Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas rank among the lowest in the country on child well-being, according to the latest KIDS COUNT Data Book released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Advocates across all three states said the path forward requires not just good policy, but the political will to fund it.
Deep South Today on Monday convened a virtual forum, which was sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to examine what the 2026 data reveals about children in the region. It was the first in a planned series of events called Families Count in the Deep South.
Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs at the foundation, walked attendees through the latest data book, which pulled together outcomes across dozens of data points to create overall state rankings. Mississippi ranked 50th in the country, Louisiana ranked 48th, and Arkansas ranked 43rd.
The picture is more complicated than the rankings alone suggest. Despite their low overall standings, Mississippi and Louisiana improved in overall well-being year-over-year. Boissiere credited state-level literacy legislation in both states for the gains.
“When leaders invest in policies that support children, children do well,” she said.
On the ground, advocates said the data largely matched what they see daily. Keesa Smith-Brantley, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, tied the state’s declining rankings directly to more than a decade of tax cuts she said have stripped over $2.5 billion from state general revenue.
“Putting it just as bluntly as I can, it won’t happen for free,” Smith-Brantley said of the investments needed to reverse course. “We have to have not just the will but the dollars behind it to see change.”
Ashley Parker Shiels, CEO of the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, celebrated the Magnolia State’s education gains while urging against complacency. She noted that 51% of Mississippi children ages 3 and 4 are not in any early childhood education setting, and that the state still ranks last in the country on health indicators. She also flagged that Mississippi’s average teacher pay remains the lowest in the nation.
“Two things can be true,” she said. “We can celebrate the success and it is real and powerful to see the progress … and we also have to acknowledge there’s more work to do and we can’t rest easy on the fact that there’s been improvement. If anything, that has to motivate us to continue this in the other sectors.”
In Louisiana, Teresa Falgoust, chief data and impact officer at Agenda for Children, said solutions for reducing child poverty are already known. She pointed to the federally expanded child tax credit during the pandemic, which drove child poverty to historic lows before expiring. The challenge, she said, is less about finding solutions than sustaining the political will to fund them.
“There’s no better way to spend a dollar than on children and families,” Falgoust said. “That is literally the future of our country and the future of our state.”
All three panelists expressed concern about the potential impact of federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP and shared specific ideas for what policy changes would improve child well-being outcomes if adopted.
Deep South Today’s network includes Mississippi Today, Verite News, The Current, and the forthcoming Arkansas Today. In-person Families Count convenings are planned in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas later this year.
Watch the entire virtual conversation:
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