State among worst in nation for underprivileged children

(THE CENTER SQUARE) >> More underprivileged children live in Ohio than in most other states, a new report shows.

WalletHub, a personal finance website, used 27 different indicators of neediness, ranging from the share of children in households with belowpoverty level income to child foodinsecurity rate to the share of maltreated children, to rank all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Ohio ranked 17th as the state with the most underprivileged children.

“The state scored poorly in terms of economic mobility, which means the odds of reaching the top fifth starting from the bottom fifth are just above 6%,” Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst, said. “Other factors that contributed to the ranking include the high percentage of poor children lacking all seven vaccines … and the low public high school graduation rate among economically disadvantage students.”

The report showed 43.6% of poor children did not have all seven — DTaP, polio, measles, mumps and rubella, Haemophilus influenzae type b, chicken pox, hepatitis and PVC — vaccines.

The graduation rate for economically disadvantage students stands at 71%.

Ohio has the 10th-worst infant mortality rate and ranked 12th worst for children in single-parent families. It also was among the worst in the nation for child food insecurity.

Its best scores came in the areas of maltreated children (24th worst), percentage of children in foster care (25 worst) and the child and youth homeless rate (25 worst).

Among Ohio’s neighbors, only Kentucky (10th) and West Virginia (3rd) ranked worse.

The country’s best states in terms of children living in poverty included New Jersey, New Hampshire, Utah, Connecticut and Virginia.

The worst states were Mississippi, Alaska, West Virginia, New Mexico and Louisiana.