By Susan Dunlap, NM Political Report
Jan. 20, 2023
The results from the 2022 Kids Count Data Book, released this week by the nonprofit New Mexico Voices for Children, are mixed, the group’s executive director, Amber Wallin, said.
NMVC releases the Kids Count Data Book annually at the start of the Legislative session to provide policy makers with information and statistics on how New Mexico’s children and families are doing on four fronts: educationally, economically, health and family and community. Data gathering for the data book was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and that problem continues, with some data reflecting pre-pandemic conditions, Wallin said during a press conference this week. Some of the data reflects averages from the years 2016 to 2020, she said.
One of the most striking deficits the 2022 data book reveals is child hunger. For about a month in 2022, a U.S. Census Bureau survey found that 35 percent of New Mexico families with children were not eating enough because food was not affordable.
Within the U.S., that rate was 29 percent, the data found.
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