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National report again ranks New Mexico last in child well-being
In an annual national report released June 9, 2025, New Mexico ranked last for child well-being for the fourth year in a row, and ranked last for education as well.
New Mexico continues to rank last in the nation in child well-being, according to an annual report released Monday.
The Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which used data from 2023, evaluates all states across four metrics of child well-being: health, economic well-being, education and family & community.
It's the fourth straight year New Mexico ranked last overall.
New Mexico 50th in child welfare, showing both improvements and declines in several areas
The state saw some improvements from 2019 to 2023, including a lower rate of teen births, a lower rate of teens who are neither in school nor working and slightly improved high school graduation rates.
But the state's ranking was dragged down by factors that include: persistently high poverty, a rising child death rate and declining educational performance.
The state's rankings in the four categories were:
49th in economic well-being.
50th in education,
46th in health
And 50th in family & community.
Of the 16 metrics studied, New Mexico fell below the national average in all but one: children living in households with a high housing cost burden — 29% in New Mexico versus 30% nationally.
New Mexico's performance on most of the metrics stayed flat or declined from 2019 to 2023.
In a news release Monday, advocacy group New Mexico Voices for Children noted that the data in the report doesn't capture the full impact of policy changes in recent years, including expanded child care assistance and pre-k funding, but argued further action is also needed.
'These efforts matter, and in time, they will move the needle,' wrote Gabrielle Uballez, executive director of NM Voices for Children. 'But today, too many children are still waiting for the resources they need.'
The challenges for children's well-being are especially concentrated in the South and Southwest regions of the U.S., the report noted. The worst states for child well-being were Oklahoma, Nevada, Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico.
The best-ranking states were largely concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest. They were New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Utah and Minnesota.
New Mexico was ranked 46th for health, with Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi below it.
Especially dragging the state down was a high rate of child and teen deaths. The rate of child and teen deaths in New Mexico increased since 2019, reaching 47 per 100,000 in 2023. The national average was 29 per 100,000 that year.
Only Louisiana and Mississippi had higher child death rates. The national child death rate also increased over this period, which the report attributes to rising firearm deaths and drug overdoses, particularly among teens ages 15 to 19.
Firearms were the leading cause of death among New Mexico kids and teens from 2018 to 2022, according to Centers for Disease Control data. The overall gun death rate has surged over the last decade and consistently ranks among the nation's highest.
The teen birth rate declined both nationally and in New Mexico. The rate was 24 per 1,000 in New Mexico in 2019 and fell to 18 per 1,000 four years later.
Only Louisiana ranked lower in terms of economic well-being.
One-quarter of New Mexico children lived in poverty in 2023, which is consistent with 2019 levels. That rate was tied with Louisiana for the highest in the country.
The national rate was 16%.
The Kids Count report uses the official census poverty measure which includes just wage-based income. Another measure of poverty from the U.S. Census Bureau takes into account anti-poverty programs such as SNAP benefits and refundable tax credits, and New Mexico's standing improves when using that measure, as advocates pointed out last year. New Mexico has the highest rate of the population receiving SNAP benefits, and 38% of recipients are kids.
Nationally, just 8% of kids nationally lived in high-poverty areas between 2019 and 2023 but 19% of New Mexican kids did during the same period. That contributed to New Mexico's low family & community ranking, although it was a slight improvement from the four years preceding it.
Nearly two-thirds of New Mexico kids have parents lacking secure employment, which held steady from 2019.
New Mexico ranked last in education, with declines in reading and math proficiency reflecting national trends. The portion of New Mexico fourth graders not proficient in reading reached 80% in 2023 and eighth graders not proficient in math reached 86%.
Nationally, education performance was the category that fell the most. Lisa Lawson, president and CEO of the Casey Foundation, wrote in the report that reading and math performance experienced declines 'consistent with the well-documented toll on student learning and a rise in chronic absenteeism' that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report added: 'This is even more troubling when we consider that these indicators are strongly tied to future academic achievement, workforce readiness and economic success.'
