One of my goals here is to avoid partisan writing. I want to stick to the science and ethics. So, to balance the last two posts I will observe that:
1. Utah, as conservative a state as you could want, does fairly well on both the health and education components of the human development index. It doesn't do as well on the income component, but I will speculate that this may be due in part to a higher birthrate and, possibly, a younger population structure.
2. As David Kindig notes, famously conservative Kansas Governor-elect Sam Brownback ran on an impressive population health program:
- Increase in net personal income
- Increase in private sector employment
- Increase in the percentage of 4th graders reading at grade level
- Increase in the percentage of high school graduates who are college or career ready
- Decrease in the percentage of Kansas children who live in poverty
Improving child health shouldn't be a partisan issue.
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