Kids Count
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Overview
KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the US.
Mission: KIDS COUNT is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States. By providing policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being, KIDS COUNT seeks to enrich local, state, and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all children.
Data Center
One of the major initiatives of the foundation is the KIDS COUNT Data Center. It allows to see data on children well-being in different graphical format by state and national level on a wide variety of indicators.For the 2009 Census, data on children in poverty is also available by congressional district.
Reports
The foundation produces a KIDS COUNT Data Book, The Right Start for America's Newborns and subject-specific research. For 22 years, KIDS COUNT , a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has provided national and state data on the well-being of children in the United States.
2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book The Foundation recently released its 2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book which examines how children and families are faring in the wake of the recession. The KIDS COUNT model has also been adopted in Latin America, and is currently being replicated by child advocates in Brazil, Mexico, and Paraguay. According to this year’s data, the official child poverty rate in the U.S. increased by 18 percent between 2000 and 2009, essentially returning to the same level as the early 1990s. This increase means that 2.4 million more children are living below the federal poverty line. Data also reveal that the impact of the job and foreclosure crisis on children has been grave. In 2010, 11 percent of children had at least one unemployed parent and 4 percent were affected by foreclosure between 2007 and 2009. These economic challenges hinder the well-being of families and the nation.
The essay introducing the Data Book this year is “America’s Children, America’s Challenge: Promoting Opportunity for the Next Generation.” In this message, the Casey Foundation takes a hard look at challenges federal and state legislators will face as they work to ensure the continued well-being and future of the nation’s children at a time of economic uncertainty. The public policy recommendations offered are practical, maximize the use of public funds, and represent the best thinking of leading progressive and conservative experts. They are grounded in policies and programs that have been shown to work and provide a blueprint for helping all children reach their potential and set the nation on a path to renewed economic prosperity.
The 2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book is complemented by the KIDS COUNT Data Center and accompanying mobile-friendly site that contain hundreds of measures of child well-being covering national, state, county, congressional district, and city information. Please visit the website to access customizable maps, graphs, and geographic profiles that include information on education, economic well-being, health, the number of children in immigrant families, and many more topics.
About the Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charity organisation with the goal to increase opportunities for disadvantaged children in the United States. It was established in 1948 by Jim Casey, one of the founders of UPS, and his siblings. The foundation is named in honor of their mother. The foundation makes grants to organisations in the US that improve children's living conditions.
