Report: 1 in 4 Ariz. kids live in poverty

Despite Arizona’s gradually-decreasing unemployment rate, nearly a quarter of all Arizona children still live in poverty, according to report released this week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The annual report, KidsCount, ranks each state using 16 categories that fall under education, health, poverty, family and community.

Arizona ranked near the bottom in each area, placing 45th out of 50 overall.

“We really haven’t translated our economic recovery since the Great Recession into better conditions for children and their health, education and security,” said Dana Wolfe Naimark, president and CEO of Children’s Action Alliance.

Arizona has a long history of low rankings in the report, inching its way up from 47th place two years ago.

Wolfe Naimark zeroed in on education and poverty, calling it a reflection of the state’s priorities.

“Part of that is the history of the economy and demographics; part of that is choices that we make,” she said. “We can either have policies and practices that make it easier for families to lift themselves out of poverty and climb up the economic ladder, or policies that make it more difficult.”

The report used 2016 and some 2017 census data, accompanied by numbers from a few national reports to compare each state. The goal is to measure state shortcomings in specific areas and to provide comparable benchmarks for how improvements can be made.

The report showed 24 percent of Arizona children live in poverty, higher than the national average of 19 percent. Additionally, 23 percent of Arizona children live in areas of concentrated poverty.

The state has faced struggles in educational attainment as well, lagging in key areas in the midst of shrinking resources for public schools. According to the report, 70 percent of fourth-graders in 2017 were not proficient in reading and 66 percent of all eighth graders that year were not proficient in math. Those levels took a dip from last year. They also reflect recent local AzMerit scores, which indicated 56 percent of third-graders tested this year weren’t proficient in reading.

Minority communities were far more likely to face high poverty rates, and health and education issues, than the national average. Thirty-four percent of African-American and Indian communities, for instance, lived in poverty, while only 12 percent of white communities faced the same situation, according to the study.

And those numbers may be far higher than reported in minority communities due to historic undercounting of children of color, low-income children and immigrant families.

“If we don’t have an accurate count, we’re potentially leaving more children and families behind,” Wolfe Naimark said.