•🧑🤝🧑 Who: The Florida Policy Institute, Walton County, Okaloosa County
•📊 What: 2025 Child Well-Being Index rankings for Florida counties
•🗓️ When: Released in February 2025
•📍 Where: Florida, focusing on Walton and Okaloosa counties
•❓ Why: To assess and compare child well-being across Florida using 16 socioeconomic indicators
The Florida Policy Institute released its 2025 Child Well-Being index for all of the state’s counties this month – and The Emerald Coasts counties posted pretty good scores.
The index uses 16 categories to rank counties. Those categories include some self-evident metrics, like the number of children in poverty, and some that might not be as blatant, like the unemployment rate and the cost of housing burden on families.
WALTON moved to the seventh best place for child well-being in Florida for 2025. Okaloosa County rounded out the top 10 at number 10.
More below:
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The Florida Policy Institute took those 16 categories and grouped them into six overall supergroups, for lack of a better term. Okaloosa and Walton varied widely in those groups, with Okaloosa doing better in three groups and Walton taking the other two categories.
Walton County did better regarding food security for children, ranking 11th, and Okaloosa County ranked 17th overall. Walton County reported 16.3% of their children were food insecure, and Okaloosa County reported about 17 1/2% of their children with food insecurity.
The United States Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as not having enough food at all times for an active, healthy lifestyle.
Okaloosa County did better than Walton County in terms of economic well-being, rating it at 12th place, thanks to its child poverty rate decreasing from 16.4% in 2017 to 12.6% in 2022. Walton County also saw its child poverty rate decrease dramatically, from 27% in 2017 to 17.9% in 2022. Still, Walton’s poverty rate remained well above Okaloosas.
As we’ve covered in the last couple months here at Mid Bay News, Walton County has seen its schools shoot up the state rankings for achievement over the previous decade. The Florida Policy Institute ranked their education situation as the best in the state. Okaloosa County had the 13th-best education ranking.
However, Walton County’s health rating was abysmal compared to Okaloosa counties. The Florida Policy Institute ranked them in the bottom quartile at 45th of 67 counties. It was by far the place where Walton County lagged Okaloosa the most. Okaloosa County finished in third place among all counties in Florida. Okaloosa County has the lowest obesity rate of all Florida counties, except Saint Johns County, near Jacksonville.
Finally, Okaloosa and WALTON counties scored near the middle of the pack for the grouping labeled family and community. Okaloosa County came in 27th and WALTON in 36th. Those categories included children and single parents, families, children in high-poverty areas, children with verified maltreatment, and youth contacts with the juvenile justice system.
The Florida Policy Institute uses 16 different categories along a breadth of socioeconomic indicators to determine whether or not a county is doing better or worse in taking care of its children. They are:
You can see all the data sets for all of these categories here.