Monday, August 22, 2011
Hawaii kids no longer above average
by Larry Geller
In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Hawaii’s children, raised in the “health state,” used to be above average in measurements of well-being. No more.
From the latest Hawaii’s Kids Count E-Bulletin, referring to ranking in the 22nd annual Kids Count Data Book, released last week:
The Data Book ranks states based on their performance across the 10 indicators of child well-being. According to the composite index, Hawai‘i’s overall rank continues to slip, going from 11 in the mid-2000s, to 26 based on the most recent data available.
Some of the measurement points highlighted in the E-Bulletin:
- Improvements in the infant mortality rate, the teen death rate, and the teen birth rate since 2000.
- A worsening in the percentage of low-birthweight 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.
An archive of Hawaii Kids Count E-Bulletins is available here. The bulletin is prepared by the Center on the Family, University of Hawaii at Mānoa.
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