The 34th edition of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT® Data Book describes how the country’s lack of affordable and accessible child care negatively affects children, families and U.S. businesses. This year’s publication continues to present national and state data across four domains — economic well-being, education, health and family and community — and ranks states in overall child well-being. The report includes pre-pandemic figures as well as more recent statistics, and shares the latest information of its kind available.

The Florida Scorecard™ is a dynamic online tool that identifies and tracks key metrics that are important to Florida’s economy today and into the future. The Florida Scorecard gives stakeholders the power to measure progress on a statewide level and within their own communities. Check back often as this information is updated regularly.

We all know people who are ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. ALICE workers educate our children, keep us healthy, and make our quality of life possible, yet do not earn enough to support their own families. ALICE households are forced to make tough choices, such as deciding between quality childcare or paying the rent, which have long-term consequences not only for ALICE, but for all. In order to better understand this growing population, United For ALICE provides a framework, language, statistics, and tools that community stakeholders can use to inform policy and drive innovation. The Research Center is the hub of UnitedForALICE.org — a one-stop source for exploring the latest ALICE data, on a national scale down to the local level in our partner states.

In our region, the average annual cost of childcare for a toddler is greater than the annual cost of tuition for a University of South Florida student. Only 50% of the students in our five-county footprint enter Kindergarten ready to learn. And on average, early learning educators earn $5,000 below the living wage for our area. These are just some of the indications that we’re grappling with a childcare crisis in our community and nationally. United Way Suncoast has launched this early learning dashboard to raise greater awareness, advocacy and action around supporting our childcare providers, families and youngest learners.

In 2022, the Legatum Institute and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD) formed a partnership. The American Dream Prosperity Index, produced by the Legatum Institute in partnership with MCAAD, enables greater understanding into the barriers to greater prosperity across the United States. The American Dream Prosperity Index contains 200 indicators from 90+ data sources, providing a comprehensive assessment of prosperity across all 50 states, D.C., and 1,481 counties.

The City Health Dashboard was created in 2018 by NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Its goal is to provide communities and city leaders with an array of regularly updated data specific to neighborhood and/or city boundaries – such as life expectancy, park access, and children in poverty — to improve the health and well-being of everyone in the community.

By harnessing the power of the Florida Gap Map, Florida’s business leaders, non-profit administrators, and policymakers will be able to tailor efforts to ensure specific resources are deployed to match the unique barriers to opportunity present in each of Florida’s 983 zip codes. In addition to shining a light on concentrations of childhood poverty at the zip code level and third-grade reading proficiency at the school level, this data visualization and analysis tool helps users identify the root cause challenges Florida’s children and families face that ultimately impact Florida’s workplace and economy.

Each year, the Tampa Bay Partnership along with the Community Foundation Tampa Bay and United Way Suncoast work together to measure our performance, and track how we’re doing against 19 peer communities and the country as a whole. The drivers of our regional economy – identified here as Economic Vitality, Innovation, Infrastructure, Talent and Civic Quality – represent the critical needs of our residents and businesses. Together, they create a framework for prosperity and lead to outcomes that indicate whether our economy is growing, and if that growth is being enjoyed by everyone.