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This year’s Kids Count in Nebraska Report featured a commentary debuting our new Index of Race & Opportunity for Nebraska Children. This blog post is the third in a series diving into the commentary. In the first post we introduced the commentary and detailed our methodology, the next posts looked at the indicators in the health section and the three indicators in the education section. We continue our series today with the three economic stability indicators.

Voices for Children believes that Nebraska must ensure families are able to achieve financial security. We believe that hard work should pay and policies need to support families in trying to build a better future. Our systems should ensure that children’s basic needs are met when families lack the resources to meet these needs.

The indicators in our economic stability section of the Index of Race & Opportunity, chosen based on their ability to predict future health, success and overall well-being, as well as their proxy power – the indicators strength in representing the general direction and central importance of a variety of similar indicators, are:

1. Children living above the poverty line: This is defined as the percentage of children and teens whose families’ income are above the federal poverty level.
2. Median family income: This is defined as the median family income in each racial group.
3. Children living in areas that are low poverty: This is defined as percentage of children living in areas where less than 20% of the population is living below the poverty line.

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