States Ranked For Children’s Well-Being

Key Points From the 2025 KIDS COUNT Rankings

• #1 State: New Hampshire; top overall rank for the third straight year with leading scores across all four categories.
• #50 State: New Mexico; bottom-tier scores in all domains with persistent economic and health gaps for Native and Hispanic communities.
• Top Region: New England dominates the rankings, with Vermont and Massachusetts taking the 2nd and 3rd spots.
• Bottom Region: The South and Southwest cluster at the bottom, including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
• Progress Indicators: Child poverty fell, teen births dropped 24%, and health insurance coverage reached a record 95%.
• Critical Setbacks: 73% of 8th graders are not proficient in math, and 70% of 4th graders are not proficient in reading.
• Safety Trends: Child and teen deaths rose 16% since 2019, highlighting a need for better safety and mental health resources.
• Racial Equity: High-ranking states like Minnesota still face some of the widest racial disparities in the nation.

How the Rankings Work

The KIDS COUNT Data Book, now in its 36th year of publication, ranks all 50 states using a composite index built from 16 indicators across four domains. Each state receives both a domain-specific rank (economic well-being, education, health, family and community) and an overall rank calculated by combining standard scores across all four domains. The methodology is designed to be transparent and reproducible, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Center for Education Statistics, and other federal sources rather than surveys or subjective assessments.

The four domains and what each measures are as follows. Economic well-being covers children in poverty, children whose parents lack secure employment, children in households with high housing cost burdens, and teens not in school and not working. Education covers young children ages three and four not in school, fourth graders not proficient in reading, eighth graders not proficient in math, and high school students not graduating on time. Health covers low birth-weight babies, children without health insurance, child and teen deaths per 100,000, and children and teens ages 10 to 17 who are overweight or obese. Family and community covers children in single-parent families, children in families where the household head lacks a high school diploma, children living in high-poverty areas, and teen births per 1,000.

Because the composite score averages across all four domains, a state that is very strong in one area can still rank modestly overall if it struggles in another. New Hampshire, for example, ranked second in economic well-being in 2025, reinforcing rather than carrying its overall top position. New Mexico, by contrast, ranked in the bottom four on all four domain scores individually, explaining how a single state ends up at the very bottom of the composite without any single catastrophically outlying number.

All 50 States Ranked for Children’s Well-Being (2026)

The tables below present the 2026 KIDS COUNT overall child well-being rankings for all 50 states organized by quartile, with their domain-level rankings and primary strengths or challenges noted. States in the first quartile (ranks 1 through 12) represent the top tier of child outcomes nationally; states in the fourth quartile (ranks 39 through 50) face the most persistent structural challenges for children.

National Trends: What Improved, What Got Worse

The 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book covers data primarily from 2022 to 2024 and presents a national landscape shaped by the long tail of COVID-19’s disruptions alongside genuine structural improvements that predate the pandemic. The headline finding is that seven of 16 indicators improved since 2019, six worsened, and three remained flat. That mixed scorecard reflects a country where economic and health safety nets have strengthened significantly in recent years while educational performance and youth engagement have deteriorated in ways that will require sustained, long-term investment to reverse.

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation: 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book.

Top States for Children: What They Do Differently

The states that consistently lead the KIDS COUNT rankings share several structural features that are not accidental and are not primarily a function of wealth alone. New Hampshire ranked second in economic well-being, not first, yet it ranks first overall because it is balanced across all four domains rather than dominant in just one. Vermont has a per-capita income below several states that rank lower than it does, yet its investment in early childhood supports, mental health infrastructure, and community-level family stability programs produces top-two outcomes for children across the family and community domain. Massachusetts pairs its economic strength with the highest education spending per pupil of any state and produces the highest reading and math proficiency rates in the country as a result, demonstrating that high spending, when well directed, produces measurable child outcomes.

Utah is the most interesting outlier in the top five. It is a predominantly conservative, low-tax state that ranks fourth nationally for children’s well-being, driven by high parental employment, low housing cost burden relative to income, strong family stability indicators, and a culture of community investment in children that does not depend primarily on government program size. It demonstrates that the pathway to good child outcomes is not a single ideological formula but a combination of economic opportunity, community engagement, and policy investment that different states have achieved through different means. Minnesota’s fifth-place ranking alongside its documented racial disparities is the most important caution in the entire data set: aggregate rankings can conceal profound inequality within states, and a high composite rank is not a substitute for examining how a state’s outcomes are distributed across racial and income lines.

Bottom States for Children: Structural Challenges That Compound

The states at the bottom of the 2025 KIDS COUNT rankings share a common structural pattern: they are not simply poor states. They are states where multiple overlapping disadvantages; high child poverty, limited health infrastructure, under-resourced schools, high teen birth rates, and weak safety nets, operate simultaneously and reinforce each other across generations. A child born in New Mexico, Louisiana, or Mississippi faces a cumulative disadvantage that no single policy intervention addresses on its own, because the challenges are systemic and interconnected rather than isolated to a single domain.

Texas is the most instructive case study in the bottom tier because it is also one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing states in the country. Texas ranks 41st for children’s well-being despite having the second-largest economy in the United States, primarily because it has the highest rate of uninsured children in the country, significant child poverty concentrated in its southern and rural communities, and below-average academic performance despite high absolute education spending. The state’s no-income-tax structure, which benefits working households in the cost-of-living comparison, does not translate into superior child outcomes because the revenue is not available for the healthcare and education investments that drive KIDS COUNT indicator improvements. This is not a commentary on the tax structure’s economic merits; it is simply what the data show about its relationship to child outcomes as measured by the 16 KIDS COUNT indicators.

