W.Va. Holds Steady On National Report Of Child Wellbeing  

West Virginia maintained its ranking at 41st in the nation for overall child wellbeing in the 2026 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  

“West Virginia does not have a good score,” Sean O’Leary, senior policy analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy (WVCBP), said. “We were not happy to see the 41^st, we want to see us do better, but we are making improvements in some areas, so that’s important.” 

For more than 30 years, the Kids Count study has looked at four indicators of what children and youth need most to live well: family and community, economic well-being, education and health. WVCBP compiles the local data for the national study.  

He said the report helps highlight areas to focus on, namely children living in poverty.  

“Raising wages, raising the minimum wage, all of those things address that issue of children in poverty, and a lot of these other indicators flow from the amount of children living in poverty,” O’Leary said. “Children in poverty have worse health outcomes. Children in poverty have worse educational outcomes. So that’s one area that I would like to see focus on from state leadership.” 

The report confirms that 22% of children in West Virginia live in poverty, a slight increase from last year.    

“What can we do about children in poverty? We can work on their parents,” O’Leary said. “Child tax credits have been proven to reduce child poverty. The earned income tax credit has been proven to reduce child poverty. Things that are getting people working and things that are improving incomes.” 

He noted that the state has seen improvements in health outcomes, particularly for children without health insurance, a measure that has gone down sharply over the past few years.  

“We’re much better off than the national rankings. We were at 3% with children without health insurance. The national rate is 6%,” O’Leary said. “We’re much better than the national rate. What’s concerning about that is that with the One Big Beautiful Bill and cuts the Medicaid, will that impact children? A lot of that decline was because of the enhanced pandemic eligibility.” 

West Virginia is also doing better in the family and community metrics, where the number of children with parents that don’t have a high school diploma has gone down.  

“Children living in high poverty areas, not just the poverty rate for children, but all the children that are living in a high poverty area has improved. Our birth rate, our teen birth rate; we want our birth rate to go up, but we don’t want our teen birth rate to go up, and that’s gone down significantly over the past few years.” 

The state’s educational attainment has slipped, but that follows a national trend of educational decline.