2018 Kids Count: Mississippi ranks low, but made progress

GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Miss. (WCBI) – The 2018 Kids Count Data came out Wednesday.

It’s an annual study of child well-being across the country.

Mississippi ranks low on the list, but reports show progress has been made over the years.

The rankings are based on four things: education, health, economic well-being, and family and community.

Mississippi ranks 48th in child well-being across the country.

While that is low, it’s higher than it has been in years past.

“That is the first time since 1991, that we have been 48th. In 26 of the 29 years that the Kids Count ranking have been going on across the country, we have been 50th,” says Research Fellow & Research Professor, SSRC, Mississippi State University
Coordinator, Family & Children Research Unit Research Scientist, Mississippi Health Policy Research Center Coordinator, Mississippi KIDS COUNT Program, Dr. Linda Southward.

Southward specializes in family and children research.

She says the first five years of a child’s life are extremely important.

That’s why she stresses the importance of investing in children early on, rather than later.

“We need to have the context in place, so that these children can receive the best, can have an early start, to have a right start, and to have a start that they can be more successful because what we see in spending among welfare programs, juvenile delinquency, all of these things that happen on the other end.”

There are 40,000 four-year-olds in the state and Southward says that the state funded Pre-K programs only serve 2,000 of them.

“We serve less than one percent of all of our 4-year olds across the state. We need all kids, zero to five, in high-quality care for them to really be ready for school,” says Assistant Research Professor and Research Fellow Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University, Dr. Heather Hanna.

The Child and Parent Development Center at Mississippi University for Women, is one of those programs providing that early start for little ones.

“Being in an environment where they can learn about behavior and social, emotional things and they can learn not just the academics, the academics are just a small portion of what they do in early childhood. The biggest part to us is all of the social, emotional. The learning how to work with their friends, learning how to self regulate their behavior,” says Director Penny Mansell.

Hanna believes investing in the early ages, is the seed that will grow into better things for Mississippi.

She says that’s what the states at the top of the list are doing.

“Those states are making those investments and they not only, they have everybody on the same page. They have the physicians, they have the child care centers, they have the Legislature, they have all of the players, all of the actors singing the same song and working together in unison, and you can see the results of that.”

Mississippi has its own version of Kids Count and one thing it shows is 30% of our children live in poverty.