A lack of resources, higher teen pregnancy rates and the opioid crisis combine with other factors to rob rural children of their childhoods.
Children growing up in rural areas are more affected than their urban peers in five "childhood ending" events. As our report notes, infant mortality in rural counties was 20 percent higher than in large urban communities. Child food insecurity is more pervasive in poor and rural areas. Four out of 5 "low education" counties in the U.S. are rural. Injury death rates are significantly higher in rural America. And the rural-urban gap related to adolescent birth is shocking: In 2015, teen birth rates in rural areas were more than 60 percent higher than in urban areas, and that gap has doubled in the last decade, despite the lower number of teen pregnancies across America overall.
Read more here: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-06-01/missing-out-on-childhood-in-rural-america