What does a child need to thrive? Most people know that children need shelter, food and love to be happy and healthy, but there’s more to consider. Child wellbeing can be affected by the child’s own personality and those around them, like their family and community. But larger systemic trends in a child’s home state also have a direct impact on their wellbeing.

The 2024 KIDS COUNT® DATA BOOK from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is an annual study of children across the United States, measuring state-specific factors at play in determining overall wellbeing. The data offers key insights into the overall health and wellness of children. The report analyzes how certain factors affect children differently depending on where they live. 

This 2024 edition features post-pandemic learning loss, and how poverty, physical and mental health, and trauma have resulted in a nationwide failure to prepare children to learn. This data focuses primarily on students’ lack of basic reading and math skills. Both of which had unprecedented drops in learning from 2019 to 2022.

Armed with this information, organizations like KVC, as well as parents and caregivers, can understand the different challenges families and children may be facing. Legislators can make informed decisions about policy. And individuals can also use this data to take action, donate, volunteer or get more involved in improving the lives of children and teens in their community.

What Contributes to a Child’s Wellbeing?

The 2024 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation

The KIDS COUNT Data Book looks specifically at four domains to measure overall child wellbeing: economic, education, health and family/community factors. Looking at these four categories provides a closer look at child wellbeing, highlighting bright spots in states as well as areas with room for improvement. 

The study looks at four “key indicators” within each category, showing how measurements contribute to the overall picture of how a state is doing.

Here are the 16 key indicators of child wellbeing:

• Economic factors
  • Children in poverty
  • Children whose parents lack secure employment 
  • Children living in households with a high housing cost burden
  • Teens not in school and not working 
• Education factors 
  • Young children not in school (ages 3 & 4)
  • Fourth graders not proficient in reading
  • Eighth graders not proficient in math
  • High school students not graduating on time
• Health factors 
  • Low birth-weight babies
  • Children without health insurance
  • Child and teen deaths per 10,000
  • Children and teens who are overweight or obese (ages 10–17)
• Family and Community factors 
  • Children in single-parent families 
  • Children in families where the household head lacks a high school diploma 
  • Children living in high-poverty areas
  • Teen births per 1,000

New Findings on Wellbeing and Learning Loss

While nine of the key indicators stayed the same or improved compared to previous years, the other six worsened — including four factors related to education and two regarding child and teen death rates.

According to data from the 2022 school year, the following indicators have dropped dramatically:

• 54% of young children (ages 3 and 4) are not in school (a 2% increase from pre-pandemic years)
• 68% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading (a 2% increase from pre-pandemic years)
• 74% of eighth graders are not proficient in math (a 7% increase from pre-pandemic years)
• 7% of teens are not in school and not working (a 1% increase from pre-pandemic years)

While these averages account for children of all races and economic backgrounds, the numbers are significantly worse for students of color, children of immigrant families and children in low-income families or school districts.

Root Causes and Educational Outcomes

Education factors are just one piece of the puzzle regarding child wellbeing. Just as economic hardship impacts a child’s ability to succeed educationally, the impact of learning loss on children and teens today will have a ripple effect on the national economy as these youth join the workforce. Today’s young people may not be prepared to take on essential careers as adults, the report states. One analysis suggests the drop in math scores from 2019 to 2022 could “reduce lifetime earnings by 1.6% for our 48 million pandemic-era students, for a total of $900 billion in lost income.”

In comparison to other countries, the KIDS COUNT Data Book reveals a concerning disparity. It highlights how ill-equipped American students are regarding reading, mathematics and digital problem-solving. All are needed skills for fast-growing occupations in today’s economy. And the pandemic cannot be held solely responsible for this drop. 

“Kids of all ages and grades must have what they need to learn each day, such as enough food and sleep and a safe way to get to school, as well as the additional resources they might need to perform at their highest potential to thrive, like tutoring and mental health services.”

-Lisa Hamilton, President and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation

To improve learning, the Annie E. Casey Foundation offers many recommendations, including:

• Getting children back on track by ensuring access to low- or no-cost meals, a reli­able inter­net con­nec­tion, a place to study and time with friends, teach­ers and counselors.
• Expanding access to inten­sive tutor­ing for stu­dents who are behind in their class­es and miss­ing aca­d­e­m­ic mile­stones
• States taking advan­tage of all their allo­cat­ed pan­dem­ic relief fund­ing to pri­or­i­tize the social, emo­tion­al, aca­d­e­m­ic and phys­i­cal well-being of stu­dents
• Addressing chronic absenteeism, so more students return to school for learning
• Investing in community schools with wraparound support for children and families 

How Does Your State Rank?

The 2024 Data Book shows improvement nationally on 5 of the 16 factors compared to 2019 or other pre-pandemic years. The top ten states for overall child wellbeing are New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Utah, Vermont, Minnesota, New Jersey, Iowa, Connecticut, Nebraska and North Dakota. Regionally, the upper Midwest has the most states with high rankings in wellbeing, with Appalachian and Southern states continuing to have the lowest rankings.

View the full list of state rankings here.

How is KVC Working to Improve Children’s Overall Wellbeing?

KVC Health Systems has a long history of strengthening families, developing parenting skills and equipping families to prevent the need for foster care. For nearly 200 years, we’ve provided heart-centered service to children and families in need, becoming a national leader in mental health and child welfare.

Often, factors like poor economic resources or lack of access to healthcare lead families to struggle. But we know that any type of disruption can greatly impact a child. One of our services across our entire network is in-home family support, which aims to ensure that families have the skills needed to safely care for their children, help parents find jobs where they can earn a suitable wage, and work with them to access healthcare. Success out in the world starts with stability at home. 

In addition to resources aiding children and youth in foster care and reunification, KVC offers mental health services at many of our locations, including the opening of a new Camber Children’s Mental Health facility in Hays, Kansas, at the beginning of 2023 and a joint venture with Children’s Mercy to build a new $53 million mental wellness campus. Academic support resources are provided at some KVC locations as well, including KVC Academy in Missouri, the Fostering Educational Success program in Nebraska and the new Middle College program in partnership with Fairmont State University.

Thanks to our team and supporters, KVC positively impacts 75,000 people’s lives every year through in-home family strengthening services, foster care, adoption, mental health treatment and inpatient children’s psychiatric treatment. Learn more about how we’re working to help children and teens in Kansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and Nebraska here.