Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 2, 1991                   TAG: 9103040276
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOW VIRGINIA'S KIDS HAVE FARED

Children, for instance.

Any so sweeping a generalization is open to the usual quibble quota. But this generalization is buttressed by data recently compiled by KIDS COUNT, a project of the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington.

Of eight commonly used measures of children's well-being, the study found, four showed the nation's children in significantly worse shape at the end of the '80s than at the beginning;two stayed about the same and only two showed improvement.

For Virginia, the data are not so grim. By most measures, children in the commonwealth fared better than in the nation as a whole. But the Virginia picture isn't all sweetness and light either.

In a composite of all eight categories, Virginia ranked 22nd among the 51 states and District of Columbia. That was better than any other Southern state, and better than a number of Northern and Western states.

Virginia's biggest gain came in reducing its infant-mortality rate from 13.6 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 10.4 in 1988, an improvement of 24 percent. That put the state close to the national average of 10 infant deaths per 1,000 births (itself a drop from the 1980 national rate of 12.6 per 1,000).

Virginia also did comparatively well in reducing the rate of teen out-of-wedlock births, from 7.9 percent of all births in 1980 to 7.2 percent in 1988. For the entire nation, the rate jumped from 7.5 percent to 8.2 percent.

On the other hand, Virginia's rank in per-capita income - at nearly $19,000 per person, the commonwealth ranked 11th in the nation - was higher than its rank in the well-being of its children. This suggests the state has plenty of room to devote more resources to its children than it does.

Moreover, much of Virginia's relatively good performance during the decade is attributable to migration into the state of more affluent families, particularly in Northern Virginia, rather than to improved conditions for children already here.

Finally, it isn't so much that the well-being of Virginia's children improved during the '80s as that conditions in the nation overall were deteriorating so rapidly.

Relative to national averages, for example, Virginia's best performances were in its juvenile-incarceration rate and in the percentage of children in poverty. Yet the number of Virginia juveniles in jail climbed from 139 to 157 per 100,000 during the '80s, and the percentage of Virginia children in poverty from 14.9 to 15.6 percent.

The fact that the national figures were even worse - the juvenile-incarceration rate rose from 118 per 100,000 to 166, and the percentage of American children in poverty from 16 to 20.1 - isn't much reason for taking pride in Virginia's performance.