Each year, the Ann E. Casey Foundation releases its exhaustive study of the well-being of America’s children called Kids Count.
The report, which considers childhood well-being based on four factors — economic well-being, education, health and family and community resources, has been conducted for 27 years now.
In all but one of those years, Mississippi has ranked dead last in those rankings.
This year is no different, based on the data released today from the 2016 report.
Our state remains entrenched at the bottom of the rankings. In many categories, Mississippi isn’t just last, it falls so far below the national average, one has to wonder if we are even trying anymore.
Almost twice as many of our children (27 percent) live in high-poverty areas than the national average (14 percent). The overall child poverty rate in our state is 29 percent, compared to 22 percent nationally.
The percentage of children living in single-parent homes in Mississippi is 47 percent compared to the national rate of 35 percent.
The percentage of Mississippi children who do not graduate with their class is again almost double the national average (32 percent to 18 percent).
On and on, it goes. Even in those areas where the state has shown improvement (declining teen pregnancy, birth rate and infant mortality and improved reading and math), those decreases follow a national trend and, in many cases, have not shown as dramatic an improvement as we see on a national level.
While there is no single solution, no magic bullet, to improve the lives of so many of our children and secure for them some reasonable hope for a better future, the single biggest factor is — and this should hardly be a surprise — education.
Across the board, almost every measurement in the study can be linked, in some way, to economic well-being. Poorer states such as Mississippi produce poor results and the cause-and-effect link between poverty and education is something no one seriously disputes.
About once in a generation, our conscience is sufficiently pricked to move us to respond with meaningful legislation that focuses on attacking the root cause of what ails our state.
But our resolve quickly crumbles. New programs, with dedicated funds, are either ignored or dismantled and the cycle of misery continues.
It does not seem to matter much to us if almost a third of our children live in poverty as long as our child isn’t one of them.
But the truth is, one way or another, all of those children are our children, and their plight is our plight, too.
Oh, we may seclude ourselves, we made delude ourselves, but the scourge of poverty and all of its accompanying miseries affect us all.
No one would build a nice new home on a street filled with shacks, So is it any real surprise that Mississippi will continue to struggle attracting new industries with good jobs.
Our educated children will flee for those opportunities that do not exist here while the poor will struggle for lack of jobs that might lift them from hopelessness.
The cycle continues.
This year’s Kids Count report confirms it yet again.
The question now, as it always has been, is simple: What are we going to do about it?
Until now, the answer has always been “little or nothing.”
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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