•Savageau, David. 1997. Places Rated Almanac. New York: Macmillan.•_____________. 2004. Retirement Places Rated: What You Need to Know to Plan the Retirement You Deserve, Sixth Edition. Frommers.

•Sperling, Bert, and Peter Sander. 2004. Cities Ranked and Rated: More than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. and Canada, 1st Edition. John Wiley & Sons. •_____________. 2006. Best Places to Raise Your Family, First Edition. Frommers.

1. Deaths per 100K (ages 15to19)2. Deaths per 100K (ages 1to14)3. Pct of children in poverty4. Pct ages 16to19 HS dropouts5. Infant deaths per K live births6. Pct low birth-weight babies7. Pct ages 16to19 not attending school and not working8. Pct children w/out resident parent w/ fulltime all-year

employment9. Pct children living in single parent families10.Births per K females ages 15to19

10 Kids Count Indicators

the score i of the ith state is the sum of the scores yri in r=1,…,m attribute dimensions, each score weighted by a weight r.

m

rriri y

1

Specifying the index requires that one address the following three issues:

1.which child welfare measures yr to include; 2.how to scale the measures yr; 3.and how to specify the weights r.

m

rriri y

1

Equal weights ranks

Assume there are n states, denoted by subscript i, whose child welfare is measured in m

dimensions, denoted by subscript r; yri is the measure of the child welfare of state i on dimension

r. The following linear programming problem solves for weights on the individual child welfare

measures (r) in order to assess the effectiveness of the kth state.

Maximize k =r

rkr y (2.a)

Subject to 1r

rir y , i (2.b)

krrUrkr yby , r (2.c)

krrLrkr yby , r (2.d)

0r , r (2.e)

Figure 3: The TDEA frontier TDEA(3)i from Table 3. Higher

numbers represent lower child welfare and are given as darker colors in the map.

Figure 4: The TDEA frontier TDEA(1000)i from Table

3.This is the case where weights are for all practical purposes completely unrestricted.

Flexible weights improve scores over fixed weights. Score improved more for states in darker colors.

Table 3: Calculated TDEA Frontier and Distance Index State TDEA(3)i θ(3)i TDEA(1000)i θ(1000)i Equal Weights Eq. Wts Rank NH 1 1 1 1 1 1

MN 1 1 1 1 0.9789 2

MA 2 0.9813 1 1 0.9563 3

NJ 2 0.9762 1 1 0.9539 5 IA 2 0.9696 1 1 0.9417 6

VT 2 0.9689 2 0.9944 0.9553 4

UT 2 0.9686 1 1 0.9371 9

ND 2 0.9657 1 1 0.9388 7 ME 3 0.954 2 0.9994 0.9324 10

CT 3 0.952 1 1 0.9377 8

NE 3 0.9404 2 0.9994 0.9112 11

WI 4 0.9315 2 0.9661 0.9099 12

WA 4 0.9209 1 1 0.8943 13

SD 5 0.9115 1 1 0.8765 16

KS 5 0.9085 3 0.9714 0.8784 15

OR 5 0.8997 1 1 0.8693 18 VA 5 0.8991 3 0.9457 0.8829 14

RI 5 0.8971 2 0.9767 0.8736 17

HI 5 0.8931 2 0.98 0.8557 22

CA 6 0.8904 2 0.9687 0.8624 20 NY 6 0.8896 2 0.9644 0.8595 21

ID 6 0.8882 2 0.9849 0.8525 23

PA 6 0.878 3 0.9047 0.867 19

MD 6 0.8654 2 0.9346 0.8472 24

CO 6 0.8654 2 0.9225 0.845 27

WY 7 0.8676 3 0.9324 0.8382 28

MT 7 0.8622 3 0.9477 0.8242 31

OH 7 0.8622 3 0.9099 0.8451 26

MI 7 0.8614 3 0.9004 0.8461 25

IL 7 0.8515 4 0.8844 0.8365 29

State TDEA(3)i θ(3)i TDEA(1000)i θ(1000)i Equal Weights Eq. Wts Rank US 8 0.8454 3 0.8708 0.8286 30

IN 8 0.8388 4 0.8964 0.8184 32

MO 9 0.8242 4 0.8672 0.8048 33

AK 9 0.8225 1 1 0.7797 37 NV 9 0.8209 3 0.8731 0.7963 36

DE 9 0.8166 4 0.9139 0.8031 34

FL 9 0.8158 4 0.843 0.8021 35

TX 10 0.802 4 0.8687 0.7749 38 KY 10 0.7903 4 0.8394 0.7652 39

WV 10 0.7791 4 0.8534 0.7482 41

OK 11 0.7835 5 0.8497 0.7564 40

AZ 11 0.7705 4 0.9077 0.7403 44

NC 11 0.765 5 0.8172 0.746 42

TN 11 0.7624 5 0.8104 0.7419 43

GA 11 0.7572 5 0.8353 0.7339 45

AR 12 0.7561 5 0.8158 0.7257 47 SC 12 0.7431 5 0.7773 0.728 46

NM 12 0.7387 5 0.8257 0.7149 48

AL 13 0.6949 6 0.7429 0.6789 49

LA 14 0.6444 6 0.6836 0.6228 50 MS 15 0.6139 6 0.6663 0.5926 51

DC 16 0.5201 6 0.6772 0.5051 52

Notes: 1000 and 3 refer to maximum order of magnitude of weight shares. States are sorted with highest child welfare at the top (by ascending TDEA(3)i , and descending θ(3)I). Lower TDEA frontier numbers correspond to higher child welfare.

Table 4: R2 between Indices Measure TDEA(3)i θ(3)i TDEA(1000)i θ(1000)i Equal Weights Eq. Wts Rank TDEA(3)i 1 0.94794 0.82812 0.81755 0.954 0.96018 θ(3)i 0.94794 1 0.82197 0.85098 0.99267 0.8849 TDEA(1000)i 0.82812 0.82197 1 0.91595 0.80078 0.78827 θ(1000)i 0.81755 0.85098 0.91595 1 0.82332 0.75322 Equal Weights 0.954 0.99267 0.80078 0.82332 1 0.89793 Eq. Wts Rank 0.96018 0.8849 0.78827 0.75322 0.89793 1

R2 between index value for 2000 and index value for other years year TDEA(3)i θ(3)i TDEA(1000)i θ(1000)i Equal Weights Eq. Wts Rank

2000 1 1 1 1 1 1 2001 0.93616 0.94545 0.83393 0.89318 0.94862 0.94528 2002 0.9083 0.91061 0.79915 0.91368 0.92582 0.89661 2003 0.91029 0.93905 0.76185 0.82201 0.95587 0.93138

avg(2000-2003) 0.96778 0.97548 0.85127 0.94879 0.98019 0.97068 Notes: The top part of the table presents the R2 between each pair of indices. The indices are calculated for each of the years 2000-2003, as well as for the average indicator values in the four years (giving five sets of values). The average R2 for the five sets of values is given in the table. The bottom part of the table gives the R2 between the index value for 2000 and the same index with values for other years.