These Are The Best States To Raise Your Children In, For Their Overall Well-Being

The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently published a report saying that New Hampshire is the best state in which to raise a child, while Mississippi is the worst.

The study measured 2015 data on the topics of economic well-being, education, health, and family and community from the private Population Reference Bureau.

The top states for overall child well-being were:

1. New Hampshire
2. Massachusetts
3. Vermont
4. Minnesota
5. Iowa and Connecticut (tied)

The five worst states for overall child well-being:

1. Arizona
2. Nevada
3. Louisiana
4. New Mexico
5. Mississippi.

The report also stated that national findings like the number of families living in high-poverty neighborhoods have risen slightly over the past decade. In Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and New Mexico, at least 20% of children lived in high-poverty neighborhoods in 2015.

Laura Speer, co-director of the study, said she was most surprised by improvements in the high school graduation rate (with 83% graduating on time in 2014/2015, up 1% from 2012/2013) and the teen birth rate: 22 births per 1,000 girls in 2015, down from 24 in 2014.

“They had been at historically good levels, and both the high school dropout rate and the teen birth rate continued to drop this year,” Speer said. “And they’re now at the lowest levels they’ve ever been.”

The states in the Northeast or upper Midwest ranked highest on the child well-being list, while the ones ranked lowest were in the South or Southwest. Speer said a big reason had to do with each state’s approach toward children’s health care.

“There were a few states in there that didn’t take advantage of Medicaid expansion,” she said. ‘They didn’t take advantage of the opportunities that the government provided over the past five years.”

Some states had huge improvements in child health care coverage. Between 2010 and 2015, California had a 67% decline in uninsured children, the highest in that time period. Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and South Carolina also had declines of over 50%, according to the report.

Speer said future health-care provisions may have an impact on the progress of children’s coverage.

“We definitely think that the gains we have made over the 10 or 15 years in covering kids and families are potentially at risk with the proposals that have been discussed by the president and Congress,” she said. “There’s little doubt that there will be negative repercussions, especially for low-income families.”

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would cut the Children’s Health Insurance Program by at least 20%, as well as Medicaid, which covers millions of kids.

“Kids are about almost half of all the enrollees in Medicaid, so kids would be disproportionately harmed there,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, a nonpartisan advocacy organization for children and family policy issues. “And what we’re talking about there are kids who are either poor or disabled, so you’re really hitting the most vulnerable kids in society.”

Speer is optimistic and hopes policymakers will think deeply about the potential implications of their decisions on not only health insurance coverage but the various state programs that provide family support.

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