Mississippi has ranked 50th in the nation for child well-being in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual Kids Count report.
In the 27 years the report has been released, Mississippi has ranked last in 26 of those years, said Mississippi Kids Count Director Linda Southward. Despite the low ranking, Southward said, Mississippi has made progress in childhood welfare since the first Kids Count report was released in 1990.
“Data related to child well-being in Mississippi dating back to 1990 when Kids Count began collecting this information suggests that Mississippi has made some rates of progress, but compared to other states, it’s relative to where we started,” Southward said. “Basically the sort of Achilles Heel — if you will — of the ranking is that even if we match the progress of another state, if we started last then we are also going to end up in the last ranking.”
The report is based on four indicators of a child’s well-being: economics, education, health and family and community. It looks at everything from poverty level to birth weight to number of single-parent families and teen births.
Local numbers
The data is broken down by county. In the Golden Triangle area, Clay County had the highest percentage of children in poverty in 2014, which is the latest data available. Almost 43 percent of children lived in poverty compared with an overall county poverty rate of 28.4 percent.
Noxubee County had a child poverty rate of 42 percent the same year with a 31.3 percent poverty rate overall.
Lowndes and Oktibbeha had the lowest rates of child poverty with 33 percent and 32.8 percent, respectively.
Other indicators
■ Every public school district in the four counties has seen an increase in chronic absences since 2010, though Clay County School District saw a decline from 2012 to 2013. The overall rate of chronic absences in the state is 14 percent, Southward said.
■ Mississippi ranked 49th in children’s economic well-being, beating Louisiana. According to the data, 36 percent of state children did not have parents with secure employment in 2014, up from 27 percent in 2008.
■ Mississippi ranked 47th in education, beating Alabama, Nevada and New Mexico.
■ The percentage of Mississippi teenagers neither working nor attending school increased to 10 percent in 2014 from 9 percent in 2009.
■ Mississippi ranked 49th in health with the highest percentage of low-birthweight babies of any state in 2014.
“Mississippi needs to make some significant policy changes to get our state out of last place,” Southward said.
In particular, she said, the state needs to invest in early quality education and pre-K for all children in the state and promote attendance for all grade levels.
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