Kids Count: Iowa life makes slight gain in report

Iowa is the seventh best state in which to raise a child, according to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual Kids Count report. That's an improvement from the 2012 results, when Iowa ranked eighth in the nation.

“I don't attribute it to anything really. It's a very small change,” said Mike Crawford, senior associate and fiscal director of Iowa's Child and Family Policy Center. “The numbers are reflective of Iowa but they're also reflective of other states as well. … Because if states aren't doing as well, they'll drop and push us up as well even if we're not doing something different.”

Crawford praised Iowa for its performance on health and education metrics. Between 2005 and 2010, the rate of low-birthweight babies has decreased from 7.2 percent to 7 percent, the amount of child and teen deaths per 100,000 dropped from 33 to 24 and from 2005-06 to 2010-11 the percentage of teens abusing alcohol or drugs shrunk from 10 to 7. In addition, the amount of children with health insurance increased by 2 percent from 2008 to 2011.

Roger Munns, public information officer for the Iowa Department of Human Services, attributed that last statistic to three things: access to private insurance, government programs such as Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa which he called “clearly one of the best in the country,” and residents valuing insurance.

“This has been an area of strength for Iowa for at least a decade,” he said. “There are places where parents don't give it as high a priority as they do here. … We have strong government programs that help families who have modest or low incomes.”

In education, an additional 4,730 high school students graduated on time in 2009-10 compared to 2005-06 and 43,000 more children attended preschool in 2009-11 than in 2005-07. The rate of students not achieving proficiency for fourth-graders in reading and eighth-graders in math remained the same from 2005 to 2011, 67 percent and 66 percent respectively.

The state didn't fare as well in economic measures. Iowa dropped from third in economic well-being in 2012 to fifth this year and reported increases in all four reported areas. The largest rises occurred in the rate of children in poverty, which grew to 17 percent in 2011 from 14 percent in 2005, and a three-percent increase between 2008 and 2011 in the amount of kids whose parents don't have secure work.

“Poverty rates in this state are clearly higher than they used to be,” Munns said. “Wages have not kept pace with expenses. More people are either underemployed or employed in work that hasn't kept up with their needs.”

An additional 208,000 Iowa children found themselves living in single-parent families from 2005 to 2011, a 4-percent increase. That means 30 percent of Iowa children have only one parent in their household, which Crawford said could have financial implications.

“There is a link. I don't know if it's the only one but there is a connection,” he said about the increase of children in poverty and the rise of single-parent households in Iowa. “Single parenting itself isn't a bad thing but it's more difficult to make ends meet.”

Crawford called for job creation, raising the minimum wage to $10 or $11 an hour and boosting the Earned Income Tax Credit as ways to improve Iowa's economic standing and help working families.

He also offered ideas of community and volunteer support as ways to help all of Iowa's children, which was one of the larger messages from the report.

“I think the most important thing to me is a general understanding that it's sometimes tough for families working on their own and they need help, and it's not giving help in a welfare sense,” Crawford said. “It's an investment. … Having that support is very important to help families thrive and improve.”

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