News for Nonprofits

Hawaii’s national rank tumbles
in 2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book

The Annie E. Casey Foundation released the 22nd annual KIDS COUNT Data Book on Aug. 17, ranking states based on their performance across the 10 indicators of child well-being. According to the composite index, Hawaii’s overall rank continued to slip, going from 11 in the mid-2000s, to 26 based on the most recent data available.

Each year, the Data Book provides the most current data on ten measures of child well-being that KIDS COUNT has tracked over the past 20 years at the national and state levels. Data presented in the 2011 Data Book show that, nationally, five of the 10 key indicators have improved since 2000:  the infant mortality rate, the child death rate, the teen death rate, the teen birth rate, and the percentage of teens not in school and not high school graduates.

Three of the 10 indicators have worsened since 2000: the percentage of low-birth-weight babies, the percent of children in poverty and the percent of children in single-parent families. Two areas are not comparable based on the most recent year of data available.

The 2011 Data Book highlights that children in Hawaii have experienced:

  • Improvements in the infant mortality rate, the teen death rate and the teen birth rate since 2000.
  • A worsening in the percentage of low-birth-weight babies, the child death rate, the percentage of teens not in school and not high school graduates, the percentage of children in poverty and the percentage of children in single-parent families since 2000.
  • Comparable data going back to 2000 were not available for the percentage of teens not attending school and not working, and the percentage of children living in families in which no parent has full-time, year-round employment. However, both indicators worsened between 2008 and 2009.

“Overall, improvements in child well-being that began in the late 1990s have stalled as family economic well-being declined in the wake of the recent recession,” said Hawaii KIDS COOUNT in its August newsletter. Two new indicators — children impacted by foreclosure and households with at least one unemployed parent — were added to this year’s data set in an effort to track the impact of the recession. The new data show that Hawaii trends are somewhat similar to the rest of the nation: 

  • In Hawaii, 14,000 or 3 percent of the state’s children were impacted by foreclosure since 2007. Nationally, 4 percent of children were impacted by foreclosure during the same period.
  • In 2010, an estimated 25,000, or 10 percent of Hawaii children, lived in households where at least one parent was unemployed. Nationally, 11 percent lived in households with at least one parent who was unemployed.

To download the 2011 Data Book and the Hawaii profile go to the KIDS COUNT Data Center website:  http://datacenter.kidscount.org/DataBook/2011/Default.aspx.