The Foundation for Child Development and the Annie E. Casey Foundation have compiled a host of measures of child well-being and use them to rank states. They have produced a report about these metrics, but here is their map showing the relative position of states according to their metrics. Nancy Folbre has an interesting discussion of these at The New York Times' Economix blog as well which centers on the willingness of states' residents to pay taxes for services for children.
Oregon ranks 31st in this - slightly below the average of the 50 states. Interestingly, from this report using much of the same data we find that Oregon does well in health measures: infant mortality, birth weight and child and teen death rates. Where we start to fall are in the areas of education, employment and poverty.
The metrics are shown below so you can decide how meaningful they are.
1 comment:
The disadvantage of a set of measures like this is that they lumps differing communities together. Disaggregating by race shows a pretty bleak picture in infant wellness indicators (infant mortality, low birth weight, premature birth) particularly for the African-American community, and other communities of color.
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