If children are indeed our future—and who could dispute that premise?—then it follows that investing in children on the national level makes a whole lot of sense. But do national agendas reflect this priority? And are some countries doing a better job investing in their children than others?
In a recent report, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries, UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre looks at the well-being of children and young people in 21 nations of the industrialized world. The report measures child well-being in six categories: material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and subjective sense of well-being. Findings are based on internationally comparable data, such as that generated by national indices of child well-being (available, for example, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland) and by such international surveys as Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
- Material well-being: The three components selected to represent this measure are the percentage of children living in relative poverty, the percentage of children in families without an employed adult, and the percentage of children reporting measures of deprivation (such as few education resources). The Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark—rated highest in this category. The Czech Republic ranked substantially higher than several of the world's wealthiest countries. The United States ranked fifth from the bottom.
- Health and safety: The three components selected to represent this measure are infant mortality rates, deaths from accidents and injuries among young people ages 0–19, and child immunization rates. The highest-ranking countries were European, with the four Nordic countries and the Netherlands claiming the top five spots. The United States ranked second to last on the first two health and safety components—infant mortality rates and deaths from accidents and injuries—but ranked in the middle for immunizations.
- Education: The three components representing this measure are school achievement at age 15, percentage of children who continue in education beyond the compulsory level, and quality of the school-to-work transition. The five highest-ranking countries were Belgium, Canada, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. The United States ranked in the middle. For the first of the three components—educational achievement of 15-year-olds—Finland, Canada, Australia, and Japan headed the list.
- Peer and family relationships: The three components that reflect this measure are family structure; family relationships (the percentage of children who report eating the main meal of the day with their parents or spending time talking with their parents); and peer relationships (having peers who are “kind” and “helpful”). On the combined components, Italy and Portugal rated at the top, and the United States and the United Kingdom rated at the bottom. On one component—spending time just talking with parents—the United States placed in the top third, whereas it placed last in family structure (it had the greatest number of young people living in single-parent families) and third to last both in percentages of young people taking meals with parents and in quality of peer relationships.
- Behaviors and risks: The three components selected to represent this measure are health behaviors (such as good nutrition and physical exercise); experience of violence; and risk behaviors (such as smoking tobacco, drinking alcoholic beverages, using cannabis, and having sex by age 15). Sweden, Poland, and the Netherlands topped the list for well-being in this area, with Belgium, the United States, and the United Kingdom coming in last. The United States placed at the bottom of the list for obesity and showed the greatest number of births per 1,000 females ages 15–19. However, the United States also showed lower percentages of students who smoke tobacco than many European nations. In the violence component, the United States scored in the middle range, with Finland and Sweden reporting the least violence and Austria and Portugal reporting the most.
- Subjective sense of well-being: This measure takes into account the child's perception of his or her well-being. The three components selected to reflect this measure are general state of health, quality of school life, and sense of personal well-being (the percentage of students who rate themselves above the midpoint of a life-satisfaction scale). Insufficient data were available for the United States on all three components, resulting in this country's omission from this overall measure. The Netherlands, Spain, and Greece ranked highest, with France, Poland, and the United Kingdom ranking lowest. The United States did, however, provide data from the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. The United States placed in the top half of the list for the percentage of students ages 11, 13, and 15 who report “liking school a lot.”
To download the full report, go towww.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf.
