BERLIN -- The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey of child welfare in 21 wealthy countries that assessed everything from infant mortality to whether children ate dinner with their parents or were bullied at school. The Netherlands, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland, finished at the top of the rankings, while the United States was 20th and Britain 21st, according to the report released yesterday by UNICEF in Germany. One of the study's researchers, Jonathan Bradshaw, said children fared worse in the United States and Britain -- despite high overall levels of national wealth -- because of greater economic inequality and poor levels of public support for families. "What they have in common are very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty, which is also associated with inequality, and in rather different ways poorly developed services to families with children," said Mr. Bradshaw, a professor of social policy at the University of York in Britain. "They don't invest as much in children as continental European countries do," he said, citing the lack of day care services in both countries, and poorer health coverage and preventive care for children in the United States. The study also gave the two countries low marks for their higher incidences of single-parent families and risky behaviors among children, such as drinking alcohol and sexual activity. Britain was last and the U.S. second from the bottom in the category focusing on relationships, based on the percentage of children who lived in single-parent homes or with stepparents, as well as the percentage who ate the main meal of the day with their families several times per week. That category also counted the proportion of children who said they had "kind" or "helpful" relationships with other children. On average, 80 percent of the children in the countries surveyed live with both parents. There were wide variations, however, from more than 90 percent in Greece and Italy to less than 70 percent in Britain and 60 percent in the United States, where 16 percent of adolescents lived with stepfamilies. Both the U.S. and British governments criticized the report. Wade Horn, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the study's standard of measuring poverty differed from that of the United States. A family of four is defined by the United States as living in poverty if its combined income is less than $20,650 a year. The poverty threshold used by the report was an income of $35,000 a year for a family of four, he said. "I think when you try to compare nations in a report like this, you tend to ignore so many other factors specific to those nations that the comparison becomes somewhat meaningless," Mr. Horn said. Britain said the report did not take account of recent improvements to education, health and general living standards in the country. Some of the statistics also went back as far as 2001, it said. http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20070214-093941-9528r ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The economy's doing great! Prosperity abounds! Just look at the Dow Jones! I find myself constantly arguing about the economy with people who love tossing out the GDP and big giant numbers and percentages at me. The question I ask them is, "Great! But what does this actually say about how the majority of people are living? Does the GDP really represent the quality of life for the majority of Americans?" Well, what do you think? Just European propaganda? Do families need more Jesus to fix the problem?
I personally would rather be a kid in the US or Britain than most of those other countries. It hink this is just some Eurotrash
Does not eating dinner with your parents or growing up in a single parent home really make your life worse? I grew up with a single parent and it never bothered me. I think they made the study such that the US and Britain would come out at the bottom. If the study was based on some other formula, the US could have come out on top. The people wanted to take a shot at the US and Britain, so that is how they designed it.
This fact is one of the reasons why US and UK have higher overall wealth level. Welfare destroys the moral fiber of the society and seeking equality in life is the most dangerous thing around.
Wow! Don't refrain from some unreflective jingoism guys! It's what America's all about! #1 w/Jesus. Seriously - all the people working at Wal-Mart, the folks cleaning hotel rooms, cooks in the kitchens where you eat, the men and women bagging groceries at the grocery store, the gas station attendants where you pump gas - how do you think their kids are living? Just because you haven't seen it (mostly because you don't want to) doesn't mean it's not happening. (But that's okay, because if they were as smart and as hardworking and clean-living as you they wouldn't be stuck working there, right? ) And, StupidMoniker, there have been countless studies done that show children raised in single-parent/step-parent homes have a vastly increased chance of ending up dropping out or committing crimes. You can consider yourself an exception to that rule if you'd like, but it's still a rule.
Question, how many of those other countries have the kind of immigration policies that the U.S. do? How many have the kind of inflow of immigrants US sees? U.S. is a great country, some of the other countries, while having a better child welfare for their own children, does not give a damn about anybody who's not born there.
And you know this since you grew up in those other countries? I do not know how reliably this research is(but that goes for a lot of research), and like others have said it all depends on what you define as poverty etc. However i think most people think that the scandinavian countries (and also the netherlands) are on the top of countries that are great for kids to grow up in, and also they are good countries to life in for the less rich. I gues you (wizkid83) mean abortion? i think that is a total different subject. Which has been discussed in a lot of other threads and i would love to discuss it wich you. since I think abortion should be legal. why do some people here think that it is a conspiricy to make the Usa and England look bad? can't it just be that there is a little bit of thruth in it?
