Tennessee has one of the highest overall rates of child homicide in the nation but ranks even higher for the rate of kids killed by guns: one out of every four children who died in 2021 was killed by a bullet.
New data released Monday by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth provides a comprehensive portrait of the lives and deaths of Tennessee’s children and the economic and social forces that shape their childhoods, from poverty to educational achievement, access to healthcare and housing.
While child deaths by firearms are on the rise — Tennessee ranks 7th in the nation for children murdered by guns — youth in Tennessee are much more likely to be the victim of a firearm crime than to perpetuate one, the “State of the Child in Tennessee 2023” report notes.
In 2022, kids were perpetrators of 1,561 crimes involving firearms; they were victims in 4,490 firearm-related crimes, according to the report.
At the same time, the state’s largest cities — Memphis, Chattanooga and Nashville — all experienced a decline in the under-18 crime rate. Nashville and Memphis experienced some of the largest declines in youth crime in Tennessee, according to the report.
The report also noted that infant mortality from all causes has increased in Tennessee, after a slight decline between 2019 and 2022. Tennessee’s infant mortality rate of 6.6 per 1,000 surpasses the national average of 5.6 per 1,000.
“Our state does better when all children have access to the resources, supports and services they need to thrive,” said Richard Kennedy, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. “We hope this report can serve as a guidebook for where we as a state are getting things right and where we can focus our investment and attention to improve outcomes.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Nearly one in five Tennessee children live in poverty, a measure of well-being that varies sharply by geography.
In rural northeast Lake County, for example, the number of children living below the poverty line is double the state average; meanwhile in wealthy Williamson County, fewer than 4 percent of children are being raised under such economic strains.
The data, released Tuesday by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, paints an uneven portrait of Tennessee’s children in county-by-county snapshots that also measure rates of low birth-weight babies, educational outcomes, childcare costs, child abuse and family circumstances.
County poverty rates coincide with other stressors facing families with children. The ten counties with the highest rates of poverty for kids also are among those with the greatest rates of low birth-weight babies, child care cost burdens and food insecurity, according to the agency’s annual 2023 County Profiles in Child Well-Being, which measured 52 different metrics that impact the states’ children.
The high poverty rates straddle both rural and urban areas. Among the top 10 counties for child poverty are Shelby and Davidson, which include Nashville and Memphis, the state’s largest cities. Small-population counties of Haywood, Hardeman and Madison Counties in west Tennessee and Campbell in eastern Tennessee also have outsized numbers of poor children.
The report also revealed wide educational disparities.
A child living in the lowest performing county was half as likely to be proficient in TCAP reading than the state average, the report found. A child in Perry County was far more likely — by a factor of nearly 10 — to be absent from school than a child in Blount County.
The disparities also extended to rates of child abuse and neglect, a data point that could signal either higher incidents of harm — or differing levels of investigations or enforcement actions by state child welfare officials or local law enforcement.
Clay County had the highest rate of substantiated abuse or neglect at nearly 34 per 1,000 children. Moore County had the lowest at 0.8 per 1,000.
“These county profiles always serve as a reminder that the experience, opportunities, and access to positive outcomes can look vastly different for each child in Tennessee.” said Richard Kennedy, executive director of Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth.
The report is released annually by the commission, an independent state-funded entity responsible for providing objective analyses and serving as a watchdog for the Department of Children’s Services.
The commission earlier this year survived an effort backed by the administration of Gov. Bill Lee to dissolve it, after it released a critical report on the DCS’s work
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Before the pandemic, Tennessee’s children were improving but still struggling with poverty, obesity, education, and more, according to a new national report that scored the state in the bottom half of all states on key metrics.
Credit: Annie E. Casey Foundation
The 2021 Kids Count Data Book is published annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and with cooperation this year by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. The report ranked Tennessee 36th for the well-being of its children in four major categories — economic well-being, education, affordable health care, and family and community context.
“Tennessee has moved up and down in a small rank space over the last decade, landing between 35 and 39 every year,” the report says. “Tennessee has seen improvements in child well-being over this decade, but they have largely been national improvements that left Tennessee in roughly the same relative position.”
(Credit: Annie E. Casey Foundation)
The information in the study is the latest but it does not cover the last year. So, the figures in it really give a snapshot of Tennessee children before the pandemic and in its early stages.
That data shows “nearly a decade” of progress in jeopardy of being “erased by the COVID-19 pandemic unless policymakers act boldly to sustain the beginnings of a recovery from the coronavirus crisis.” Data book researchers said ”simply returning to a pre-pandemic level of support for children and families would shortchange millions of kids and fail to address persistent racial and ethnic disparities.”
“This is a pivotal time for Tennessee and we need to invest in our children in a strong, equitable, and sustainable way,” said Richard Kennedy, executive director of Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, Tennessee’s member of the Kids Count network.
Here’s a glimpse into some of the study’s key finding about Tennessee.
• Economic well-being: In 2019, one in five children lived in households with an income below the poverty line. Though higher than the national average, this percentage has decreased by 23 percent over the past decade.
(Credit: Annie E. Casey Foundation)
• Education: In 2019, 60 percent of young children (ages three and four) were not in school. This percentage has remained consistent in Tennessee, fluctuating little throughout the last decade.
(Credit: Annie E. Casey Foundation)
• Affordable health care: In 2019, 80,000 Tennessee children did not have health insurance. Many of these children may be eligible for TennCare or CHIP. The year prior there were more than 55,000 uninsured children in Tennessee who were eligible for coverage through one of these programs.
(Credit: Annie E. Casey Foundation)
● Family and community context: In 2019, Tennessee experienced one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation. Tennessee’s teen birth rate is 34 percent higher than the national average.
(Credit: Annie E. Casey Foundation)
Pandemic survey
While the study did not cover the pandemic, researchers conducted surveys across Tennessee to gauge child well-being. Here are some key findings.
• During the pandemic, in 2020, 23 percent of adults in Tennessee with children in the household had little to no confidence in their ability to pay their next mortgage or rent payment.
However, by March 2021, this figure had fallen to 13 percent, suggesting the beginnings of a recovery. Although confidence is increasing, disparities persist, with 26 percent Black or African American Tennesseans reporting a lack of confidence in paying the rent or mortgage in March 2021.
• Tennessee has seen great improvement in children’s access to internet and digital devices for schooling. In 2020, more than one in five children did not have access. By 2021, that number has been reduced to 13 percent.
• Despite improving indicators, nearly one in four adults in Tennessee with children in the household reported feeling down, depressed, or helpless in 2021, a number that remained unchanged since 2020.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is the most extraordinary crisis to hit families in decades,” said Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Deliberate policy decisions can help them recover, and we’re already seeing the beginnings of that. Policymakers should use this moment to repair the damage the pandemic has caused — and to address long-standing inequities it has exacerbated.”
