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Cass kids suffer recession fallout

Published 9:59pm Monday, January 23, 2012

LANSING — Infant mortality in Cass County jumped 41 percent over the past decade while more than half of Cass K-12 children now qualify for free and reduced price lunches, the latest Kids Count in Michigan Data Book concludes.
Michigan’s long economic struggle is reflected in the new Kids Count findings. Children qualify for school-based meals if their family income is 185 percent of poverty or less. Studies confirm that families need income of about 200 percent of poverty – at least $44,226 for a family of four – to cover basic needs without assistance. Poverty also drives up neglect cases.
“The findings show that kids in Cass County and across Michigan are still suffering the fallout from our long recession,” said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, the Kids Count in Michigan director at the Michigan League for Human Services. “Poverty in Michigan is as big a threat to our children today as polio was to a previous generation. Fortunately, we can do something about this. We know that public policy can improve children’s social and economic environment.”
This year’s report, Health Matters, focuses on child health and the role that the social and economic factors in children’s lives play in good health.
The annual Data Book is released by the Kids Count in Michigan project. It is a collaboration between the Michigan League for Human Services, which researches and writes the report, and Michigan’s Children, which works with advocates statewide to disseminate the findings. Both are nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organizations concerned about the well-being of children and their families.
The report ranks counties on 16 indicators of child well-being (with No. 1 being the best), though data is not available to rank smaller counties on all 16. Trends over time are available for 15 indicators, with nine indicators improving and six worsening.

County figures
Cass County’s best ranking was 13th among the counties for the fourth-grade MEAP tests with only 4.9 percent of Cass fourth-graders considered not proficient in math, compared with 8.5 percent of fourth-graders statewide. The county’s ranking for the eighth-grade MEAP tests was 35th with 19.4 percent of eighth-graders considered not proficient in math, compared with the statewide rate of 22 percent.
The county’s worst ranking was No. 77 among all counties for babies born to mothers receiving less than adequate prenatal care with 42 percent of Cass county babies born to such mothers compared with about 30 percent statewide. The county was also ranked 69th among 76 counties for children in out-of-home care with a rate of 8.3 children in out-of-home care per 1,000 children compared to a statewide rate of 5.

State figures
Statewide, the biggest improvements were in the area of education with fewer students considered not proficient in math and among adolescents with fewer births to teens, fewer teen deaths and fewer high school dropouts.
Michigan saw a small improvement in infant mortality from 2000-2009, although African-American infants have triple the risk of mortality than that of white infants. There was also a 25 percent improvement in the rate of child deaths over the decade with 318 children (ages 1 to 14) dying in 2009, down from 471 in 2000.
Worsening trends included the rate of children confirmed as victims of abuse and neglect, which rose 34 percent statewide over the decade. In 2010, 32,500 Michigan children were confirmed victims with four out of every five suffering from neglect.
The percent of children living in poverty jumped from 14 percent to 23 percent between 2000 and 2009. Even more startling is the rate of children living in extreme poverty – roughly less than $11,000 a year for a family of four – jumped from 5 percent of children to 11 percent. That means that more than one in every 10 kids in Michigan is living in extremely desperate circumstances, living at half the poverty level.

Consequences
Children growing up in poverty face lifelong consequences. They are less likely to graduate and more likely to suffer from heart disease, obesity and high blood pressure as adults.