Six percent of Vermont kids have experienced a parent being in jail

Submitted by tim on Tue, 11/21/2017 - 07:57

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont has the second highest incidence of children with parents who are or were incarcerated, according to the The Annie E Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT Data Center. While the state is slightly below the national average (7 percent), most of its peer-group states had lower rates than Vermont's 6 percent, including New Hampshire (5 percent), Massachusetts (5 percent) and New York (4 percent). Close to 6 million kids in America have experienced losing a parent to prison or jail at some point in their lives — and this number is growing.

Nationwide, this population has increased by 636,000 children since 2011–2012.

At the state level: 30 states and the District of Columbia reported an uptick in the number of kids with a parent incarcerated between 2011–2012 and 2015–2016.

Children living in the South and Southwest are more likely to have experienced parental incarceration compared to their peers in other parts of country. In Arkansas — which has the highest proportion of children affected — close to one in five kids have lost a parent to incarceration. Kentucky (15%) and Louisiana (15%), Arizona (13%) and Tennessee (13%) follow closely behind.

The incarceration of a parent can be devastating to a family’s stability and have as much impact on a child’s well-being as abuse or domestic violence. Because of this, states must invest resources to support family members left behind.

Read A Shared Sentence to learn more about the toll of parental incarceration.

	Data Type	2011 - 2012
United States	Percent	7%
Alabama	Percent	8%
Alaska	Percent	10%
Arizona	Percent	9%
Arkansas	Percent	9%
California	Percent	5%
Colorado	Percent	5%
Connecticut	Percent	5%
Delaware	Percent	8%
Florida	Percent	8%
Georgia	Percent	8%
Hawaii	Percent	5%
Idaho	Percent	8%
Illinois	Percent	6%
Indiana	Percent	11%
Iowa	Percent	8%
Kansas	Percent	6%
Kentucky	Percent	13%
Louisiana	Percent	8%
Maine	Percent	8%
Maryland	Percent	6%
Massachusetts	Percent	5%
Michigan	Percent	10%
Minnesota	Percent	5%
Mississippi	Percent	7%
Missouri	Percent	7%
Montana	Percent	8%
Nebraska	Percent	9%
Nevada	Percent	8%
New Hampshire	Percent	5%
New Jersey	Percent	3%
New Mexico	Percent	10%
New York	Percent	4%
North Carolina	Percent	8%
North Dakota	Percent	7%
Ohio	Percent	10%
Oklahoma	Percent	10%
Oregon	Percent	8%
Pennsylvania	Percent	7%
Rhode Island	Percent	5%
South Carolina	Percent	7%
South Dakota	Percent	8%
Tennessee	Percent	10%
Texas	Percent	7%
Utah	Percent	5%
Vermont	Percent	6%
Virginia	Percent	6%
Washington	Percent	7%
West Virginia	Percent	9%
Wisconsin	Percent	7%
Wyoming	Percent	9%

DEFINITIONS & SOURCES

Definitions: Children were included if the respondent answered "yes" to the following question: Did the child ever live with a parent or guardian who served time in jail or prison after the child was born?

Data Source: Child Trends analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, National Survey of Children’s Health.

The state-level data used here come from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). The NSCH includes information on over 102,000 children under age 18, with roughly 2,000 children per state. Households were selected through a random-digit-dial sample, and one child was randomly selected in each household. Information on each child is based on responses of the parent or guardian in the household who was most knowledgeable about the sampled child’s health. Information was collected via a computer-assisted telephone interview. For more information on the NSCH, seehttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/slaits/nsch.htm.

Cell phones were contacted for the first time in 2011-2012

Footnotes: Updated October 2017
S - Estimates suppressed when the relative standard error was greater than or equal to 30%, indicating small sample sizes.
N.R. - No observations in the sample.
N.A. – Data not available.
Percentages exclude missing data. Weighted percentages were applied to the estimates of those missing to derive overall estimates for the number of children.