What These Rankings Mean for Families Considering a Move

The KIDS COUNT rankings are a legitimate and useful starting point for families evaluating a relocation, but they are a starting point and not a complete answer. A state’s overall position tells you something real about the policy environment, the depth of health infrastructure, the average strength of public schools, and the economic conditions surrounding children, but day-to-day family experience depends heavily on the specific community, school district, and neighborhood within that state. A high-ranking state almost always has under-resourced districts. A low-ranking state almost always has well-resourced suburban communities that significantly outperform the statewide average on every indicator the KIDS COUNT measures.

The most practical way to use the KIDS COUNT rankings in a relocation decision is to use the state composite rank to set an initial threshold, then drill into district-level academic performance data, local health access maps, neighborhood child poverty rates, and community safety statistics for the specific communities on your shortlist. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s own KIDS COUNT Data Center at datacenter.aecf.org allows searches by state, county, and city across all 16 indicators, making it possible to check conditions at a far more granular level than the state ranking alone provides. Families arriving from high-cost coastal states into mid-tier KIDS COUNT states often find that the specific suburban communities they target outperform the national average across every child indicator while still offering the cost savings and lifestyle improvements that drove the relocation decision.

FAQ

What state is best for raising children in 2026?

New Hampshire ranks first for children’s well-being for the third consecutive year in the 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book, placing in the top four on all four domain scores: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. Vermont and Massachusetts rank second and third. For families who prioritize education specifically, Massachusetts leads the country in reading and math proficiency rates. For families who prioritize safety and family stability, New Hampshire and Vermont consistently score highest on those specific indicators.

What state is the worst for children’s well-being?

New Mexico ranks 50th overall in the 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book, placing in the bottom four on all four domain scores. Children in New Mexico face persistent economic hardship, below-average academic performance, and significant health gaps, particularly for Native and Hispanic communities that make up a large share of the state’s child population. Louisiana ranks 49th and Mississippi ranks 48th, with both states facing similarly deep structural challenges across economic, education, and health domains.

How does KIDS COUNT rank states?

The Annie E. Casey Foundation calculates a composite index for each state by measuring 16 indicators across four domains: economic well-being (child poverty, parental employment, housing cost burden, teens not working or in school), education (preschool participation, 4th-grade reading, 8th-grade math, graduation rates), health (uninsured children, child death rates, low birth weight, childhood obesity), and family and community (single-parent families, household educational attainment, high-poverty neighborhood concentration, teen birth rates). Standard scores for each indicator are combined into domain scores, which are then combined into an overall composite rank from 1 to 50.

Why do New England states consistently rank so high for children?

New England states benefit from a combination of higher median household incomes that reduce child poverty, long-term investment in public education and early childhood programs, strong healthcare systems with high insurance coverage rates, relatively low rates of children in high-poverty neighborhoods, and community and policy cultures that have prioritized children’s well-being indicators across multiple administrations and decades. Their small geographic size also helps, since concentrated populations are easier to reach with health, education, and family support services than geographically dispersed or very large state populations.

Why does Texas rank low for children despite being a wealthy state?

Texas ranks 41st for children’s well-being primarily because it has the highest rate of uninsured children in the United States, significant child poverty concentrated in its southern border and rural communities, and below-average academic proficiency despite high absolute education spending. The state’s no-income-tax structure limits the revenue available for the healthcare and education infrastructure that drives KIDS COUNT indicator improvements. Texas’s strong overall economy and fast population growth have not translated into proportionally stronger child outcomes as measured by the 16 KIDS COUNT indicators, making it one of the most visible examples of the gap between state-level economic strength and child-level well-being outcomes.

What indicator has gotten most worse for American children since 2019?

The most alarming deterioration since 2019 is the 16 percent increase in child and teen death rates between 2019 and 2023. Academic performance is also significantly worse, with 73 percent of eighth graders now testing below math proficiency (up 9 percent since 2019) and 70 percent of fourth graders below reading proficiency (up 6 percent). The number of teenagers ages 16 to 19 who are disconnected from both school and work rose 5 percent to nearly 1.2 million. The Annie E. Casey Foundation describes this combination of rising mortality, learning loss, and youth disconnection as the most pressing challenge in current American child policy.

Does a state’s child well-being rank affect where businesses hire?

Research consistently shows a link between child well-being indicators and long-term workforce quality, since children who grow up with access to stable housing, quality education, consistent healthcare, and family support are more likely to become productive, healthy, engaged adult workers. States in the bottom quartile of KIDS COUNT rankings face a compounding challenge: poor child outcomes today create workforce readiness gaps in 15 to 20 years that make it harder to attract and retain employers who need highly skilled workers, which in turn reduces the tax base available to invest in the child services that would improve future outcomes.

References

1. Annie E. Casey Foundation: 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book, published June 10, 2025
2. Annie E. Casey Foundation Blog: U.S. States See Progress, Setbacks in Child Well-Being, June 8, 2025
3. Annie E. Casey Foundation: 2025 KIDS COUNT Interactive Data Book
4. KIDS COUNT Data Center: State Rankings by Domain and Indicator
5. New Futures: NH Kids Count 2025 Ranking – New Hampshire Ranks 1st in Child Well-Being
6. Morgan State University NCEED: Numbers That Matter – Kids Count 2025, June 29, 2025
7. Children’s Advocacy Alliance of Nevada: Nevada’s 2025 KIDS COUNT Results – 47th Overall
8. Oklahoma Policy Institute: Oklahoma Ranks 46th in 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book, June 8, 2025
9. Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book – Arkansas Ranks 45th