Alaska Progress Report

Alaska ranks 32nd on child well-being

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT Data Book is hot off the wire and Alaska is ranked 32nd overall. As usual, we stake out many extremes in the rankings:

• Low-birthweight babies, 2008. At 6.0 percent Alaska has the lowest rate in the nation, well below the national rate of 8.2 percent.
• Infant mortality, 2007. At 6.5 deaths per 1,000 live births, Alaska is ranked 19th, just under the national average of 6.8.
• Child death rate, 2007. At 31 deaths per 100,000 children ages 1 to14, Alaska ranked 49th, way above the national average of 19.
• Teen death rate, 2007. At 100 deaths per 100,000 teens ages 15 to 19, Alaska ranked 50th, well above the national rate of 62.
• Teen birth rate, 2008. At 47 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19, Alaska ranked 34th, significantly above the national rate of 41.
• Percent of teens not in school and not high school graduates, ages 16 to 19. At a rate of 5 percent Alaska ranked 9th, less than the national rate of 6 percent.
• Percent of teens not attending school and not working, ages 16 to 19. At a rate of 12 percent Alaska ranked 45th, well above the national rate of 9 percent.
• Percent of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment, 2009. Alaska ranked 47th with a rate of 36 percent, above the national rate of 31 percent.
• Percent of children in poverty, 2009. Alaska ranked 5th with a rate of 13 percent, well under the national rate of 20 percent.
• Percent of children in single-parent families, 2009. Alaska ranked 12th with a rate of 30 percent, just under the national rate of 34 percent.

Because of our urban-rural split, many of these indicators are considerably different in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau compared to Barrow and Bethel, for example. Some of the state data are broken out by region within the state.

Alaska delegation scores low on 'conservatism'

The unapologeticly conservative Heritage Action for America group, an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation, has released its legislative scorecard that purports to "...see whether their Members of Congress are fighting for freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society." Well, what could possibly go wrong?

As you would expect Democrats are generally low and Republicans high on the scorecard. But what's this? Don Young scores 40 percent, the fourth lowest among all Republicans in both houses. Lisa Murkowski scores 45 percent, tied for lowest ranked Republican in the Senate with Susan Collins of Maine. Mark Begich scored 10 percent, ahead of 84 of his fellow Democrats in both houses.

Of course, we know that Alaska leans Republican in spirit, but we're majority independent in affiliation.

Health care spending in Alaska: $7.5 billion

Health-care spending in Alaska reached about $7.5 billion in 2010, according to new estimates by Scott Goldsmith of ISER and Mark Foster of Mark A. Foster and Associates. For comparison, that's close to half the wellhead value of all the oil produced in Alaska in 2010. The definition of health-care spending is broad, including not only spending for hospitals, doctors and medical tests, but also prescriptions, nursing homes, medical equipment and more. The researchers found the following:

• Health-care spending in Alaska increased 40 percent between 2005 and 2010, up from $5.3 billion to $7.5 billion.
• Individual Alaskans directly paid about 20 percent of the health-care bill, state and federal health programs 40 percent, and private and government employers 40 percent.
• A combination of things is driving health-care spending in Alaska and nationwide: new technology, income growth, medical-price inflation, changing insurance coverage and a growing, aging population.
• At current trends, health-care spending in Alaska could nearly double by 2020, climbing to more than $14 billion. Controlling that growth will be a big challenge.

Read the full report here.

Alaska unemployment 7.7 percent, well below national rate

From the August 19, 2011 press release: "Alaska’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July was 7.7 percent, up slightly from June’s revised rate of 7.5 percent. The comparable national rate was 9.1 percent.

"The unemployment rates for Alaska and the nation are both lower than they were a year ago, but neither rate has changed much during 2011. The state’s jobless rate is still above its 10-year average of 7.1 percent, although it remains considerably healthier than the national rate.

"The contrast between Alaska and the nation is even more pronounced in terms of jobs. Although employment in the nation began to recover in 2010 and has continued to improve modestly this year, the July employment number of 130.9 million puts the nation at 2004’s level — that means the U.S. has a long way to go in making up those job losses.

"In Alaska, 2011 represents an all-time high, with July employment at 355,100. Employment in Alaska has grown every year since 1988, with one exception: 2009, the tail end of the national recession. Employment declined by a four-tenths of a percent that year, but Alaska made up those small losses promptly in 2010 — then surpassed them.

"The not seasonally adjusted jobless rates fell in every region in the state in July, as July is probably the top month for economic and labor force activity in Alaska. Construction, seafood processing, and the visitor industry hit or approach their peak this time of year. Six areas’ rates were below 5 percent; the lowest was Bristol Bay at 1.1 percent. Eight areas had double digit unemployment rates, with Wade Hampton Census Area the highest at 24.6 percent. Wade Hampton’s unemployment rate has topped 20 percent in five of the past 10 years."

