246,000 Mississippi children living in poverty

More than a third of Mississippi children are stranded in poverty — higher than during the Great Recession.

“Recovery from the recession is extremely hard for families that were on the verge of economic collapse before the recession,” said Oleta Fitzgerald, director of the Children’s Defense Fund’s Southern Regional Office. “Children in poverty live in families whose incomes are below some $22,000 a year for a family of four, with those in extreme poverty with incomes at half of that in today’s world.”

A total of 246,000 Mississippi children, or 34 percent, are living in poverty, according to the 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which ranks states on the overall well-being of children. In 2008, when the U.S. economy nosedived, that number was 30 percent.

In contrast, the national figure for child poverty is 22 percent.

Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy for the Casey Foundation, a nonprofit based in Baltimore, said these numbers could improve since the unemployment rate has shrunk to 5.3 percent from 7.5 percent in June 2013.

In the report, Mississippi ranked 50th in overall child well-being; economic well-being; and health, and family and community. The state also ranked 48th in education.

Nationwide, 66 percent of fourth-graders in public schools were reading below the proficient level in 2013, compared to Mississippi’s 79 percent (which was an improvement from 81 percent).

While Mississippi worsened in six categories, it improved in nine.

The biggest improvements came in the following:

•The percentage of high school students failing to graduate on time improved from 36 percent (2007-08) to 32 percent (2011-12).

•The percentage of children lacking health insurance improved from 13 percent to 8 percent.

•The number of teen births, which can play a role in graduation rates, fell from 65.6 per 1,000 in 2008 to 46 in 2013, according to state Department of Health statistics.

Health Department officials believe these births have declined because of “abstinence-plus” and other programs the department has aimed at reducing these births.

“It’s not that we’re not improving,” said Linda Southward, director of Mississippi Kids Count. “We’re not at the same starting point.”

Only once in the past 25 years has Mississippi ranked something other than 50th in poverty. That was in 2013 when Mississippi ranked 49th, she said. “We have to improve dramatically.”

These poverty numbers are what the state has seen for some time — more than a third of children in poverty while the national poverty rate hovers above a fifth.

“That’s disconcerting,” Southward said. “Until there are resources consistently for investing in Mississippi’s children, I don’t think we’re going to see a difference.”

Dozens of Mississippi communities are making a difference by investing in Excel by 5 programs, she said. “They’re putting a stake in the ground.”

A new survey found that 52 percent of Mississippi children who arrive at kindergarten are on target and 48 percent are not, with 24 percent of those needing immediate referral, she said.

The question, she said, is, “What do we want for our children in Mississippi?”

Fitzgerald said many of Mississippi’s children in poverty “live in rural areas hard hit by collapsing economies and education systems.”

Parents need better jobs, and their children “need access to quality education systems so they can escape their parents’ reliance on low-wage, low-benefit jobs when they do exist,” she said. “Families need help with child care so they can stay at work and food assistance when their earnings won’t allow them enough to feed their children.”

Many children “are being locked out of opportunities to thrive, exposed and hurt by all the negative consequences of being poor — hunger, under-education, poor health and mental health, poor housing,” she said. “We should be ashamed.”

USA Today contributed to this report.

Contact Jerry Mitchell, at (601) 961-7064 or jmitchell@jackson. gannett.com. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.