Survey: City Children’s Well-Being Improving
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
If children are acting put-upon, parents can at least tell them New York is a better place to be a child than it was last year, according to a national survey of childhood well-being.
In a state-by-state comparison, New York ranked 18, up from 22 last year, according to the Kids Count survey, published yesterday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The survey, which took into account measures such as child mortality and children living in poverty, ranked Minnesota first and Mississippi last among the 50 states.
Overall, New York improved in the categories that measured child and teenage deaths, teenage births, high school dropouts, and children living in poverty.
New York improved the most in the category of high school dropouts. In 2005, the dropout rate was 6%, a 33% improvement from 2000, when 9% of high school students dropped out before graduation.
New York declined, however, when it came to babies born with low birth weights. The percentage of babies born with low birth weights climbed to 8.2% in 2004 from 7.7% in 2000.
According to authors of the survey, that trend was consistent with a national increase. “While wellbeing indicators have largely gotten better for teens, they’ve gotten worse for babies,” a research associate at the foundation, Laura Beavers, said.
Of the declining school dropout rates and fewer teenage pregnancies, the associate executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, Jennifer March-Joly, said, “That’s good news.”
However, she added, “Data on child poverty and parental unemployment also suggests that far too many children in New York state face a future where economic security and achievement may be out of reach.”
In a statement, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum attributed the rising cost of living in New York City to some of the well-being and health challenges presented in the survey’s data. “Every child in New York City deserves the opportunity to grow up in a safe, loving home,” she said. “The city needs to protect working families, especially when it comes to making sure new mothers and their babies have access to basic health care.”