Alaskans have highest credit card debt, lowest delinquency

More proof that Alaska's economy is largely insulated from national trends at the moment: new data from Transunion show that Alaskans as of the second quarter of 2011 carried the highest average credit card debt,  but still managed the lowest delinquency rate, defined as the rate of borrowers 90 days or more past due. To top it off Alaska had the second-highest year-over-year decline in its delinquency rate, from 0.73 percent to 0.39%.

Alaskans carried an average credit card debt of $6,926, significantly higher than the next most-indebted state, North Carolina at $5,433. From the press release: "The national credit card delinquency rate (the rate of borrowers 90 or more days past due) decreased for the sixth consecutive quarter, dropping to 0.6% at the end of the second quarter in 2011. This is the lowest mark observed in 17 years. Credit card debt per borrower increased $20 in the quarter to $4,699, though it remains near record-low levels."

Alaska 4th most Republican state

A newly released Gallup poll shows that Alaska is the nation's fourth most Republican state, with the R's enjoying a 19 point advantage in adults who say they "lean Republican." 30 percent of the 585 respondents said they leaned Democratic and 49 percent Republican. The small sample size means about a 4 percent margin of error.

Utah is still the reddest state, with Republicans there sitting on top of a 32 point advantage. Idaho and Wyoming follow at 29 and 27 points respectively, but nationally Democrats still enjoy a slight advantage of 44 to 40. The District of Columbia headlines blue states with a stratospheric 68 point advantage, followed by Hawaii, Maryland and Connecticut, all in the 20's.

Republican versus Democrat is by no means the whole story, however, because in Alaska over half of all voters are nonpartisan/undeclared, more than double the percent that are Republican. In the 2010 general election in Alaska there were 495,290 registered voters. 52.7 percent of us were registered as nonpartisan or undeclared, 26.2 percent Republican, 15.1 percent Democrat and 6 percent other.

Violent death in Alaska, suicide most common

Grim statistics from the state: "The Alaska Violent Death Reporting System 2003-2008 Summary report provides a detailed summary of six years of data concerning all types of violent deaths collected by the Alaska Violent Death Reporting System."

• In 2003-2008, there were 1347 violent deaths in Alaska, accounting for 7% of all deaths in Alaska and a combined rate of 33.7 violent deaths per 100,000 persons.
• Suicide accounted for the highest rate of violent death (21.7 per 100,000 persons), followed by the combined rates for homicide/legal intervention (6.4 per 100,000 persons) and undetermined intent and unintentional firearm deaths (5.5 per 100,000 persons, respectively).
• Highest rates by age group were found among children aged <1 yearand adults aged 20-29 years (84.0 and 59.9 per 100,000 persons, respectively).

View the entire report for the gory breakdown. Also available, a new report on deaths from firearms: "From 2003–2008, firearm injury hospitalizations and deaths disproportionately affected males, Blacks, AI/AN people, and people living in the Northern and Southwest regions. Firearm injury death rates by intent were consistently highest for suicide, but this was not the case for hospitalization rates. A plausible explanation for this difference is that suicide attempts with a firearm are almost always fatal."

Alaska has 4th lowest mortgage delinquency rate in Q2

According to Transunion, Alaska's mortgage delinquency rate in the second quarter of 2011 was the fourth lowest in the nation at 2.64 percent. The three lowest states were Nebraska (2.43), South Dakota (2.31) and North Dakota (1.45).

The highest rates were in Florida (13.91), Nevada (13.04), California (7.83) and Arizona (7.78). The national average was 5.82 percent, down from 6.19 in Q1 of 2011 and 6.67 in Q2 of 2010.

State transportation dashboard

From the friendly horse and carriage folks: "The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) has developed a web-based dashboard to share DOT&PF performance measures with the public, elected officials, and partnering agencies. The site, located at www.dashboard.dot.alaska.gov, uses gauges on a dashboard to visually show the progress of 11 key DOT&PF performance measures.  The gauges show current operations and desired trends.  Visitors to the site can click on each gauge to advance to a second page that provides more information; such as why the measurement is important, what is being done, and how performance is measured."

Key performance indicators include:

• Number of centerline miles of National Highway System roads meeting department standards
• Traffic fatalities
• Occupational injuries and illnesses
• Seasonally closed airports
• Deck area of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges
• Alaska Marine Highway on-time departures
• Alaska Marine Highway vessel car deck capacity utilization
• Airport revenues
• Runway lighting
• Commercial motor vehicle weight compliance
• Administrative and engineering costs on projects

Data is only updated annually with plans to go quarterly. If they could make the data near-real time and replace the gauge metaphor with a modern technique like bullet charts we'd have a winner.