How are babies doing?

The new “State of Babies Yearbook: 2020,” released by the national nonprofit Zero to Three, has answers.

“The Yearbook is the story of the 12 million infants and toddlers in the U.S. and their families,” the yearbook’s executive summary explains.

“But it is also the story of our nation’s future. The babies behind the numbers are our society’s next generation of parents, workers, and leaders. We can’t afford to squander the potential of a single child if our nation is to thrive—nor should it be acceptable that so many have barriers in their way.”

The yearbook’s goal is to bridge “the gap between science and policy with national and state-by-state data on the well-being of America’s babies.”

Grounded “in the science of early development,” the yearbook looks at how babies are doing in three developmental domains: good health, strong families, and positive learning experiences. Within each of these domains are a number of indicators including:

• preterm births, low birth rates, and preventative dental and medical services in the health domain

• home visiting, housing status, and neighborhood safety in the family domain, and

• Early Head Start enrollment, the cost of center-based care for infants, and the percent of parents who say they read to their child daily in the early learning domain

To rate how well states’ policies address the array of babies’ needs, the yearbook uses the acronym GROW, which stands for Getting Started at the low end of the ratings to Reaching Forward to Improving Outcomes to Working Effectively, which is the highest rating.

The full yearbook also points to national themes including the nation’s growing diversity.

“In 2018, more than half (50.7 percent) of America’s babies were non-White, continuing a trend that began in 2011 when more than half of all infants born were children of color.”

“Specifically in 2018, 26.2 percent were Hispanic, 13.7 percent Black, 4.9 percent Asian, 0.8 percent American Indian/Alaska Native, 0.2 percent Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and 4.8 percent Multiple Races.”

These infants and toddlers “are disproportionately at risk for poorer outcomes in all three domains of well-being.”

The yearbook’s state profiles provide more specific detail and ratings.

Massachusetts, for example, gets the yearbook’s highest overall rating of “Working Effectively.” But the state lags in “Positive Early Learning Experiences,” where it gets the rating, “Reaching Forward.” One contributing factor to this rating is the state’s notoriously high cost of child care for infants and toddlers.

This yearbook adds to the growing focus on the unique needs of infants and toddlers that has been happened locally. One example: Strategies for Children facilitates the Massachusetts Partnership for Infants and Toddlers (MPIT), a “unique collaboration between early childhood professionals inside and outside of government, at the state and local level, spanning early education and health.” MPIT has worked to bring families’ voices to the policy arena by surveying them about their needs. Results from the statewide family survey and focus groups will be published soon.

What else can be done? The yearbook calls on advocates, policymakers, and stakeholders to encourage states to:

• tell the story of how babies are doing

• strengthen current initiatives

• use the yearbook to identify problems and devise responsive policies

• collect more data on babies’ lives, and

• collaborate, so states can learn from each either

As the report concludes, “this is an exciting time of policy innovation. The importance of children’s earliest years of life has gained more attention than ever before. Across states, this new awareness is translating into creative policy strategies…”

“The key to further success, especially for states where challenges across all the domains seem daunting, is to find a manageable place to begin and to be thoughtful about how policy choices fit within a broader system of support for infants, toddlers, and their families.”