FAQ: 2004 Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card

FAQ: 2004 Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card

Why is this report important?

Our report should inspire families, individuals, activists, and officials to work together to create better communities. It is not a relocation guide. We gather the data to alert people to both problems and successes in their communities. The report is a user-friendly tool to help everyone in a community improve the quality of life for children in the area.

Why wasn’t my city included? Where can I find information on it?

The report only includes the 100 largest (in population size) cities in the United States.

If you are looking for specific information on a city not included in this report (or for more information on any of the cities we do cover) you might want to try the U.S. Census Bureau website at www.census.gov.

I’ve been to some of your “A+” cities and didn’t find them particularly friendly.

While this report aims to be as comprehensive as possible, keep in mind that certain “intangible” qualities of a city are difficult to capture in a study such as this. There are many things we could not cover in this report – the sense of community in a city, the friendliness of the residents, or a city’s cultural offerings.

Cities that received high grades did so because they successfully meet many of the needs of children. Our index of ‘kid-friendliness” refers to the quality of life and services in a city. An important finding of the study is that cities that did very well still have room for improvement. Likewise, cities that did poorly have their own success stories.

How can numbers alone describe a city?

There are many efforts underway in every city that aim to improve the quality of life for children, and not all of these efforts can be quantified. For each city, we highlighted a program or project, which is helping to make the city a better place for children. We call these programs “extracurricular projects” in our Report Card.

Why haven’t you reported any statistics on child abuse?

Child abuse and neglect are, without a doubt, key issues in understanding the state of children’s well being. However, we have no reliable estimates of the rate of child abuse and neglect. The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (www.childstats.gov) has identified this as a primary area in which proper research and documentation is needed. Challenges to collecting this data include: how to effectively extract this sensitive information, how to administer sample surveys, and whether there is a legal obligation to report abuse or neglect.

Will this report encourage flight from cities that did poorly to the cities ranked favorably?

The motivating factor behind this study is to help communities identify and solve their problems, rather than run away from them. We’re not trying to tell you where to live, rather we’re hoping to point out both the good and bad in every neighborhood. We’ve provided examples of projects in every city that local residents have started to improve the quality of life for their children. We’re hoping you use these examples as starting points for improving the lives of kids in your own neighborhood.

How old is the data?

We used the most current data available for all of the 100 cities. With the exception of growth in urbanized area (which measures growth from 1982-1997), all of the data is from 1999, 2000, 2001 or 2003.

How did you choose the indicators you used?

Several factors went into deciding which indicators to use in ranking the cities. One of the most important criteria was that the data for each category be compiled by a single source for all 100 cities. This meant that we couldn’t use things like school drop-out rates, because each city measures drop-out rates differently (turning 18 without graduating, or not coming to school for 6 months, for example), and there was no central bank of information with those numbers. We wanted our indicators to cover a wide variety of topics, as well as focus on the issues Population Connection is working on. We included indicators not normally thought of as “kid-friendly,” such as access to subsidized reproductive health services and status of sexuality education in schools, to remind people how important these issues are to the health and well-being of our children.

What is ‘PopEd’?

PopEd, or Population Education, is Population Connection’s education program, which designs and teaches environmental and population curricula for students in kindergarten through high school. Since 1975, Population Connection has provided quality population education training materials to educators. With an emphasis on hands-on learning and balanced discussion of different viewpoints, our program has earned a reputation for educational excellence.

What is the difference between a Major City and a Large City?

We define a Major City as the main city in an MSA (metropolitan statistical area) that contains at least 2.5 million people. Under this definition, there are 20 major cities in the United States. Together, the Large Cities and Major Cities comprise the 100 largest, in terms of population, cities in the United States. All of the rankings for the Major Cities and Large Cities were done separately, in order to compare similar cities together. The Major Cities, such as Boston, Chicago, and New York, face many of the same problems, such as high crime rates, while the Large Cities, such as Norfolk, VA, Tacoma, WA, and Plano, TX, tend to have more in common – both the benefits and drawbacks of living in a city of a particular size.