Hawai'i ranks among the worst in the nation when it comes to the percentage of children living in families where no parent has a full-time job, according to the annual Kids Count report that gauges the well-being of children.

According to the report, a project of the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, 36 percent of Hawai'i keiki in 2004 lived in households where parents were either unemployed or worked part-time. While this is an improvement from 41 percent in 2000, Hawai'i still fares worse than the national average in this area.

However, Sylvia Yuen, director of the Center on the Family at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, said Hawai'i's economy has improved since 2004 and the report's data may not reflect what is actually happening now.

"As we move into more of the economic good times, the data will catch up with the fact that more people are employed and finding jobs," Yuen said.

"But we can't deny that there are still quite a few families that are not doing well economically."

In the annual Kids Count report, Hawai'i fared worse in five of the 10 well-being indicators, improved in four and remained the same in one. The report, released today, measures each state's progress in areas including infant mortality, poverty rates, single-parent families and babies with low birth weights.

Hawai'i ranks 21st overall, according to the report's state-by-state comparison, an improvement from 24th last year.

States in the Northeast and upper Midwest scored the best. At the top: New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota and Iowa. Southern states did the worst: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Nationwide, one-third of America's children lived in homes where none of the parents had full-time, year-round jobs in 2004. That is a slight increase from 32 percent in 2000. Hawai'i ranks 36th in this area nationally.

Yuen said this is a vital area of concern, because children are directly affected when a parent is either unemployed or working low-wage, part-time jobs.

"It means that they are probably in poverty or living in very adverse conditions," she said. "We know through countless studies that kids in these conditions don't fare as well as other kids."

She said children from poorer families are more likely to be without health insurance, have health problems that will affect them the rest of their lives and do worse in school.

"Economics have a very big impact on the well-being of children," she said.

The most significant setback in the Kids Count report occurred in Hawai'i's teen death rate. Hawai'i experienced a 32 percent increase since 2000 — from 41 deaths per 100,000 teens in 2000 to 54 deaths in 2003. Hawai'i dropped in ranking from second to eighth in the nation in this area.

Yuen said most of those deaths were probably preventable.

"We, the public, should be concerned about every death because it is unnecessary," she said. "I suspect that in the teen death rate, that a substantial number of those were accidents, car accidents and so on. Those are the kinds of things that we can prevent."

The report was not all bad news. The teen birth rate is an area in which Hawai'i saw significant improvement, going from 46 births per 1,000 teenage girls in 2000 to 37 births in 2004.

Hawai'i is doing better in this area compared to the national average and ranks 23rd overall.

Yuen attributes the improvement to the prevention and education efforts of schools, churches and the health community.

"A few years ago, when (teen pregnancy) was very high, people across the country became very concerned about this and came at it from all different perspectives — abstinence, contraceptives and sex education," Yuen said.

Nancy Partika, executive director of Healthy Mother, Healthy Babies, said there is no single reason why this area has improved, but she said that several education efforts have helped to reshape the teen perspective on sexual habits.

"Teens are getting smarter about their behaviors. We know that teens are tending to have sex at a later point than they once were," Partika said.

She also noted that there are still concerns in this area.

"There is definitely ethnic disparity and geographic disparity," she said.

Here's how Hawai'i fared in other well-being indicators: