fire. "So I grew up in poverty. And that was the one thing I didn't want to have to raise my children in."

She suddenly found herself without income after her divorce -- her husband had been the one whose job took care of the family's finances -- so she moved back to Columbus to live with her grandmother in a house built in the 1940s. She had half-expected a fire, she said -- the house lacked proper insulation and electrical work. They didn't have hot water, and there was a bug problem, she said. Occasionally, they even saw a rat.

But before the fire, Richardson had a job at Headstart and was taking online college courses. After the fire, she was laid off at Headstart and had to quitReport, which gathers data from government census information and other sources every year for a state-by-state comparison of children's wellbeing. Mississippi consistently ranks at the bottom of most study metrics, and this year lagged behind every other state in general wellbeing.

"The high percentage of children in families in Mississippi who are living in poverty continues to be one of the core reasons (the state still places) in the bottom of these overall child wellbeing indexes," said Linda Southward, a spokesperson for Kids Count in Mississippi.

The report breaks child wellbeing into four groups: economic wellbeing, education, health and family and community. Mississippi placed last in both economic wellbeing and family and community; 48th in education, beating Nevada and New Mexico; and 48th in health, beating Louisiana and Wyoming.

The most