Kentucky is in the lower third nationally for child well-being, ranking 34th among the states in the 2017 Kids Count Data Book released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said that ranking should push the state’s citizens and government leaders to move Kentucky forward. Kentucky Youth Advocates is the foundation’s Kentucky organization.

“We can’t continue to accept being in the bottom half of the nation when it comes to the well-being of our kids,” Brooks said.

The report tracks child well-being across four areas – health, education, family and education and economic well-being. The report compares data from 2015, the latest year available, with data from 2010. A separate report including county-level data will be released in November. Kentucky’s worst category is economic well-being, ranking 39th nationally.

For Brooks, poverty underpins all other challenges in health, education and family and community that Kentucky kids face.

“For us to really attend to any other measure on child well-being, we have to tackle economic security,” he said.

Brooks said 2016 was the first year that more than one in four Kentucky children lived in poverty, noting that hasn’t changed this year.

As many as 34 percent of Kentucky children live in families where neither parent has full-time, year-round employment.

As Dishman-McGinnis Elementary School’s family resource coordinator, Amy Carter said she most often finds herself helping out with basic needs.

Her school has a free lunch participation rate of more than 95 percent.

“We do a lot of basic needs here: food, shelter, clothing,” she said.

The report’s indicators for economic well-being said Kentucky mostly improved between 2010 and 2015. However, its gains are not as large as others nationally.

Overall, the percentages of Kentucky children whose parents lack secure employment, children living in households with high housing costs and teenagers not in school or working have improved. However, the percentage of Kentucky children in poverty is flat at 26 percent.

Kentucky fared better in health (22nd) and education (24th) nationally.

However, Kentucky still has work to do in public education.

Three of five Kentucky fourth-graders scored below proficient in reading and nearly three in four eighth-graders scored below proficient in math.

Health stands out as a more positive performance area, with 96 percent of Kentucky kids enrolled in health coverage, which rose from 94 percent in 2013.

Kentucky ranked 38th nationally in the family and community category. That area tracks the percentages of children in single-parent families, children in families where the household head has no high school diploma, children living in high poverty areas and teen births per 1,000.

Carter said the biggest challenges she sees families facing are housing and childcare costs.

She spends a lot of her time connecting families to helpful services and helping parents realize there are other opportunities other than a minimum-wage job.

Brooks posed a refundable state earned income tax credit as a viable solution. That would allow low-income families to have more purchasing power locally, he said.

“That helps the local economy, and that helps the state budget,” he said.

Other solutions could include more state support for child care costs through tax credits and micro loans for aspiring entrepreneurs in low-income areas, he said.

Kentucky Youth Advocates suggested several possible solutions to addressing the issue.

They include reauthorizing the Children’s Health Insurance Program at the federal level, implementing local smoke-free laws and higher tobacco taxes to reduce smoking while pregnant and reinstating the Kinship Care Program.

“We should aspire to better days for children in Kentucky,” Brooks said.

– Follow education reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter @BGDN_edbeat or visit bgdailynews.com.