A new analysis of states with the most underprivileged children ranks Michigan among the worst, confirming prior reports detailing a decline in child well-being in the Great Lakes State.
The personal finance website WalletHub compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia across 25 metrics of child well-being, ranging from the share of children in households with below-poverty income, to the child food-insecurity rate, to the share of mistreated children.
“Tackling the problem of underprivileged children in America requires a multifaceted approach. On top of lifting children out of poverty and making sure they have access to adequate nutrition and medical care, we also need to look after their medical health, protect them from abuse and ensure they receive quality education,” WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe said. “Failing to address even one of these issues can lead to worse outcomes during adulthood.”
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Researchers organized the metrics into three key dimensions – socio-economic welfare, health, and education – and used a weighted average across all metrics to calculate an overall score that ranked states from those with the most underprivileged children to those with the least.
The methodology produced an overall ranking of 23rd for Michigan, suggesting the state has more underprivileged children than most. The year prior, Michigan was ranked 24th overall.
In 2024, WalletHub ranked Michigan 32nd for socio-economic welfare, 15th for health, and 12th for education.
South Dakota was the only state in the Upper Midwest to fare worse than Michigan with an overall rank of 14th, though the South Dakota ranked better for health.
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The results from the WalletHub analysis are not surprising, and follow an obvious trend of decline since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office.
In June, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Michigan League for Public Policy released a 2024 Kids Count Data Book that showed Michigan slipped two spots from 2023 in the measure of child well-being, with the state now ranked 34th among states overall.
That report examined 16 indicators to offer rankings in four areas – economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors – as well as an overall ranking.
Michigan ranked 41st in education, with every measure used worse than the national average, and worse than when Whitmer took office. For economic well-being, Michigan ranked 31st , with categories including “children whose parents lack secure employment,” “children living in households with high housing cost burden,” and “teens not in school and not working” worse than in 2019. The 18% of “children in poverty” was the only statistic in that category to remain the same.
Michigan’s best ranking came in the health category with a 22nd place finish, though the 9.2% of low birth-weight babies was up from 2019, as was the 28 “child and teen deaths per 100,000.” The 35% of Michigan teens who are obese was 2% higher than the national average, while the 3% without health insurance was slightly better than the 5% nationwide.
The only area where Michigan improved was family and community, with the number of children in single-parent families, living in high-poverty areas, and teen births per 1,000 better than in the past. Those improvements largely tracked with national trends. The 8% of Michigan children in families where the head of household lacks a high school diploma stayed the same between 2019 and 2022, floating about 3% lower than the nation as a whole.
Other evidence kids are struggling in Michigan has come from NEAP data that shows Whitmer’s unilateral decision to close schools to in-person learning for nearly a year during the pandemic contributed to fourth-grade reading scores plummeting from 32nd nationally in 2019 to 43rd in 2022.
There’s also a recent United for ALICE report that shows roughly 200,000 more Michiganders in 2022 struggled to afford a “survival budget” than in 2019. In Whitmer’s Michigan, 41% of the state’s 4 million households live below the ALICE threshold, and that includes more than half in 11 counties.
The situation has hit minorities and single parents the hardest, with the ALICE report showing 63% of black households and 47% of Hispanic households in Michigan living below the ALICE threshold.
It’s 73% for single women raising children.
“With pandemic assistance waning while significant challenges remain, there are warning signs that the economic situation for households below the ALICE threshold has worsened since 2022, including sustained high levels of food insufficiency, feelings of anxiety and depression, and continued difficulty paying bills,” according to the report.
Other aspects of Michigan’s decline under Whitmer have been documented by the University of Michigan’s Michigan Poverty & Well-being Map, a WalletHub analysis of the “Best and Worst-Run Cities in America,” U.S. News & World Report’s “50 Best Places to Live & Retire,” news reports on skyrocketing homelessness, a national “Best States” ranking, the National Poll on Healthy Aging, the U.S. Census Bureau, unemployment data, Consumer Affairs’ “Best and worst states to move to,” a ranking of states with “the Most People in Financial Distress,” Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council, and other sources.