STARKVILLE, Miss. —
This week’s unveiling of the annual “Kids Count” Data Book for Mississippi will — as always — stir interest on both sides of the state’s legislative aisle as Democrats and Republicans alike confront reliable statistics from the leading resource for comprehensive research and information on the Mississippi’s children.
With state leaders engaged in substantive debates over contentious issues like charter schools, school district consolidation, Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges, and the annual struggles to fund public education at all levels and public health care in the poorest state in the union, the “Kids Count” data focuses on information vital to proponents and opponents of those issues alike.
The data produced is often jarring and uncomfortable to confront. The latest edition documents the fact that while 22.4 percent of all Mississippians live in poverty, the poverty rate for Mississippi children under age five is 37.5 percent while 30.2 percent of children aged 5-17 live in poverty. Also documented is the per capita income disparity between the most and least affluent Mississippi counties.
Madison County has a per capita income of $31,517 while neighboring Holmes County has a per capita income of $11,585. Those numbers belie the more disturbing statistic that finds 15 percent of Mississippi children — the highest percentage in the nation — living in extreme poverty in families with incomes less than 50 percent of the federal poverty level.
On the issue of public health, “Kids Count” research shows that Mississippians exceed the national average for low birth weight babies by one-third and exceed the national average on child and teen deaths per thousand by 43 percent. Most appalling, as cited recently by Gov. Phil Bryant, is the fact that Mississippi teens are giving birth at the highest rate in the nation and at a rate 39 percent higher than the national average.
What separates the “Kids Count” work from other public advocacy groups that focus solely on the litany of depressing economic indices in which Mississippi is rated at or near last is the fact that the group actively seeks out and recognizes Mississippi groups and programs that are making a positive difference in changing those dismal outcomes.
The 2013 “Kids Count” Data Book reviews research on health, safety, economic well-being and education for the benefit of policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders. The group also hosts an annual summit meeting and recognizes organizations that improve the lives of children in operating programs that can be emulated in other parts of the state.
The 2013 “Kids Count” Summit will be held Friday, Feb. 22 at 8 a.m. at Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson. The plenary speaker is youth advocate and U.S. Army veteran Wes Moore, the author of the bestselling book “The Other Wes Moore.” During the event, the group will honor the Jackson Medical Mall Foundation’s Childhood Obesity Project, Biloxi’s Moore Community House, and the Starkville School District’s Emerson Family Centered Programs as “Kids Count” Success Story award recipients.
The innovative Mississippi Children’s Museum in Jackson earned recognition as the group’s 2013 “Program of Promise.”
The research is conducted by the Family and Children Research Unit at Mississippi State University’s Social Science Research Center, but is funded in by a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and MSU’s Division of Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine. The organization is influenced by a diverse advisory board with representatives from public and private agencies including the state Department of Health, state Department of Mental Health, the state Attorney General’s office, North Mississippi Health Services , the CREATE Foundation, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the 4-H Foundation, Alcorn State University, and Southern Ag Credit.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Columns
‘Kids Count’ research stirs interest on both sides of legislative aisle (HED)
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Columns Headlines
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