Blog

54 boxes? Let’s build a Kids Count Fort!

The Kids Count in Nebraska 2014 Report has just arrived at the Voices for Children office. While we are excitedly flipping through the book and getting ready for next week’s release, we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to look back at Nebraska’s data from the National 2014 Kids Count Data Book.

We all know that Nebraska is a great place to be a kid and the National KIDS COUNT Data Book by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, reaffirms that. This report uses 16 indicators of child well-being, and has ranked Nebraska the 10th best state in the country to be a child. Unfortunately, the report shows that we actually did worse than the previous year, falling 2 places – the 2013 book ranked Nebraska as 8th in overall child well-being. Additionally, the report separates the 16 indicators into 4 sections – Economic Well-Being, Education, Health, and Family and Community. Nebraska fell in the nationwide rankings in every section but education.

While the rankings seen in the National Kids Count Data Book are very helpful, they fail to tell the whole story of being a kid in Nebraska. This is where the Kids Count in Nebraska Report comes in. Kids Count is the most comprehensive source of data on child well-being in our state and has over 200 indicators available at your fingertips, many of which include disaggregation based on race, ethnicity, gender and/or family income.

Even though we cannot share the 2014 report yet, there are many things you can do in the mean time to prepare for the impending wealth of data on child well-being that will be released next week. You can:

• Get registered for our scheduled release events
• Check out our blog series from this summer on the National Kids Count Data Book to get a broad overview of the data in 4 sections: economic well-being, education, health and family and community.
• Look at some of last year’s data on the Kids Count Data Center.
• Contact us (kidscount@voicesforchildren.com or 402 597-3100) to schedule a Kids Count presentation for your organization, coalition, community group, etc.

Thank you to taking the time to share!