For example, why did the percentage of Utah children living in poverty - that is living in a family of four with an annual income of less than $9,700 - grow 20 percent from 2000 to 2003? Just four years earlier, in 1999, Utah was one of three states with the fewest children living in poverty; now it ranks fifth. Utah sits at 18th for the number of children from functionally poor families, those living below 200 percent of the poverty level.
Questions such as how Utah dropped from fifth place nationally to ninth are not easy to answer. Many factors can influence the figures, including changes in the local and national economies. Still, the numbers should get attention from policy makers and legislators in Utah. A trend downward in child well-being is a red flag that should not be ignored.
KIDS COUNT attributes the growing national problem of poverty, which contributes to children failing in school and getting involved in criminal behavior, primarily to parents who, for a variety of reasons, do not have long-term employment with living wages.
Substance abuse, domestic violence, prior incarceration and depression are underlying problems that lead to unemployment or underemployment, the report says.
Terry Haven, director of the KIDS COUNT Project for Voices for Utah Children, says Utah's growing immigrant families, many with parents who are employed in low-wage jobs, may account for some of the increase in children living in poverty.
Cuts in Medicaid funding and proposed changes in Social Security would affect the 5 million American children and more than 20,000 in Utah who receive Social Security benefits. Other threatened programs in the current national budget provide foster care, food stamps, child support enforcement and childhood nutrition.
Haven rightly worries that federal budget cuts will hurt programs that help Utah children.
The KIDS COUNT survey should force attention on poverty and its consequences.
The Utah Legislature, often loath to fund such things as day care and after-school programs that help low-income parents, should heed the warning this survey represents. Otherwise, this alarming trend is likely to continue.
