KIDS COUNT Report Shows Improvements, Opportunities For CT Kids

This year’s KIDS COUNT Data Book finds Connecticut’s children doing well overall. But a closer look reveals growing poverty rates in the state’s largest and poorest cities. WNPR’s Diane Orson reports.

Each year the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT report looks at how children are doing across America, state-by-state. This year’s book contains data through 2008.

Connecticut’s story is mixed. Overall, the state ranks 8th in the nation for general child well-being. There were improvements in several areas: fewer child and teen deaths, more teens in school and graduating from high school. But the state worsened in other areas: more low-birthweight babies; more children in single-parent homes and more kids living in poverty.

Speaking at the Yale Child Study Center last week, Jim Horan, Executive Director of the Connecticut Association for Human Services, said improvements in poverty rates that began in the late 1990s stalled even before the current recession.

"Child poverty was rising before the recession from 10.5% in 2004 to 12.5% in 2008. We know what to do to reduce poverty, but the Governor and the Legislature never made the necessary investments to reduce poverty."

Horan says despite Connecticut’s great wealth, children in large urban areas and inner-ring suburbs are paying the price for the economic downturn.

For WNPR, I’m Diane Orson.