Kids Count Data Center

Definitions: The number and percent of children under age 18 who live in families with income below the poverty threshold (100% Federal Poverty Guideline) as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Data Source: The U.S. Census Bureau's Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE). Data were retrieved on November 24, 2009 from http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/saipe/index.html.

*Please use these estimates with caution. The total confidence interval (upper bound minus lower bound) of the percent estimate, is 10 percentage points or greater, which indicates that this estimate has a large margin of error. This generally occurs when estimate relies on small number of cases. To obtain total confidence interval values around the estimates for this indicator please contact Washington KIDS COUNT.

Footnotes: Data last updated in November 2009 by Washington KIDS COUNT.
The poverty rates available in SAIPE are model-based county estimates. Technical notes on the modeling can be found at http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/publications/index.html. Beginning with the estimates for 2005, data from the American Community Survey (ACS) were used in the estimation procedure; all prior years used data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplements of the Current Population Survey. Due to this difference, the SAIPE data from 2005 is not comparable to earlier SAIPE data. Beginning in January 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau expanded the ACS sample to 3 million households (full implementation), and in January 2006 the ACS included group quarters. Because of the addition of group quarters in 2006, estimates between 2005 and later years are not fully comparable for certain age groups across 2005 and 2006. Generally residents of group quarters have higher poverty rates than residents of households, and this affects the comparison.

The federal poverty definition consists of a series of thresholds based on family size and composition. In 2008, the poverty threshold for a family of two adults and two children was $21,834.Poverty status is not determined for people in military barracks, institutional quarters, or for unrelated individuals under age 15 (such as foster children).

Definitions:

The number and percent of babies who weighed less than 2,500 grams (5 pounds, 8 ounces) at birth.

Data Source: The data used for this measure come from Center for Health Statistics, Washington State Department of Health (DOH), Infant Death Data. Data are available online at http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehsphl/chs/chs-data/birth/bir_vd.htm (Natality Table B7)

S: Data estimate has been suppressed. When the annual number of low weight birth was 10 or fewer, percent is not shown. Data presented here are annual estimates. We did not calculate three year averages for this indicator as the majority of the counties, in the majority of the years reported low birth weight counts of more than 10.

Footnotes: Data last updated in January 2010 by Washington KIDS COUNT.

DOH technical notes on measurement issues are available at http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehsphl/chs/chs-data/technote/tech_not.pdf.

Definitions: A student graduates on-time if he/she receives a high school diploma within four years of starting 9th grade. Total graduation rate is the percentage of all students who graduated from high school within four years after they started 9th grade. The numerator is all high school students who graduated with a high school diploma within four years of starting 9th grade. The denominator is the total cohort size who started 9th grade four years prior to graduation.

The same definition applies to racial/ethnic categories. That is, the numerator is all high school students from a particular racial/ethnic background who graduated within four years of starting 9th grade. The denominator is all high school students from that racial/ethnic background who started 9th grade together.

Data Source: Data for this measure come from the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Data were retrieved from "Graduation and Dropout Statistics" reports, and Appendix C and D at http://www.k12.wa.us/dataadmin/.

S: Data have been suppressed due to low numbers. Data were suppressed if the enrollment of students served in any of the 9th, 10th, 11th or 12th grade was 10 or less.

Footnotes: Data last updated in April 2010 by Washington KIDS COUNT.

“A student is considered to be a graduate if he or she received a high school diploma or an adult diploma from a community college program during the reporting period (including a summer program). On-time graduates are those who receive a diploma in the expected year,” p. 7, published online at http://www.k12.wa.us/dataadmin/pubdocs/GradDropout/08-09/GraduationDropoutWashington2008-09.pdf.

OSPI suggests using caution when making comparisons across schools, districts, and states and from one year to another as different methods of calculations were used for on-time and extended graduation rates and annual and cohort dropout rates. For detailed discussion of methods and criteria that OSPI used to include or exclude groups (such as transfers in, transfers out etc.) in the calculations, please read their "Graduation and Dropout Statistics 2008-09 Report" at the link provided above.

Race/ethnicity is self-reported by either students or parents/guardians. When students report more than one racial/ethnic category, OSPI reports the category listed first. Therefore, the racial/ethnic categories are not mutually exclusive.