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Missouri Ranking Improves, Arkansas’ Declines in Kids Count Study

Scott Harvey
/
KSMU

A new study finds that Missouri ranks 26th when it comes to child well-being, an improvement of three spots from the previous year. The report is part of the 2015 Kids Count Data Book released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

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’s actually 16 indicators that the Kids Count uses but out of those 16 there are key ones that are pulled into four categories which are economic well-being, education, health, family and community, and that is how the data is derived,” said Carter.

The report reflects data from 2013. Some indicators like Missouri children living in poverty shows an improvement from the previous year, but is still worse than pre-recession levels. Children without health insurance in the state remained steady at seven percent. Other criteria for child well-being have shown an increase in recent years.

“In Missouri one of the things that we’ve seen is the increasing number of children growing up in high poverty communities and in neighborhoods. In fact, one in 10 of Missouri’s children are now growing up in an area where poverty rates are more than 30%,” Carter explained.

Nationwide, 1.7 million more children are now in poverty than between the years 2007 and 2009, or the period of the Great Recession.

Carter mentioned that the need for more long-term, career-driven jobs is the key to get families out of poverty.

In the statement, Annie E. Casey Foundation President and CEO Patrick McCarthy said, “While we’ve seen an increase in employment in recent years, many of these jobs are low-wage and cannot support even basic family expenses.”

Carter believes that it is important for more community members to get involved to help improve the numbers for next year.

“I think the ultimate goal in what we see when these numbers come out is that nobody wants to hear a kid say that whey woke up and weren’t sure when they were going to get food that day.”

On a positive note for Missouri, the numbers show that youth education is improving, which experts believe is key for children to eventually grow out of poverty.

“We did have improvements in math and reading proficiency and we also had improvements where we saw that more children were living with parents with a high school diploma,” said Carter.

Arkansas, which was ranked 41st in last year’s report, was ranked 44th this year. There, 29 percent of children live in poverty, 17 percent live in areas of concentrated poverty, and six percent do not have health insurance.

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