Kids Count - 2006 Data Book Online
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has released its 2006 Kids Count Data-Book online.
The broad array of data presented each year in the KIDS COUNT Data Book is intended to illuminate the status of America’s children and to assess trends in their well-being. By updating the assessment every year, KIDS COUNT provides ongoing benchmarks that can be used to see how states have advanced or regressed over time. Readers can also use KIDS COUNT to compare the status of children in their state with those in other states across several dimensions of child well-being. Furthermore, the annual presentation of KIDS COUNT data allows incremental improvements to the Data Book as new data become available and methods are refined.
Although the 10 measures used in KIDS COUNT to rank states can hardly capture the full range of conditions shaping kids’ lives, we believe these indicators possess three important attributes: (1) They reflect a wide range of factors affecting the well-being of children, such as health, adequacy of income, and educational attainment. (2) They reflect experiences across a range of developmental stages—from birth through early adulthood. (3) They permit legitimate comparisons because they are consistent across states and over time. Research shows that the 10 KIDS COUNT key indicators capture most of the yearly variation in child well-being reflected in other indices that utilize a much larger number of indicators. For more information about the criteria used to select KIDS COUNT indicators, see page 178.