Unemployment hurts kids!

I am struggling to believe a few of the statistics reported in the Indy Star from the Casey Foundation's report. After my recent experience breaking down Wawasee's alleged "dropout" statistics student by student - I have a real problem believing that Indiana has the highest dropout rates in the nation. The other stats are astonshing as well.

• 33% of Indiana's children live in families where no parent has a full-time job
• The number of Hoosier children living without secure parental employment grew 22% between 2000-2004
• Indiana's high school dropout rate is the highest in the nation

Quoting from the Star's article:

A third of Indiana's children live in families where no parent has a full-time job, setting them up for problems ranging from educational struggles to poor health, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2006 Kids Count Data Book. The number of Hoosier children living without secure parental employment grew 22% from 2000 to 2004. That jump was the fourth-largest in the nation for the period and seven times the national increase. The president of the Indiana Youth Institute said the loss of about 100,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000 is having a dramatic and negative ripple effect on children. Two other problem areas identified for Indiana in the new report were the percentage of children living in poverty, which increased 7% from 2000 to 2004, and a high school dropout rate that is the highest in the nation.

There is no doubt that unemployment hurts kids. Poverty is a huge problem for children and more important than poverty itself is the actual social problems that create the poverty.

However, there is something rotten in the state and national dropout statistics. More on that later.