In Madison County, there are more than 2,000 minority children, and 32 percent live in poverty.
Nebraska’s minority children mostly come from Mexico (52 percent), Central America (10 percent) and East Asia (8 percent.)
Those immigrants who come from Mexico and Latin America tend to have a higher fertility rate than those U.S. born, said Mark Mather, vice president of domestic programs at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C.
“You combine those two forces, immigration and the fertility, it really creates the perfect demographic storm and that’s what’s really driving the ethnic population growth,” he said.
Annemarie Bailey Fowler, research and opportunity-at-work coordinator of Voices for Children, said there are some misconceptions about this population group. For starters, data indicates that more than half of the parents of children in immigrant families are U.S. citizens.
Poverty is often associated with single-parenthood in the U.S., however, this is not the experience of immigrant children. In 2007, 75 percent of immigrant children lived in married couple families.
Poverty levels hinge on several parental indicators, including a limited understanding and proficiency of English, low levels of education and the predominance of low-wage employment.
“Ignoring the unique needs and challenges of immigrant children and depriving them of access to community, opportunity, equality and justice will threaten the well-being of thousands of children and result in higher costs to our state and our country in the future,” Fowler said.
Another of the key issues pointed out by the latest data is that of infant and maternal health.
In 2007, more than 7 percent of Nebraska’s newborns were born below 5 pounds, 8 ounces and nearly 1 1/2 percent were born with a very low birth weight — 3 pounds, 3 ounces or below.
Better than the state average, about 5 percent of all births in Madison County for 2007 resulted in babies with low birth weight.
But that rate is still too high, said Dr. Magda Peck, associate dean for community engagement and public health practice and professor of public health and pediatrics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“This has been a challenging problem for the nation as a whole,” she said. “Nebraska has unfortunately good company nationwide as being part of a stuck trend overall.”
Ten years ago, goals were set to drop the low birth weight rate to 5 percent. But both the nation and state have failed and, in fact, there has been no significant change made in the rate over the past decade, Peck said.
Combating the problem is so important because a low birth weight baby has a greater likelihood of not living to see their first birthday as well as inheriting a host of potential cognitive and physical defects, she said.
The data shows disparities along ethnic lines in that African-American women tend to have higher instances of low infant birth weights.
There’s so many factors that go into low birth weight — genetics, health conditions, environment, prenatal health care, social support and many more — that there’s not a single solution.
“It’s critical for Nebraska to not become complacent,” Peck said. “We must do better by our mothers and babies so that they can be born alive, at good weight and thrive to their first birthday and beyond.”
