtis Skinner, a labor economist and director of family economic security at the National Center for Children in Poverty, sees the increase in poverty as closely tied to housing issues, as well as a dangerous indicator of future negative trends. “Across the country, in especially large cities, we’re seeing this enormous increase in housing costs, and a decline in affordable housing causes an increase ... of kids who are living in concentrated poverty,” Dr. Skinner says. “Typically these areas have worse schools and less recreational areas and places to play, [and] more unhealthy spaces with more contaminated environments.”

The extreme nature of these impoverished communities is also telling. “The increasing dearth of affordable housing means that people who are seeking affordable housing are pushed into concentrated neighborhoods where [it] is available,” Skinner adds. “Being poor is bad, but growing up in an area of concentrated poverty is especially bad for kids. In this bifurcated economy with high wage and low wage, we’re now in bifurcated living patterns as well, with more class-based segregation.”

Race plays into these statistics as well. For example, although it has improved in recent years, the national percentage of fourth-graders not proficient in reading is 66 percent overall. But lack of proficiency affects 83 percent of African-Americans and 81 percent of Hispanics. Many other topics present similar breakdowns.

“This is a structure of opportunity ... decidedly in favor of white … and wealthy people,” says Ryan Pfleger, a doctoral student researcher at the National Education Policy Center. “Some people have claimed that differences in genes, differences in culture, differences in effort cause [an] achievement gap. But the bigger explanation … is the difference in opportunity.”

Still, “there are multiple ways to decrease the gap,” Mr. Pfleger says, citing examples such as fighting student hunger, which interferes with learning, or pursuing studies measuring the independent effects of income, hunger, and health care on students.

“There are multiple ... ways that the research has shown that [change],” he says. “Is it one of these [initiatives]? It’s a combination.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Education and health have improved for US children, says annual report
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0904/Education-and-health-have-improved-for-US-children-says-annual-report
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe