Latino families are struggling, but some progress has been made by Latino children in the area of education, health insurance coverage and mortality rates. This according to the 23rd edition of the KIDS COUNT Data Book published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
According to a Latinolista.com report, there’s still room, lots of room, for improvement in these areas but they do signal positive trends. More Latino students are graduating from high school, national reading and math scores are trending up, slightly more children covered by health insurance, and mortality rates down for children.
Disparities however are deepening among children based on income, race and ethnicity. Since the 1960s, standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students has grown by about 40 percent and is now double the testing gap between African Americans and non-Hispanic whites, which declined over the same period.
Another sobering statistic: the number of children living in poverty jumped from 12.2 million to 15.7 million, an increase of nearly 30 percent from 2000 to 2010.
The report also says the United States ranked 27 out of 31 developed countries in a study measuring for equal opportunities, which determine a child’s chance to “thrive and mature” into successful contributors of a given economy.
Graphic (C) Annie Casey Foundation