Today in States of Things: Washington's Children
This photo of happy children can be found in the report.
April is apparently the month when reports are released.
Yesterday, we received the "State of the Air" report from the American Lung Association. Today, we received the "State of Washington's Children" report from the UW and Washington KIDS COUNT. The report, which gathers information and generates statistics for the 1.5 million children under the age of 18 living in Washington State, is a joint partnership to provide an overview of the health and wellbeing of the youth.
From the report:
- 29% percent of 10th graders reported that they had been bullied or harassed at school in the past year.
- 64% of high schoolers immediately enroll in some kind of post-secondary school.
- 1 in 3 children in Washington live in a "low-income household."
- 16% live in households that experience food insecurity.
- 6 out of 10 children ages 1-5 are being read to each day.
- 110,000 children in the state have no health insurance.
- 1 in 6 10th graders reported the use of illegal drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes in the last 30 days, respectively.
Some of these numbers are actually fairly hopeful on the surface--like the part where the majority of kids get read to and are going to college or another kind of post-secondary education. However, the immediate next statistic? That only 31% of individuals 25 or younger have a Bachelor's degree. Though this could easily be because college is expensive and often takes more than four years. But these kinds of questions are sort of the problem with this report.
The "State of Washington's Children" report is less of a comprehensive study, and more of an overview of numbers with little context; what the report does not provide is any comparison to last year's data, so these numbers are, it seems, meant to be taken alone.
You can view the full report (it's a PDF) here.
