The Union Leader ran this story yesterday, and the local papers ran it today:

State drops to second in Kids Count report 

New Hampshire fell from its first-place perch of the past four years, but only to second nationally in the annual Kids Count report released today on the health and well-being of children and teenagers.

State-by-state Kids Count report cards have been filed annually for 18 years based on Census Bureau statistics in 10 categories, such as low birth weight, children in single-parent households, high school dropouts and infant mortality.

Overall, New Hampshire ranks second behind Minnesota in the report, funded and compiled by the Annie E. Casey Foundation based in Baltimore, Md.

The state led the nation in two categories: child poverty and teen births.

So far, not so bad!  I actually went out to the actual data for NH (found here); take a look at BOTH the percentage and raw numbers data presentation.

Although the state’s child poverty rate jumped 50 percent between 2000 and 2005, from 6 percent to 9 percent, New Hampshire’s rate remains the nation’s lowest. Mississippi’s rate of 31 percent is the country’s highest.

Still, that 9 percent equates to roughly 28,000 New Hampshire children living in poverty (income below $19,806 for a family of two adults and two children) in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available.

Maria White, director of public affairs at the Children’s Alliance of New Hampshire, said the state’s high cost of living is largely to blame.

"Income and wages for many families in New Hampshire haven’t been able to keep up with the increases in cost of living, and more children in our state are falling into the ranks of the poor," she said.

This part, I disagree with.  Frankly, while costs are rising, this was a political statement.  Looking at the numbers.

Nativity (where born) – a growth 4K to 8K in 5 years

Face it, most illegal immigrants are not well educated – most lack the equivalent of a high school diploma.  Without skills on the part of the parents, of course these kids will be in poverty. And that pool of children, from the study, is above 10% of the native born children population.

New Hampshire also led the way with just 18 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19. Texas had the most young mothers, at 63 births per 1,000 teens.

New Hampshire’s number has fallen significantly in recent years, from 23 births per 1,000 teens in 2000.

Ann Larney, a public affairs director for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said keys to keeping that number low are knowledge and communication.

"Planned Parenthood emphasizes education, prevention and good health care," said Larney. "I think our new efforts have been focused on parents and teens and the need to talk about healthy relationships and encourage their teens to delay sexual activity until they are mature enough."

I have a hard time philosphically with her statements, given that Planned Parenthood led the charge to get the parental notification bill repealed.  Often times, statements uttered by their representatives talked about women and that the right to an abortion had to be maintained…..when the discussion was about 13 year old girls!  How many abortions did they participate in during those years – and yes, I would add that to the death rate (sure, my bias is certainly showing…proudly). 

The largest improvement in any category for New Hampshire was its high school dropout rate, which dropped 33 percent between 2000 and 2005.

This is a good improvement as well! 

But the Granite State ranks better than only Indiana and Montana in graduating students with disabilities. Those students leave school at nearly three times the rate of their non-disabled peers.

[snip]

"There’s still kind of a resistance by many schools to want to serve kids with disabilities adequately," said Cohen. "There are some schools that actually encourage kids to drop out."

He said New Hampshire’s reliance on local property taxes to pay for education has fostered a poisonous atmosphere toward students with disabilities and the price tag for their education.

"There’s almost a mean-spiritedness among some officials in schools and some communities," said Cohen.

OK, snark time…it seems that when those in public debate use "mean spirited", it is generally in terms of people who are balking at spending other peoples’ money as the person uttering "mean spirited" wants (think liberals, as I never hear conservatives use that phrase except sarcastically or in satire).  In other words, if a community isn’t instantly ready to open the pocketbook, we’re selfish. 

I looked at the data, and did come up with a conclusion: The most important thing, once I switched to raw numbers and all years available, were the last 4 data sets:

• Teens not attending school and not working (2001-2K to 2005-4K)
• Children living in families where no parent has full time year round employment (2001-69K to 2005-82K)
• Children in Poverty (100%) (2001-21K to 2005-28K)
• Children in Single Parent families (2001-63K to 2005-70K)

If I were to casually sum these all up (and I am not a statistician), it shows to me that as the number of single parent families grows, so does the number of children living in poverty.  I believe that there is more than a casual connection between poverty and dropping out of school and then having kids of their own.  This is a serious problem and is only going to grow.

Why?  We seem to denigrate marriage rather than supporting it.  According to Dr. William Cosby (and proved by a number of studies), it only takes the following to keep from falling or staying in poverty:

• Get a high school diploma
• Get and hold a job
• Get and stay married
• Then have kids – not before

Thus, how to fix the problem?

Strengthen families so as to make divorce less prevalent, then kids stay out of poverty and will probably have better outcomes in school.  The poverty numbers will go down as well as the other data set elements in this study (teen deaths, low birth weight rates, et al) will continue to trend downward.