Do kids really count in Georgia?

In a new national measure of child well-being by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, Georgia ranks 40th out of the 50 states. The annual standings draw on 10 key indicators, including poverty, infant mortality, death and dropout rates and family employment.

Georgia is sixth-worst in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes, eighth-worst in teen births, ninth-worst in infant mortality and 10th-worst in high school dropouts.

As executive director of Voices for Georgia's Children, Pat Willis wonders why Georgia always comes up so low on measures on child wellness.

"We need to hammer home that Georgia stays in the bottom of all these indicators for kids even while our economy is better than most state economies," she said. "We have a level of resources, comparatively speaking to other states, that should be available to pull us away from the pack of people on the bottom and we don't do it."

Most troubling is Georgia's seventh-place ranking in the number of underweight newborns; low-birth-weight babies face greater risks of dying in infancy and of learning and developmental disabilities.

Four years ago, Georgia reported 12,930 low-birth-weight babies. In 2005, the state reported 13,498 low-birth-weight babies, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2008 Kids Count Data Book, released last week.

Dr. A.W. Brann Jr., an Emory University professor of pediatrics, reviewed the birth rates and found that it's not the very lowest-birth-weight babies that Georgia has seen a rise in, but babies who are between 3 1/2 and 5 1/2 pounds when they're born.

The rise in infertility treatments has led to more births of twins and triplets, who are more likely to be premature. And some pregnancies must be delivered early because of the dangers to the baby or mother from hypertension or diabetes.

Very low birth weights account for half of infant deaths, Brann says. And those mothers also face a greater risk of another premature birth. While Medicaid — a joint federal and state program that provides medical care to low-income women — kicks in when a woman becomes pregnant, Brann advocates a health plan that covers at-risk mothers for at least two years after a premature birth.

"In a woman with a high risk, pregnancy is too late to begin care," he says. "You need to help that woman space the next baby so she can restore her health."

"Women are just not as healthy as they need to be," says Taifa Butler of the Georgia Family Connection Partnership, which worked with the Casey Foundation to produce the Kids Count report. "Health costs are rising, and no one can afford it, whether they are working class or poor."

Children's programs are often the first to suffer cuts during budget crunches. A new study from the Urban Institute and New America Foundation found that, if spending trends persist, the children's share of domestic federal spending — which excludes defense, nondefense homeland security and international affairs — will be 13.8 percent in 2018, down from 20.2 percent in 1960.

At the state level, Willis says, legislators seem content with incremental changes in children's well-being. "There is no big vision ... no major value shift in how we are going to regard kids," she says. "We need someone who is going to put a stake in the ground for our kids and their futures."

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)