First, the good news, and, thankfully, there’s a lot of it:

Montana’s children are healthier than kids in the rest of the country. They are more likely to have been breast-fed as babies. They are thinner, less likely to watch lots of television or play video games. The vast majority don’t have television sets in their rooms and most are read to each week.

That’s according to Montana Kids

Count, an annual survey of Montana and the nation’s children. The survey, released this week, is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a national nonprofit group, and published by the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

But the numbers also hold some bad news: Almost half — 42 percent — of Montana’s children live in moderate poverty and a full quarter of children under 5 live below the federal poverty line.

“The economic times have forced families to struggle,” said Julie Ehlers, a spokeswoman for Montana KidsCount and UM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

This year’s report included information from a national report on child health, including obesity rates and looked at factors connected with obesity.

In that realm, the figures show, Montana is doing quite well. Nationally, about a third of children aged 10 to 17 are obese. In Montana, only 26 percent of those children are obese. Some 86 percent of Montana children under age 5 were breast-fed as babies, compared with 76 percent nationwide. Breast-feeding has been linked with lower obesity rates and higher IQ.

Only 9 percent of Montana’s children between ages 6 and 17 spent more than four hours a week watching TV or playing video games, compared with 11 percent of all American children. And while half America’s children have a TV set in their bedrooms, only 36 percent of Montana’s children do.

Ehlers said Montana’s general affinity for the outdoors and the state’s smaller population might explain some of those successes. Successful public education campaigns may explain part of the state’s higher breast-feeding rate. But the state’s employers also play a big role by allowing mothers to express breast milk after they have returned to work.

“Montana is a small-business state,” she said. “Working for a smaller employer, it may be easier to make accommodations to continue breast-feeding and express milk during work.”

Montana’s smaller cities mean parents have shorter commutes. That’s important, Ehlers said, because when parents must be away from their school-age children for many hours after work, it gives children less time to have adult-supervised play outside.

“We have time to engage in physical activities,” she said. And we have time to make and eat dinner together, another big factor in overall family health, both physical and emotional.

All of that is even more impressive when you consider that Montana’s neighborhoods are less likely to have sidewalks, parks or be near libraries than neighborhoods in the rest of the nation, the figures show.

But Montana drops down the pack when the figures start looking at money. It’s no secret that Montana’s wages are lower than the national average, Ehlers said. The KidsCount figures tell a story of what that means.

The number of children living in extreme poverty has doubled from 4 percent in 2000 to 8 percent today, up slightly from last year. The number of young children — those 5 years old and below — living in poverty has grown from 17 percent nine years ago to 25 percent today.

The figures also show that a “baby boom” begun a few years ago has continued, with a birth rate that is up. Yet, the state’s infant mortality rate is also up to 6.1 deaths for every 1,000 births. That’s still better than the U.S. as a whole, which has an infant mortality rate of 6.26, according to the 2009 CIA World Fact Book.

The number of Montana homeless young children who receive early childhood education in the federal Head Start program more than doubled last year, up to 408 from 197. That trend occurred even as the number of children enrolled in Head Start hardly changed at all in the same span.

“This just paints a snapshot for what we need to be mindful of now and in years to come,” Ehlers said.