South Carolina and Georgia children are in a rut, occupying for a second year the 45th- and 42nd-lowest slots in the annual "Kids Count" report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

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Augusta-Richmond County youths often ranked beneath state and national averages, but there was better news for child well-being in Columbia, Aiken and Edgefield counties.

The Georgia Family Connection Partnership pointed out that Georgia is among the bottom 10 states in three measures that affect child well-being -- teens not in school and not working, children living in single-parent families and the infant-mortality rate.

"We can't blame these results on the recession," said Taifa Butler, the director of policy and communications for the Georgia Family Connection. "Failure to execute strategies has stalled progress in the state." More than half -- 50.8 percent -- of Richmond County children lived in single-parent households, behind only Dougherty County in the rankings, compared with 19.4 percent of Columbia County's kids. A statewide average of 36 percent placed Georgia 43rd in the United States, where the average is 32 percent.

In infant mortality, Richmond County also lagged, with a rate of 9.5 deaths per 1,000, above the Georgia rate of 8 and the national rate of 6.7. Columbia County's infant mortality rate was 6.9.

But through Healthy Start, Richmond County has made strides in improving its infant-mortality rate, which is down from 12.5 in 2000, said Robetta McKenzie, of the Augusta Partnership for Children, the county's Family Connection collaborative organization.

Healthy Start works with women and teens who are pregnant or have children younger than 2 on nutrition, prenatal care, self-sufficiency and other issues.

Elizabeth Gainous, the chairwoman of the Augusta Partnership board, said youth and lifestyle sometimes cause a mother to give birth to an underweight or unhealthy infant.

The rate of low-birth-weight infants in Richmond County was 11.4 percent, above the state average of 9.6. Columbia County was at 6.7 percent.

In conjunction with more than 100 partner organizations, the Augusta partnership also operates a dropout prevention program and a fetal infant-mortality review process.

Family Connection of Columbia County's main focus is on improving the graduation rate, currently at 83 percent graduating in four years. Richmond County's graduation rate is 70.4 percent.

The Harlem-based collaborative operates after-school programs and has 32 teens working for local government agencies and businesses through Georgia Works, said coordinator Julie Miller.

"It's the holistic idea of engaging youths in their community," Miller said. "Showing them that this is a good thing to stay in school and help them to get to the next step."

Also ranked in the Kids Count report was the teen-death rate. Georgia slipped from 28th to 33rd in the U.S., with 73 per 100,000. Richmond County had 101 deaths per 100,000 teens in 2007, while Columbia County reported only one death.

The only area in which Richmond County fared better than Columbia County was in incidences of child abuse or neglect, which was 10.8 cases per 1,000 children in Georgia.

Richmond County had 10.4 cases; Columbia County had 12.3.

Aiken County ranked ninth and Edgefield County 12th out of South Carolina's 46 counties for overall well-being, a statistic not measured in Georgia.

Aiken County was home to just 3 percent of the state's 363,000 households that received food stamps, according to May data, the most recent available from the state Department of Social Services. Edgefield County accounted for less than 1 percent of the state's food-stamp families.

Nevertheless, South Carolina's overall poor ranking is not surprising, said David Laird, the policy adviser for the Children's Trust of South Carolina, a nonprofit that has tracked the reports over time and found 45th to be South Carolina's average rank.