The overall well-being of children in the United States has stagnated or decreased over the past decade, and New Mexico is no exception — as a new report on child poverty released Wednesday revealed.
The 2011 Kids Count Data Book, published every year since 1990 by the private charitable Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, utilizes 10 indicators — including infant mortality rate, teen-pregnancy rate and the percent of teens who are not in school or working — to track the welfare of kids across the country.
The report said 38 states have seen an overall increase in poverty. "Since 2001, the number of low-income children climbed steadily from 27 million to 31 million in 2009, or 42 percent of children," the report states. "The official child poverty rate, which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, reached 20 percent in 2009, essentially the same level as 1990."
And for the second year in a row, New Mexico ranked 46th in the national study. Since 2000, it has placed somewhere between 43 and 48. Among other factors, the study reports that in 2009 about 9 percent of New Mexico teens between the age of 16 and 19 were not in school and had not graduated from high school; that 41 percent of New Mexico kids live in single-parent homes; and that 25 percent of all children in New Mexico are considered to be living in poverty — meaning their income, for a family of four, is below $21,756.
Christine Hollis, director of the New Mexico Kids Count program, said one of the key reasons for the annual report is to use data to prompt action. "It's meant to hold policymakers accountable and it's meant for people to use this data to see there are problems and to move forward on them.
"Basically the report is saying that over the last two decades we are losing out, that what we accomplished in the 1990s is going down the drain. And New Mexico has consistently been among those states at the bottom of the list."
The report relied on data from a number of sources, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Center on Budget and Polling Priorities in Washington, D.C. Most of the data are from 2007-09.
The report suggests action items to offset the depressing trend, including investing in early childhood education, ensuring children can read at their expected proficiency level by the third grade, and addressing chronic school absences and the high dropout rate in schools.
"Yes, it costs us to do any of these programs," Hollis said, emphasizing that many studies on education link these action items to a country's ability to compete in the global marketplace. "But I don't think we can afford to not do this."
She said Kids Count New Mexico will not only email the report to New Mexico's legislative leaders, but make sure that a hard copy of the study gets on all their desks in the Roundhouse during the upcoming special session, planned for sometime in September.
She said she sees the report as an opportunity. "We know what will work, we know what public policies work, we know that early childhood will work," she said. "We just need the political will to do it and move it forward."