Colorado’s gap in well-being between white and Hispanic children is the seventh largest in the country, according to a new report.The new Race for Results index by the Annie E. Casey Foundationcompares how children are progressing on “key milestones across racial and ethnic groups at the national and state level.”
Overall Index Scores in Colorado By Race
- Non-Hispanic white children in Colorado fare best overall, with an index score of 758.
- American Indian children had the second best index score of 397.
- Hispanic children are significantly worse off than white children with an index score of 389.
- Black or African-American children in Colorado fare the worst, with a score of 387.
Credit Annie E. Casey Foundation/Annie E. Casey Foundation
One of the major reasons for the gap? Poverty, according to the Kids Count report.
Colorado children under the age of 6 are most likely to be in poverty, with 1 in 5 living in poverty in 2012. The number of Colorado children living in areas of concentrated poverty, where the poverty rate is higher than 30 percent, has more than quadrupled since 2000. The report also found that the growth in the number of children in Colorado has not been evenly distributed across the state.
The growth has been primarily been in the Hispanic population, which now makes up one-third of Colorado children.
“Children of color tend to do worse on almost all indicators of child well-being than non-Hispanic white children,” said Sarah Hughes, the Research Director for the Colorado Children’s Campaign. “And there will come a day...when children of color make up the majority of Colorado’s child population.”
Over time, she says that will translate to a majority of the workforce who grew up in poverty, didn’t graduate high school on time and didn’t have the same advantages as affluent children, which won’t bode well for the state as a whole.
The odds are stacked against children of color in Colorado, who already make up 43 percent of the child population in the state. For example, Colorado’s children of color are less likely to be enrolled in preschool, less likely to be reading proficiently by fourth grade, more likely to have a baby as a teenager, less likely to graduate high school on time and less likely to have obtained at least an associate degree by the time they reach age 25, according to the report.
The index is based on 12 indicators that measure a child’s success in each stage of life, from birth to adulthood. The index used a single composite score placed on a scale of one (lowest) to 1,000 (highest).
You can read the full report here.
