Around 300,000 working Arkansans, many of whom are parents with children at home, would qualify for a Working Families Tax Credit, and almost $40 million would return to Arkansas’s economy.

Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and the Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading have produced a new guide to help parents understand the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The Arkansas Department of Education now uses ESSA to measure how Arkansas’s students and schools perform. Arkansas’s ESSA plan is a welcome shift from the one-size-fits-all […]

Arkansas has been in the national news a lot this year for a major change to our health care system. While the disenrollment of nearly 17,000 Arkansas Works beneficiaries is newsworthy, there is another major change underway that’s not received much media attention or public scrutiny. Last year, Arkansas lawmakers passed Act 775, which creates […]

Nearly 8,500 Arkansans lose health care coverage, with more losses expected each month A new brief from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families highlights that few people got new jobs, while many lost health insurance, as a result of the Arkansas Works work-reporting requirement. Each month the state releases a data report that tracks the […]

Too many children in Arkansas are missing too much school to make academic progress. In 2014-15, 13 percent of K-12 students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days of school (or 10 percent of the school year) for any reason, including being suspended. Children who are chronically absent in kindergarten and first […]

Statewide, many people think of Northwest Arkansas as a place where poverty is rare, where families and communities thrive in a booming economy. But as our updated Northwest Arkansas Child Poverty report explains, thousands of families struggle to get by even as the post-recession economy has surged. The child poverty rate in the region decreased […]

As we’ve demonstrated over the past few months with the release of our data snapshot series, black men and boys in Arkansas encounter significant barriers. They face a higher rate of infant mortality, child poverty, and incarceration than their white peers. They also have lower high school graduation rates and family income levels. These outcomes […]

In June 2018, Arkansas became the first state to officially implement a requirement to work in a Medicaid expansion program – known here in Arkansas as Arkansas Works. Some Arkansas Works enrollees began reporting work activities or exemptions in June. By the end of the year, all Arkansas Works enrollees ages 30 to 49 will be […]

Across the board, our black men and boys encounter significant barriers. They face a higher rate of infant mortality, child poverty, and incarceration than their white peers. They also have lower high school graduation rates and family income levels. These outcomes are a result of decades of policy decisions that negatively impacted black Arkansans. This […]

The foundation for health and wealth starts at birth and influences success at every stage of life. Learn more in our latest infographic or in its parent publication “Health and Wealth in Arkansas.”