1. Child Welfare 900 Lydia Street - Austin, Texas 78702
Phone (512) – fax (512)
Child Welfare
One Voice:
A Collaborative for Health and Human Services
Thursday, September 30, 2004
F. Scott McCown, Executive Director

2. The Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery Boerne, Texas
Founders of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, 1985
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3. The Changing Face of Texas
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4. Texas Population by Age & Ethnicity, 2040
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5. Child Population Growth
Fastest growing child population in U.S. between
350,000 additional children
183,000 more than California
75,000 more than Florida
Second largest child population in U.S.
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6. Center for Public Policy Priorities
Indicators of Need
Texas
US Average
rank
% of Population under 18, 2002
28.0%
25.3%
3rd
Child Poverty Rate, 2002
22.0%
16.7%
6th
Under-65 Population with No Health Insurance, 2002
28.4%
17.2%
1st
Here’s where you can see other indicators of need for public services.
Not just a lot of children (needing schools), but a lot of poor children (more expensive to educate; more likely to suffer from bad nutrition and lack of access to medical care, which also affects their ability to do well in school)
Lack of health insurance: a lot of the difference is due to a much lower rate of employer-provided coverage.
Per capita personal income: This is an economic indicator that’s periodically released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. What BEA does is take the total personal income of a state’s residents (net earnings (from wages/salaries, business losses), dividends/interest/rent, transfer payments) and divide that by the state’s population. PCPI is used (among other things) in determining the state’s match rates for Medicaid (the FMAP, or Federal Medical Assistance Percentage), foster care, child care. In the late 1990s, the state’s per capita personal income grew fast enough to rank Texas right about average (25th in 1998). But even with high PCPI, poverty rates remained high. In other words, the late 1990s showed that you can have a lot of money in the state, but if it’s increasingly concentrated in a few high-income households, no one else benefits all that much from economic growth.
We also have a tax system that is less and less able to capture economic growth. Dick will talk more about this, but the next few items are two indicators of how this problem affects Texas more than it does other states.
Both of these are based on Census Bureau definitions of what “taxes” are — they include licenses, occupational permits and fees, and a lot of other things that we wouldn’t even consider “taxes”. But even with these included, the state has one of the lowest tax bites (taxes as a percent of personal income) and also one of the most rapidly shrinking tax shares in the late 1990s. Since 2000, state taxes have lost more ground (as a % of personal income, and also in total) than have local taxes.
Source: Congressional Quarterly’s State Fact Finder 2004.
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7. Underinvesting in Children
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8. . . . Especially in Poor Children
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9. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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10. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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11. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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12. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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13. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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14. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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15. Center for Public Policy Priorities
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16. What’s in the “Other Federal Funds?”
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17. The Pew “Fostering Results” Project
June 2003: Pew Charitable Trusts initiates support for the Children & Family Research Center at the School of Social Work, University of IL at Urbana-Champaign, to launch a public education/outreach campaign called Fostering Results.
Fostering Results is working nationally and in selected states to highlight the need to address federal financing mechanisms favoring foster care over other options for children & families, and to improve court oversight of child welfare cases.
Fostering Results will engage influential national & local leaders, including judges, child welfare directors & caseworkers, and advocates for youth & for foster, birth, and adoptive families, using media, reports & meetings to call attention to financing & court issues.
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Center for Public Policy Priorities