Kids Count 2017 Data Book

Why I picked it up: Families with young children, as well as school groups, are a key audience for museums. And we all know that museums can provide children with meaningful experiences …. experiences that are cherished, and sometimes change lives in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. But we meaningfully reach too few children, a social justice issue that museums have not truly reckoned with. So of course I picked this up.

What you need to know:  The Annie E. Casey Foundation has been working on this annual "by the numbers" on child wellbeing since 1990; this 2017 book uses the most recent data (2015) from the US Census Bureau, the CDC, the US Department of Education, and other sources.
​
The Data Book examines child wellbeing across four factors, noting if there has been progress (or regression) over the past five years (so, since 2010).

• Economic: Progress! There are fewer children in poverty … but one in five are still from impoverished households.
• Education: Mixed. Graduation rates are improving, but other measures (e.g. school proficiency) are lagging.
• Health: Progress! There has been overall improvement, particularly in health insurance coverage thanks to Obamacare.
• Family and community: Mixed. Teen pregnancy rates are declining, but there are increasing numbers of children in single-parent households, which tend to be lower income with fewer resources and more stressors.

Other findings:

• Overall, whites and Asian American children are doing much better than other children of color.
• They examined wellbeing by states and regionally, finding that New England states overall have highest rates of child wellbeing; states in the South, Southwest, and Appalachia are not doing as well. These findings make sense given those regions have sharply different levels of educational attainment, with resulting economic outcomes that affect child wellbeing.

Implications for museums:  While this report doesn't directly mention museums, we have to be mindful that its focus is a key audience for all of us. In particular:

• Any director or staff member of a museum that has children and/or families as a core audience should have familiarity with the report, since this is your core audience. It will give you a better idea of challenges your audience is facing … especially underserved audiences.
• In particular, educators should take a look at how their state is doing, and consider programs that might address some of these concerns. And development directors should work closely with education staff to secure funding through new sources. After all, we are capable of creating meaningfully improved outcomes for all children. But we have to reach them to do so.

The website includes a wonderful tool for focusing in on one specific geographic area for a snapshot of child wellbeing. For some lucky states, it can even be refined by zip code. Go to datacenter.kidscount.org to start pulling your community's numbers.

Read or skip? Anyone who wants to serve all children in their community should skim through the report, check out page 53 for their state's ranking, and consider going to datacenter.kidscount.org to create more refined reports. They make it easy.

Full citation:  "2017 Kids Count Data Book: State Trends in Child Well-Being." The Annie E. Casey Foundation. June 2017.
​


Have a suggestion for my reading list?  Email it to me at susie (at) wilkeningconsulting (dot) com.

---