Having a parent incarcerated is a traumatic experience that can be along the same magnitude as abuse, domestic violence, and divorce. It also often adds to the generational pull of poverty. This fact sheet, created for the release of the national KIDS COUNT report A Shared Sentence includes New Mexico-specific data. (KIDS COUNT fact sheet; state-level data on incarceration)
Many low-wage occupations do not come with benefits like paid sick leave. So workers who are already earning low wages have to forfeit those wages in order to stay at home to tend a sick child or care for themselves. The U.S. has no national policy, so states and cities are taking up the issue. With the lowest rate in the nation of workers with paid sick leave, New Mexico has much to gain by enacting such legislation. (A Working Poor Families Project report; State-, national-, and international-level data on sick leave policies, some by race and ethnicity)
While child poverty is down slightly, New Mexico now leads the nation with the highest rate of child poverty. This annual KIDS COUNT report on child well-being presents data by county, tribal area, and school district on indicators such as the rates of health care coverage among children, preschool enrollment, child abuse, and teen births. It also tracks trends on some of these important indicators and looks at disparities across racial and ethnic lines. (Annual KIDS COUNT report; state-, county-, tribal-, and school-district-level data on indicators of child well-being, some by race and ethnicity)
New Mexico is a poor state with high rates of food insecurity and with too many adults and children suffering from nutrition-related chronic conditions. Programs that incentivize consumption of locally grown, fresh produce to food-insecure individuals offer both health benefits to low-income communities as well as economic benefits to local farmers. (Policy brief; state-level data on economic well-being and health disparities by race and ethnicity)
Raising the minimum wage is an important and effective strategy for reducing poverty particularly given the erosion of the purchasing power of the state wage since it was last raised in 2009. In New Mexico, approximately 112,000 workers are earning the current state minimum wage of $7.50. In January, New Mexico lawmakers should act to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour by 2018. While this increase should not be considered a living wage, thousands of families would benefit. (A Fiscal Policy Project report; state-level data on characteristics of minimum wage earners, including by race and ethnicity)
The share of teens and young adults in the workforce has declined over the past two decades in New Mexico. Even though other mountain states and the U.S. as a whole are seeing these same trends, New Mexico has some of the lowest labor force participation rates, unemployment rates, and employment-to-population ratios for this demographic. (A Fiscal Policy Project report released in conjunction with EARN; state- and regional-level data on employment and workforce demographics disaggregated by several criteria, including by race and ethnicity)
This PowerPoint, presented by Veronica C. Garcia, Ed.D., at a roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Senator Tom Udall, looks at data on child well-being in New Mexico as presented in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2013 national KIDS COUNT Data Book and their 2014 Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for all Children policy brief. (Presentation; state- and national-level data on the indicators of child well-being, including data by race and ethnicity)
New Mexico tops the nation in the rate of working families who are low-income and in income inequality. Raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation would be a step toward reversing these trends—and it would provide an economic boost. (A Fiscal Policy Project report; state-level data on selected demographics of low-wage workers)
This special report looking at economic indicators and social conditions in New Mexico’s 22 tribal communities—including the high rate of Native children who can speak a language in addition to English. (A special KIDS COUNT report; tribal-level data on indicators of child well-being)
While the income and unemployment gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites had been closing in the three years leading up to the stock market crash, those gains were all lost in the resulting recession. This report looks at why Hispanics were harder hit by the downturn. (A Fiscal Policy Project report; state-level data on employment and earnings by race and ethnicity)