The economic welfare of Maryland’s kids has been relatively stable in recent years, with measures like childhood poverty staying level from 2023 to 2024, according to a new national report.
But Maryland still fell from 10th place among states to 18th in the newest edition of the annual Kids Count data book, as other states improved faster.
That disparity is why the report, released Monday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, includes a new scoring system that aims to make it easier for readers and policymakers to assess how well kids fare in each state in areas such as health, education, and family and community.
“Those rankings give you a snapshot of how states compare over a given year. It remains useful,” said Nonso Umunna, director of the Kids Count initiative for the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. “They didn’t show how far apart the states really were and didn’t reveal the serious challenges or room for growth that even some of the top-ranked states may have … the scores go deeper.”
The report now assigns a score of 0 to 1,000 for each measure of child well-being: overall well-being, economic well-being, health, education and family and community.
Maryland generally did well in the report, going from 21st to 19th place for overall child well-being and moving up in every other category but education. The state’s scores under the new system were middling, but generally slightly better than the national average: It got a 616 out of 1,000 for overall child well-being, compared to 838 for New Hampshire and 271 for last-place Mississippi.
“The methodology was updated to preserve the clarity of the rankings while also adding a way to better understand the gaps, trends and progress that’s taking place,” Umunna said, noting that the report was specifically focused on trends since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the public health emergency disrupted the lives and well-being of kids for several years.
“For Maryland, we’ve seen improvements since the pandemic,” he said. “But we still have room for improvement.”
Losses in education, gains in economic stability
Education was the most troublesome category for Maryland, which fell from 18th place to 20th and got a score of 438. New Jersey took the top spot in education at 731 and New Mexico was last with 1 point.
Like the rest of the nation, Maryland students have continued to struggle since the pandemic. The percentage of eighth graders and fourth graders who are not proficient at math remained unchanged in the latest report, at 75% and 66% respectively.
Nationally, 73% of eighth graders and 70% of fourth graders were not proficient at math in 2024, the year the report looks at.
“It’s not particularly exclusively a Maryland issue,” Umunna said, “however that doesn’t mean we should take solace in the fact that Maryland is following a national trend. We still feel like there’s a lot of room for improvement.”
Maryland students made slight gains in math in last school year’s Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP) with 26.5% of students proficient in math, compared to 24% in the 2023-24 school year. And state officials hope to see further improvement after impleentation last year of a new math policy that calls for small-group instruction for students in grades two through five and math intervention courses for sixth- through eighth-grade students struggling in the subject.
Meanwhile, the economic well-being of Maryland kids improved in 2024 compared to the pandemic.
In 2024, about 22% of Maryland’s children had parents who lacked secure employment, up from 24% in 2019. There are also fewer teens working instead of going to school, moving from 7% in 2019 to 6% in 2024.
But there are still economic hardships for a large portion of Maryland kids.
The report said the number of families facing a “high housing cost burden,” meaning more than 30% of monthly income goes to housing, stood at 30% in Maryland in 2024. That’s only slightly better than the 31% of kids in 2019 facing in a similar situation.
And while the percent of Maryland children in poverty went down from 12% in 2019 to 11% in 2024, that still means that more than 1 in 10 kids face poverty in Maryland.
These metrics earned Maryland a score of 685 in economic well-being of kids, putting it 18th in the rankings. New Hampshire nearly topped out at 933 and Louisiana fell in last place at 246.
Health and community metrics
The new report shows that there were fewer kids and teens struggling with obesity or being overweight in 2024 compared to prepandemic data. In 2024, approximately 29% of Maryland kids were overweight or obese, down from 34% in 2019.
But more Maryland kids — 5% — were without health insurance in 2024, compared to 3% who did not have coverage in 2019.
The mixed bag of health metrics resulted in Maryland scoring 659 and ranking 22nd. New Hampshire topped the list with a health score of 883, and Mississippi once again is last at 122.
The category, “Family and Community,” looks at stability of family dynamics and community resources kids have.
Teen birth rates have decreased in Maryland, meaning that there are fewer teenagers aged 15 to 19 who are giving birth, which can lead to long-term negative effects to the child and the teenager. In 2024, 10 Maryland teenagers out of 1,000 gave birth, compared to 14 per 1,000 in 2019.
Slightly fewer kids lived in a single-parent household, down to 34% in 2024 from 35% in 2019.
That said, approximately 10% of Maryland kids have families where the household heads lack a high school diploma in 2024, a category that has showed no change compared to 2019.
Maryland earned a score of 684 and ranked 23rd among states. New Hampshire was again first in the category, with a score of 937, and New Mexico was last with 250 points.
The Maryland Center on Economic Policy advocates for policies that fund programs to help Maryland kids and families. Umunna said he’d like state officials to ensure that education reform called for in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future stays funded, even if the state faces financial challenges in coming years. He also urges state leaders to support initiatives that help families more easily afford housing options.
“When we make investments, we see results,” he said. “We’ve seen improvements in economic well-being, health, and family and community … but we’ve seen the numbers in education not trending in the right direction.”
Umunna also notes with the report focusing on 2024 data, the scores do not reflect the current economic challenges families may face in 2026.
The rising cost of living as well as policy changes designed to kick people off of certain federal assistance programs could add additional financial burdens to Maryland families that won’t be reported until future Kids Count reports.
“Now, we’re having these high gas prices or high inflation. It’s likely to have an adverse impact on some of these numbers,” he said. “We’re hoping that’s not the case, which is why we still think that the state should continue to carry on with the policies that have been able to keep these numbers.”
— Maryland Matters reporter William J. Ford contributed to this report.
