Kids Count: Third of county children in poverty
Published 12:15 pm Tuesday, October 16, 2012
With trend lines worsening in a number of categories over the past decade — including births to unmarried teens, children in poverty and children in single-parent families — Escambia County ranks 50th out of Alabama’s 67 counties in the latest Kids Count data book released today.
According to statistics for 2010 — the latest year for which data was reported — 35.6 percent of children in Escambia County live in poverty, up from 24 percent in 2000. Nearly 40 percent of the children in the county are in single-parent families, and 17.5 percent of children born in 2010 were to unmarried teenagers — up from 15.3 percent in 2000, and ranking Escambia County almost at the bottom in the state, at 61.
The data book, released every year by VOICES for Alabama’s Children, gives a snapshot of each county’s statistics related to child welfare, from infant mortality to first-grade retention.