How Policymakers Can Help Children from Struggling Families

Today the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its annual Kids Count Data Book. The newest edition of the most comprehensive resource available on the state of the nation’s children tells a sad story of the recession’s effects on children in our country.

Some striking examples from the data:

• Nearly 8 million children have at least one parent who is unemployed--double the number of 2007.
• There are 7.7 million children with no health insurance, along with 12 million parents.
• Since 2007, 5.3 million children have been affected by foreclosure.
• In 2005, 29 percent of families with children were considered “asset poor,” meaning that their total assets (liquid and non-liquid) added up to less than three months of poverty-level income. By 2009, the percentage of families with children who were asset poor had jumped to 37 percent.

These data are in line with trends from the past decade that show widening levels of inequality. Before the recession, low-income households were not benefiting from economic growth as middle- and high-income families were.  “The official child poverty rate,” the Casey Foundation reports, “which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, increased 18 percent between 2000 and 2009, essentially returning to the same level as the early 1990s.”

There were, however, improvements in five indicators of child well-being: the infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, teen birth rate, and percentage of teens who are neither in school nor high school graduates.

The Casey Foundation recommends six ways for policymakers to support struggling families:

• Strengthen and modernize unemployment insurance and promote foreclosure prevention and remediation efforts.
• Preserve and strengthen existing programs that supplement poverty-level wages, offset the high cost of child care, and provide health insurance coverage for parents and children.
• Promote savings and asset protection and help families gain financial knowledge skills.
• Promote responsible parenthood and ensure that mothers-to-be receive prenatal care.
• Ensure that children are developmentally ready to succeed in school.
• Promote reading proficiency by the end of third grade.

The new edition of the Data Book is supported by an interactive website that enables users to search the national and state-level data collected in the book.