Iowa a Top State for Kids and Families

Report: Iowa still a good place for kids

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette

Iowa remains one of the nation’s better states for childhood.  The state ranked sixth in the 2009 KIDS COUNT report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, based on dozens of health, education, and economic factors. That’s a slight improvement over the past five years.

“We usually are in the top 10, and there’s so little difference in the top eight or nine states,” said Michael Crawford, senior associate for the Child and Family Policy Center in Des Moines, the Casey Foundation’s Iowa affiliate.

Crawford said wider availability of lifesaving technology has improved the state’s infant mortality rate since 2000. Stricter safety laws contributed to this decade’s statewide decrease in infant mortality, child deaths, and teenage deaths.

“The largest factor in those deaths is automobile accidents, and I think the seat belt and child restraint laws in the past 20 years are really having an effect,” he said.

Crawford noted an uptick in low-birthweight infants, from 6.1 percent in 2000 to 6.8 percent in 2007, and that the current recession’s effects have yet to be reflected in the report.

The share of Iowa children in poverty, those who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, and those whose parents are unemployed have all increased since 2000, although the state’s campaign to enroll more eligible families has contributed to higher food aid enrollments.

“Those are kind of reflective of the economy,” he said. “Even though those numbers have deteriorated and gotten worse, they really don’t reflect what’s happened in the past year and a half.”

The entire report, including state-by-state comparisons and a county-by-county breakdown, is posted in interactive form at http://datacenter.kidscount.org/.  The data is compiled from state and federal agencies, including the Census and the National Center for Health Statistics.