A sharp racial/ethnic divide has emerged within the world of low-income working families, posing a critical equity and economic challenge to New Mexico and the nation, a new study concludes.
Making college more affordable for its low-income population would pay the state big dividends down the road. Having a better educated workforce would help attract higher-paying jobs to the state, which would lead to more economic activity. In addition, boosting the educational level of the state’s adults would improve the educational outcomes of our children. Those are among the points made in a report released today by New Mexico Voices for Children.
If it were not for governmental anti-poverty programs—such as SNAP, housing assistance, and tax credits—an additional 100,000 New Mexico children would live below the poverty level. That’s among the conclusions in a report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
While New Mexico ranking rose slightly from 50th in 2013 to 49th in 2014 in the national KIDS COUNT rankings of child well-being, state policy makers not have managed to make much progress toward improving how well the state cares for its kids. The KIDS COUNT program measures 16 indicators of child well-being, and New Mexico saw improvement in just five of those. Worse, child poverty—a main factor in poor outcomes—actually increased (from 28 percent to 31 percent) even as it decreased in most of the rest of the nation.
Four New Mexicans who have dedicated their lives to making the state a better place will be honored at the Spirit of Hope gala. The annual event, a fundraiser for New Mexico Voices for Children, will begin at 6pm on Friday, November 21, at the Sandia Resort and Casino.
More than half of New Mexico families with children under age eight are low-income. A new KIDS COUNT report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation looks at the challenges faced by the 10 million families nationwide who are just trying to make ends meet. The report looks at two-generation solutions, meaning they address the needs of both the young children and their working parents.
A new report by a Georgetown University research center found the number of uninsured children in New Mexico declined by nearly 5,000 between 2008 and 2013. The report, released today by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, found of the children who remain uninsured, 24 percent live in rural areas of the state.
As New Mexico’s recovery from the recession continues to lag behind the rest of the nation, lawmakers should expand the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) to increase the purchasing power of low-income working New Mexicans and generate economic activity. The WFTC is a state-level version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which is considered one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty programs.
New Mexico is still spending 8 percent less per pupil on K-12 education than before the recession. That translates to $633 less being spent per student than funding levels in 2008, when adjusted for inflation. That’s according to a report released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a non-partisan policy research organization based in Washington, D.C.
The share of teens and young adults in the workforce has declined over the past two decades in New Mexico—a trend that is consistent with other states in the mountain region and the U.S. as a whole. Even though New Mexico is in sync with workforce trends for teens and young adults, the state has some of the lowest labor force participation and unemployment rates, and employment-to-population ratios for this demographic.