Things are getting better for New Mexico’s kids, but slowly. That is according to a report that comes out each year at the beginning of the legislative session. The study also included data on environmental health for the first time.
The New Mexico Kids Count Data Book is released every year by New Mexico Voices for Children, with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The new report said child poverty in the state held steady from last year’s number at 24% and is still higher than the national average of 16%.
But Emily Wildau, who puts the data book together at Voices for Children, sees that as a win.
“The pandemic had such a potential to cause dramatic increases in child poverty,” she said. “And New Mexico acted by passing a lot of policies that prevented that.”
The report also showed a decrease in teens who are not in school and do not work, down to 9% from 12%. The teen birth rate in the state also dropped significantly in the last decade. The rate of high school students who did not graduate on time dropped to 23% in 2020 from 33% from 2010.
Wildau said that while those numbers are encouraging, “None of the progress ever is happening as fast as we'd like.”
The report showed that the state’s chronic absenteeism remains stubbornly high at 39%. Additionally, the child and teen death rate has been climbing since 2017, moving up to 43 per 100,000 children from 34 in 2011.
This is the first year that the report has included an environmental health section, which showed that more New Mexico children also have asthma problems than in the country as a whole – 9% compared to 7%. It also said that New Mexico spends $391 more than the national average per Medicaid beneficiary because of health problems brought on by heat.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s budget recommendation this year calls to expand early pre-kindergarten, extend the school year to 180 classroom days and create a new Family Services division at the troubled Children, Youth and Families Department.
This coverage is made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and KUNM listeners.
