TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—Indiana falls in the middle of the 50 states in overall measures of child well-being in categories ranging from poverty and education to health and community.

“We are pretty much middle of the pack,” said Tami Silverman, president, and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute. “We want to be ranked higher than that.”

The 2018 KIDS COUNT data book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Indiana 28th in the nation for child well-being, behind the neighboring states of Illinois and Ohio, but ahead of Michigan and Kentucky.

The data compile measures of child well-being across the nation using 16 indicators in four domains—family and community, economics, education, and health. The foundation has been ranking states on these measures since 1990.

“Most encouraging is our education rank,” Silverman said, noting that Indiana was 14th nationally.

“Obviously we need to keep moving and make sure our kids are well educated but we also want to make sure they are healthy and safe and that they live in a household that can provide what they need,” Silverman said.

In health, Indiana was 31st among all 50 states, in part because of childhood obesity and tobacco use.

“We are going to be working with several different organizations this fall in particular on some of those health rankings,” Silverman said. “We know that as far as infant mortality the governor has made statements that it’s no secret that we really struggle with infant mortality rates in our state.

In the area of economics, one in five children lives in poverty, ranking 31st in the category. Although Indiana’s child poverty rate is slightly above average, the report indicates that it is significantly higher for black and Hispanic children. Those children are three times more likely than their white counterparts to live in poverty.

In other measures:

• More than a quarter of Hoosier children live with parents who lack secure employment;
• Fifty-nine percent of fourth-graders aren’t proficient in reading and 62 percent of eighth graders lack proficiency in math;
• More than one-third of children live in single-parent families.
• The number of high school students failing to graduate on time declined slightly from 14 to 13 percent from 2010 to 2018;
• Only six percent of children are without health insurance, down from nine percent in 2010;
• And the number of teen births has dropped from 37 to 24 per 1,000 births from 2010 to the present.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is using the release of the 2018 KIDS COUNT report to stress the importance of the 2020 census and making sure that every child is included in the count.

“It’s important that we accurately count so that we get all of those supports so that we get the funding we need for education, for safety, for housing, all of those things are centered and many of them tie directly back to the census,” Silverman said.

Funding for many programs, especially those affecting children, is influenced by the census count.

“We need to make sure that from the start that when the newest Hoosiers are born that they have the health that they have the safe home, that they have all the things they need in order to thrive and succeed and grow up to be the next leaders in our great state,” Silverman said.

FOOTNOTE: Brynna Sentel is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.