The 16th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows a half million more children living in poverty in 2003 than 2000, for a total of nearly 13 million. The study also concludes that five out of 10 child well-being indicators worsened since 2000. In addition to child poverty, there was an increase in the percentage of low-birthweight babies between 2000 and 2002; an increase in infant mortality for the first time in 40 years, having reached an all-time low in 2001; and a slight rise in the teen death rate between 2000 and 2002. These findings are in stark contrast with data in last year's KIDS COUNT study that showed eight out of 10 key indicators improved from 1996 to 2001, a period of economic growth and significant expansion of public programs.

KIDS COUNT does report good news in three areas: the high school dropout rate has fallen significantly from 2000 to 2003, the teen birth rate in 2002 continued to go down, and the percent of children in single-parent households leveled off. Looking across all well-being indicators, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Minnesota rank highest, and Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi rank the lowest.

"The nearly 4 million children living in low-income households where neither their parent(s) nor any other adult in the household worked at all in the past year is an alarming increase of more than 1 million children since 2000," says Douglas W. Nelson, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. "The best way to improve the future for America's most disadvantaged kids is to improve the financial security of their parents today."

William O'Hare, coordinator of the Foundation's KIDS COUNT project, reinforces the Data Book's findings that during the late 1990s, the number of children living in non-working, low-income families dropped considerably, as new welfare work rules took effect and the economy surged. "Since then," O'Hare observes, "this figure has been rising once again, and this has largely been unacknowledged by policymakers or the media."

The 2005 KIDS COUNT Data Book's essay, "Helping Our Most Vulnerable Families Overcome Barriers to Work and Achieve Financial Success," presents a sobering picture of what lies behind the inability of more than 2 million parents to enter and succeed in the workforce. The essay focuses on four particularly perplexing barriers that have gone largely unrecognized and unreported, but make it extremely difficult for even the most motivated parents to work, stay successfully employed, and become self-sufficient. The essay concludes that not any single barrier — domestic violence, depression, substance abuse, or prior incarceration — prevents work, but rather the cumulative impact of multiple burdens severely limits workforce success.

Some of the solutions that were highlighted in the essay present examples of public and private initiatives around the country that address the needs of America’s most persistently unemployed families through:

Linking domestic violence screening to other services offered by caseworkers, such as child support and employment training; Culturally sensitive screening and counseling for adults with mental health issues; Improving the employment skills of adults with substance abuse problems while they recover from their addiction; Providing training and placement assistance for people returning from prison to help them secure maintenance and repair service jobs within state and local government agencies.

The Casey Foundation advocates a call-to-action to address the needs of vulnerable parents in a more systematic, comprehensive, and integrated way. "These steps can start by enabling states to craft policies and programs to help people overcome multiple barriers and help the hardest-to-employ adults secure jobs," says Nelson. "States should be offered more flexibility, including the use of waivers, in order to combine welfare and workforce resources into an integrated support system for the most challenged job seekers."

The call-to-action is to: Improve state screening and assessment of low-income adults to uncover hidden barriers to employment; Improve state collection and analysis of data on adults with serious employment barriers; Increase the emphasis on case-management support and combining services that address employment barriers with employment-focused activities; Increase the help given to persons transitioning from incarceration back into the community, such as job search assistance prior to release, and encouraging community-based organizations, faith institutions, and local governmental agencies to support formerly incarcerated people who are seeking jobs.

"Too many parents want to work their way out of poverty, but are unable to do so," concludes Nelson. "The futures of too many kids, as a result, are severely compromised. As a nation we can and must do a better job in helping tear down the most formidable barriers and help the parents of nearly 4 million kids connect to a job, become self-sufficient, and find a path out of poverty."

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable organization, whose primary mission is to foster public policies, human-service reforms, and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulnerable children and families. For more information, visit www.aecf.org.

For more information, contact:

Darcy Sawatzki
Hager Sharp Communications
202-842-3600, ext. 249
http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/sld/db_press.jsp