Kids Count places New Mexico 50th in U.S. for child well-being

Aug. 8—After moving up to 49th place in 2021, updated data on factors such as child poverty and school enrollment knocked New Mexico down to 50th in the nation for child well-being, according to the national 2022 Kids Count survey released Monday.

The most recent ranking — based on 16 indicators that include economic, education, health and family factors to calculate a composite score — falls in line with a decade-long trend for New Mexico, which has been at or near the bottom for overall child well-being since 2012.

But officials said the data is largely comprised of numbers collected two or more years ago, and they said they hope more recent figures will show improvements yielded by recent investments in education and early childhood.

"[The data] doesn't necessarily reflect many of the policy changes we've seen at a state level," New Mexico Voices for Children Executive Director Amber Wallin said in an interview Monday. "When the data catches up to the policy, we expect to see continued improvement for New Mexico's children and families."

Wallin pointed to recent investments in the state's early childhood system and refundable tax credits of up to $175 per child as examples of new policies that aren't reflected in the recent Kids Count.

The data used to determine the 2022 report, released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Maryland-based philanthropic organization, partially relies on five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey between 2016 to 2020.

But it doesn't have any standalone American Community Survey data for 2020 or 2021 due to delays in data collection and processing with the survey, which annually captures key economic, social and demographic markers of the nation's population.

The ranking also relied on proficiency data from standardized tests taken in 2019 and failed to capture high school graduation rates for the class of 2020.

The recent count places New Mexico last in education for the seventh year running, according to data from Voices for Children.

In addition to markers like child poverty and academic proficiency, the report also points to a troubling rise in rates of anxiety and depression among kids across the U.S. The rate of kids ages 3-17 with anxiety or depression rose from 9.4 percent in 2016 to 11.8 percent in 2020.

Those rates were the highest nationwide for American Indian and Alaskan Native children, 15 percent of whom reported anxiety or depression compared to 12.7 percent in 2016.

Foundation President Lisa M. Hamilton said the survey reveals "the unfolding mental health crisis that America's young people are experiencing — one that reflects not only the turmoil of the past two-plus years but also issues that were making life harder for kids well before the pandemic."

New Mexico reported 11.4 percent of kids in the state as reporting having or being diagnosed with anxiety or depression by a doctor in 2016. That number rose to 12.9 percent in 2020 — an additional 7,000 kids, according to Wallin.

In New Mexico in 2020, suicide was the second-leading cause of death among kids ages 12 to 18, according to data from the state Department of Health. In 2019, 11 percent of the state's high school students had attempted suicide in the last 12 months. The rate was higher for lesbian, gay and bisexual students — a quarter of whom were estimated to have attempted suicide within the last 12 months in 2019.

The numbers are higher than national averages reported in the Kids Count Data Book. Nationally, 9 percent of high schoolers attempted suicide in 2019 and 23 percent of gay, lesbian or bisexual students.

"Long term, New Mexico is still rebuilding our mental and behavioral health systems," Wallin said. "About a decade ago, they were really harmed by defunding."

New Mexico is seeing long-term improvements over the last 10 years between 2010 and 2020 in areas such as the rate of uninsured children and the number of teenagers who are not in school or employed.

The rate of teenage births has also declined from 53 per 1,000 female teens ages 15 to 19 in 2010 to 22 per 1,000 female teens in 2020.

While New Mexico remains in last place in the rankings, Governor's Office spokeswoman Maddy Hayden wrote in an email the state has improved in "nearly every metric" measured by Kids Count since 2018.

Hayden lauded recent investments like free child care expansions and postpartum Medicare extensions for new moms as factors the state believes will be reflected in data in the future.

"[It] is critically important to take into account the fact that this report is based on 2020 data, a year when the nation was in the midst of a pandemic," Hayden said.