Georgia's children stuck in bad situation according to national rankings

Kids have it pretty tough in Georgia, and for the most part, life isn’t getting better.

That was the finding of an annual report released Thursday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which ranked Georgia 42nd in the nation for children’s living conditions. That’s the same ranking as last year.

The state once again ranked in the bottom 10 for infant mortality (42nd), teen unemployment (45th) and the number of children living in single family homes (43rd).

It also slipped from 39th to 40th for its high rate of teenage pregnancy.

Taifa Butler, policy director with Georgia Family Connection, said the results reflect a serious failure on the part of the state to improve its high poverty level, which is the main cause of the poor ranking.

“We can’t blame these results on the recession,” Butler said. “The rankings in this report do not reflect the current economic recession, which began in late 2008. Failure to execute strategies has stalled progress in the state.”

Butler said more could be done to improve access to education and health care, particularly in the state’s rural areas.

“I know we have a tight state budget, but it seems like the first things to get cut are always the sorts of programs that do the most good,” Butler said.

Midstate families on the whole fared worse than the rest of the state in the study. In the area of infant mortality alone, the region had a rate of 13.9, which is much higher than the statewide rate of 7.9.

June O’Neal, who heads up the Bibb County Mentors Project, said the low ranking is a sign of a deeper problem.

“You can tell a lot about a state and a community by how it treats its children,” O’Neal said. “Children just aren’t a priority here, because money talks and children can’t vote or pay taxes. I don’t think we got into this problem quickly, and we’re not going to get out of it quickly, either.”

Linda Holland, a manager at the Macon-Bibb County Health Department, said it will take more than just strong schools and public health programs for Georgia to improve conditions for children. She said the heart of the problem lies with poor parenting.

“What we need is a way to reach out to the whole family, not just the kids themselves,” Holland said. “Things like mentors projects are great at what they do, but they can’t do everything. We need to teach parents how to be better parents.”

Holland said Georgia should bring back Resource Fathers and Resource Mothers, two taxpayer funded programs slashed from the state budget in 2007 that provided aid to teen parents.

“Strategies like that, which attack the source of the problem, can go a long way in breaking the cycle of poor education and child care,” Holland said.

Georgia has been stuck near the bottom of the rankings ever since the annual study was first released 21 years ago. Only once has it climbed out of the bottom 10, when it was 39th in the nation in the mid 1990s.

To contact writer Carl Lewis, call 744-4347.