According to the 25th edition of the Kids Count Data Book released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, New York ranks among the top five states for children’s health. The report compared information from 1990 that shows major trends in the well being of children and then recent trends that compare data from 2005 to 2012.
What’s amazing is that New York showed improvement in all eight areas of health and education for children. The report shows that there has been a decrease in the number of children who don’t graduate from high school since 1990. It has decreased from 33 percent to 22 percent in 2012 which is a remarkable improvement. Another encouraging development for the social and child services in New York is that the number of teen births has decreased however much to our disappointment the number of children in high poverty areas remained stable at 17%.
Another finding which was worth a notice was that the number of children in single parent families increased by 24% from the 1990 to 2012. Even though this last statistic doesn’t seem to directly relate to a health some studies do suggest that a lack of attention or a dysfunctional family environment at an impressionable age can lead to psychological and even physiological problems in life. However in many cases that may be true for children living with both their parents since separation is not the only criteria for a dysfunctional family.
