Maine's a nice place for kids

Associated Press

©Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

E-mail this story to a friend

Maine children are generally better off than children in other states, and the state's infant mortality and teen birth rates are among the nation's lowest, according to a national report released Wednesday.

About one infant per 200 live births in Maine died in 2000, which is almost 30 percent better than the national average, the report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found. Massachusetts was the only state with a lower rate.

In addition, Maine's teen birth rate fell from 2.3 percent in 1990 to 1.4 percent 10 years later. The 39 percent improvement made Maine fourth-best among the states.

The annual Kids Count report evaluates states by 10 measures, including percentage of children in poverty, percentage of high-school dropouts, and child death rate. Maine now ranks in the top half of the states across every measure, good enough for an overall ranking of 12th.

"Overall, kids in Maine are really lucky to live here, because we have targeted resources when we have seen problems," said Lynn Davey, the report's director in Maine. "We live in communities and we have representatives . . . who have shown that they care about kids and families."

Maine's performance improved during the 1990s in six of the 10 measures listed, but it got worse in two areas. Most disturbingly, the state's percentage of families headed by a single parent shot up by 35 percent between 1990 and 2000. The national increase was 17 percent.

Maine's worst ranking versus other states was for children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment. The most recent figure stood at 24 percent both statewide and nationally.

Among the study's other findings: