UAA Alert! Anchorage Campus Inclement Weather Notice for Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024

Due to deteriorating and unsafe road conditions in Anchorage and the surrounding areas, the Anchorage campus will close at 5 p.m. today, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. Athletics competitions and some other activities will continue as scheduled. Check email for additional info.

Data tick toward the positive for young Alaskans in 20th anniversary of Kids Count

by Kathleen McCoy  |   

For 20 years, Kids Count Alaska has been an ongoing program at the Institute for Social and Economic Research. It's part of the nationwide KIDS COUNT program, sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to assess the welfare of children around the country and provide data to support policies for improving children's lives. ISER researchers have taken a preliminary look at trends in Alaska over the past two decades, and found that children here are doing better in several ways.

• Babies are much more likely to survive. In 1993, infant mortality in Alaska was near the national average, at 8.2 deaths per 1,000 births. From 2007 through 2011, Alaska's rate averaged 5.2 deaths per 1,000 births, continuing a long-term decline. • High-school dropout rates are lower. In 1990, the dropout rate among Alaska teenagers 16-19 was 10.6%. Since then the rate has fluctuated, but the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development reports that the dropout rate among high-school students was down to 7% by the 2011-2012 school year. • Rates of violent death among Alaska's teenagers have dropped by nearly half. In the period 1989-1993, teenagers (16-19) died at a rate of 125 per 100,000 from accidents, homicides, or suicides. From 2007 through 2011, that rate averaged 66 per 100,000-still higher than in other states, but a significant improvement.

Learn more here:

Researchers with Kids Count Alaska will be taking a more detailed look at 20-year trends in the well-being of Alaska's children and teenagers in the months to come.

 

Creative Commons License "Data tick toward the positive for young Alaskans in 20th anniversary of Kids Count" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Recommended Stories

Ruddy Abam December grad: Commencement speaker Ruddy Abam Harry Potter Class Harry Potter and the 400-level English class Heather Hudson New book by Heather Hudson captures Alaska's can-do approach to telecommunications Emily Sobek Building a career of her own 100stones After the Flood 100Stone: Artist and UAA psychology professor discuss the healing power of art