Report: Poverty affects 72,000 Maine children

More than one-quarter of Maine children are living with parents who don’t have secure, year-round employment, and more young adults are falling between the cracks, without jobs or schooling or career plans, according to a national report being released today.

The good news is that Maine teens are having fewer babies and the infant mortality rate remains low, the report shows.

“One of the things about the numbers in Maine that really concerns us is that 26 percent of children live in homes without a parent with full-time employment,” Maine Kids Count Director Lynn Davey, of the Maine Children’s Alliance, said Wednesday. “That’s a concern.”

The number of children living with underemployed parents actually decreased from 27 percent to 26 percent between 1996 and 2001, according to the report.

The annual Kids Count report, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, evaluates states using 10 measures, including the percentage of children in poverty, the percentage of high school dropouts, and infant birth and death rates.

The report compares figures from 1996 to 2001 for most of the categories.

Maine Kids Count, a project of the Maine Children’s Alliance, is part of the national Kids Count network. Maine has an overall Kids Count ranking of 12th in the nation, which means Maine children generally are better off than their counterparts in other states.

Maine’s performance improved in four of the 10 measures listed: child death rate, teen birth rate, children with underemployed parents and children in poverty.There are more than 72,000 children in Maine living with one or two parents who do not have secure, full-time, year-round employment, the Maine Kids Count report states.

“Research over the years has shown that children who grow up in poor homes or in families that struggle to make ends meet face tough hurdles,” Davey said. “That kind of jumped out at us.”

Maine’s rate of unskilled young adults is higher than the national average, the report states.

“Another figure that raised concerns is the vulnerable and disconnected young adults, age 18 to 24,” Davey said. “In 2002, 18 percent of Maine’s young adults were not working, were not in school and didn’t have a degree beyond high school.

“Nationwide, this rate of disconnected young adults was 15 percent,” she said.

Of these young adults, approximately 17 percent – or an estimated 16,800 – live below the federal poverty line, Davey said. She said many of these young adults fall into four established “at-risk” groups.

“A lot of these kids were in foster care, in the juvenile justice system, are teen parents or are high school dropouts,” the Maine Kids Count director said. “These young adults are much less likely to have the tools and connections to become productive adults.”

Davey said the numbers regarding young adults are startling, “but we can alter their [Maine’s youth] future by securing programs that help.”

The 15th annual Kids Count data book shows that child poverty rates dropped in nearly every state, but the overall rate for the United States is among the highest in the developed world, with 11 million poor children in 2000. During that year, the child poverty rate ranged from 7 percent in New Hampshire to 26 percent in New Mexico.

Maine’s child poverty rate dropped by 19 percent between 1995 and 2000. Approximately 13 percent of the state’s children lived in poverty in 2000 compared to 16 percent in 1995.

“We also have the third lowest teen birth rate in the country,” Davey said.

Between 1996 and 2001, the number of Maine teenagers 15 to 17 years old who gave birth dropped by 29 percent. Nearly 17 teens out of 1,000 gave birth in 1996 compared to only 12 out of 1,000 in 2001. The national average is 25 births per 1,000 teens.

Infant deaths in Maine increased between the same period, but the numbers for the state are so low that the statistics are bound to fluctuate, Davey said.

In 1996, about one infant per 200 live births in Maine died, and in 2000 the number increased to one out of 166 births. The 39 percent difference represents an additional nine deaths, Davey said.

On the other hand, death rates for children 1 to 14 years old declined by 27 percent in the state during the same period. The report states that only 16 children out of 100,000 died in 2001, compared to 22 in 1996.

Maine is ranked fifth in the nation for both child death rates and low birth weights.

The state’s percentage of families headed by a single parent shot up by 13 percent between 1996 and 2001, with 26 percent of Maine families headed by a single parent. The national increase was 4 percent.

The annual report provides Maine Children’s Alliance with a tool to solicit legislation and programs for the state’s children, Davey said.

“We use the data to advocate for sound policies for kids,” the director said. “When this report comes out every year, we see where we need to add attention.

“Clearly it’s [the report] telling us we need to do more on the behalf of kids,” she said.