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Nebraska ranked 10th in overall well-being of children

A new report says 18 percent of Nebraska children live in poverty, and 37,000 live in high-poverty neighborhoods.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation publishes the Kids Count report. It looks at economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. The 18 percent of Nebraska children living in poverty in 2013 was up from 13 percent five years earlier.

Chrissy Tonkinson, research coordinator for Voices for Children in Nebraska, says those numbers are different for children of color.

“If you look at white, non-Hispanic kids, we’re about 10, 11 percent. Conversely, if you look at kids who are black or African-American, it’s about 45 to 50 percent of kids who are living in poverty. So that’s a huge disparity in poverty, as well as other areas, like reading, or kids without health insurance, kids living in high-poverty areas, or kids in single-parent families, we see disparities.”

In Nebraska, more than 25,000 children weren’t covered by health insurance in 2013. That’s a slight improvement from the 2008 report.

Laura Speer, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Associate Director of Policy Reform and Advocacy, says that reflects a trend at the national level.

“That for the most part has to do with access to public health insurance programs, because that has been expanded in most states. We see there are fewer children that lack health insurance, and the reason why it’s mostly been about public health insurance is that fewer employers are providing health insurance coverage for families for their employees.”

The Kids Count report found that 63 percent of fourth graders weren’t proficient in reading. 64 percent of eighth graders weren’t proficient in math. Also, more than half of Nebraska children didn’t attend preschool.

Nebraska ranks 10th in overall well-being. The report is available at datacenter.kidscount.org.