Government and business big wheels who need to know in a glance the number and status of children statewide can consult a little wheel of data being distributed by the state's leading child advocacy group.

Demographic information and 11 child well-being indicators can be viewed with a simple turn of the 2008 Kids Count Data Wheel from Voices for Utah Children.

Turn the arrow on the inside wheel to one of the 29 counties listed on a ring around the outside — "DA" for Davis County, for example — and numbers appearing in the window at the bottom show there were 1,883 low-birth-weight babies born last year and that 107 of them died.

On the flip side of the wheel, total population of the county is listed at 220,781, there are 20,174 children ages 4 and under, 46,594 between ages 5 to 17 and 8,803 — that's 14.5 percent — children live in poverty.

Putting actual numbers of mortality, poverty, school-lunch recipients, birth and poverty rates in a simple, at-a-glance format is intended to put a handle on the debate and decisions regarding child welfare, said Terry Haven, Kids Count director for Voices.

A data wheel might look like a quaint throwback method of information sharing, but the wheel puts a snapshot of accurate and as up-to-date as possible data about Utah children in someone's hands faster than pointing and clicking a mouse will get information on a computer screen.

"The basic knowledge and context it provides is critical for any advocate for policies and funding to improve the well-being of children in the state," Haven said.

The data wheel is also a keyhole into a deeper set of data from the national Kids Count project, a state-by-state continuing survey underwritten by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that measures the educational, social, economic and physical well-being of children.

A data center, which went online in January, contains 100 measurements of how kids are doing and includes the most recent information on poverty, health, youth risk factors and basic demographics that allows detailed comparisons of geographic areas to finding out what the current level of poverty is — $20,650 for a family of four — and that 85,446 children in Utah are in families living at or below it.

Voices for Utah Children is a statewide advocacy group. More information can be found at www.utahchildren.org or by calling 801-364-1182.

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E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com