The Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, MD, well-respected
for its annual KIDS COUNT data book that tracks ten key
indicators of child well-being, this year is emphasizing the
shortcomings in the data currently available. In a departure
from the traditional format, this year’s data book, released in
July 2009, leads off with an analytical essay focusing on the
nation’s “data deficit,” and the fact that important data are
not only outdated but improperly gathered.
The Casey Foundation is particularly critical of federal actions
in gathering data on poverty. “Perhaps the single most glaring
shortfall comes in our efforts to measure poverty, the key
performance indicator that rises above all the others in its
impact on children’s futures,” according to the Foundation.
Calling “this crucial counting process …. seriously wanting,”
action steps are recommended to increase the quality and
quantity of data available.
The federal government’s poverty formula, developed in the 1960s
and unchanged since that time is “thoroughly outdated,” state
Casey Foundation officials. It calculates the cost of a basic
household grocery budget for a given family size and then
multiplies it by three, since in the 1960s, families spent about
one-third of disposable income on food. Today, however, food
takes up roughly one-seventh of net household income. The
government poverty formula does not take into account child
care, transportation, health care or education costs and makes
no allowance for regional differences in the cost-of-living.
In short, concludes the Casey Foundation, “our nation’s
so-called poverty measure provides absolutely no gauge of the
impact of our major anti-poverty programs on reducing poverty.”
The Foundation urges a new poverty measure, along the lines of
the one developed by the National Academy of Sciences in the
1990s, that takes into account costs related to work, child
care, taxes, and out-of-pocket medical expenses, with
adjustments for regional differences in living costs. Non-cash
benefits would also be counted.
“Systems and organizations charged with helping disadvantaged
families and communities succeed must capitalize on new
opportunities afforded by today’s information revolution to
bolster their efforts to measure and improve outcomes,” said
Foundation CEO Douglas Nelson. “It is more critical now than
ever to have accurate data that show how American families are
faring in the current economic downturn and have systems that
are equipped to use this information to improve the well-being
of those children and families most in need,” he concluded.
Read more at:
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/databook/2009/Default.aspx