I think he was talking about immigrants (people born elsewhere, not people who weren't born at all). Because they look at pretty specific things that the US and Britain are specifically bad at. They could have looked at number or percentage of population with college degrees, they could have looked at per capita GNP, they could have looked at many things that the US and Britain are world leaders in. Instead, they looked at which countries have the highest percentage of children that live with and eat dinner with both parents. Just seems like an odd way to measure child welfare to me.
You are right, sorry i misread. In that case disregard my comment. I agree with you that looking at single parents and eating together is a strange thing when you look at child welfare. Like i said I do not think that this research proves anything. However I do not think this research was designed to make the USA and England look bad. I just think it was strangly designed. These kind of tests almost never really prove anything to me, it always depends on how the researcher set up his tests. I think that the scandinavian countries and some other European countries are a good place to grow up in(and i'm not saying the USA is not a good place). I have no idea what the best place to grow up is. I'm happy were i grew up, but i'm not saying it is better then England, USA or other countries. I haven't lived there so i have no idea.
So, you're alleging that UNICEF collected data from all the countries, and then decided (in order to make the U.S. and Great Britain look bad) to weight the data in such a way that it would put the U.S. and Great Britain at the bottom of the list? Or that they knew beforehand that American and British children were less likely to eat dinner with their families, and so asked that question specifically to make the U.S. and Great Britain look bad? What's wrong with acknowledging the serious economic gap between poor families and better-off families in this country? What's wrong with recognizing that, as the wealthiest country in the world, we should be doing much better by our citizens?
I was talking more about the immigration but lets just look at the report itself. Available from http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf Take a look, and look at the metric, basic conclusion I've drawn looking at each metrics are in the U.S. kids have more material goods, are meaner to each other, are more independent, fat and unhealthy, and like to watch TV more than reading. That and U.S. has a strong middle class though babies are die more (which is something I DO find unacceptable). Not exactly a rosy picture, but really don't say US is having more destitude children. The inequality metric (% of people earning less that 50% of the media) is flawed due to the U.S. strong middle class. Look at the other two categories of cars, computers, school supplies and stuff, U.S. does fine. We get hammered for having illiterate kids, but who cares, they're watching Barney till they are 6 anyways. Some other metrics just doesn't fit well with the U.S. culture of competition and independence.
More likely the second. Nothing is wrong with it. Two issues though. First, it should be mentioned that the wealth gap is largely the rich getting richer and not the poor getting poorer. Second, if you want to look at the wealth gap, look at some economic measure, not at who eats dinner with their parents. We don't measure the best basketball team by who has the nicest visitors locker room, we look at more relevent things like record.
This is not true. Inflation is rising at a faster rate than incomes for most poor families. They may not be getting any poorer on their tax returns, but necessities are getting more and more expensive. Eating dinner with parents was not the only thing the board looked at, and wasn't weighted the heaviest. And they did look at economic data. But, even with that category included, these things are all symptomatic of the larger problem of wealth disparity. There is no strong or consistent relationship between per capita GDP, for example, and child well-being. (stated at UNICEF website) "The level of children's well-being was assessed through measuring six factors: Material well-being; health and safety; education; peer and family relations; behaviors and risks; and self-perceived subjective well-being." "The USA came second to last on the overall score and fared worst for health and safety, which was measured by rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, immunization, and deaths from accidents and injuries." Note the above. This is most likely the direct result of excessive healthcare prices and the limited/non-existent health insurance provided to most poor families. And we don't measure the well-being of people by their 3 point percentage. Bad analogy. While you're insisting that the criteria for the data was chosen in a conspiracy to make the U.S. look bad (and to what advantage?), you're also insisting that the measurements should be slanted to make the U.S. look good - but vast economic indictators have little to nothing to do with the quality of life that the vast majority of people here experience. Is it possible that the Netherlands has figured out a better way of doing things than the system we use?
This does not surprise me. Most kids are doing alright - get the proper nutrition and live in safe places but there is an entire hidden generation growing up without proper nutrition / cleanliness/ safety. I grew up in a lower middle class family -- but we allways had food /shelter /saftety. We were taught basic hygene and nutrition habits. But this is not allways the case. I have started talking with people who run a crisis center that provides temporary shelter for kids in unhealthy/dangerous situations (in fact I am going to start "working" there every other weekend). These kids (and many like them)have fallen through the cracks. They come from unsafe, dirty places. Whether out of apathy, bitterness or lack of knowledge these kids are not being taken care of. I live in a small/mid-size city and the center allways has kids there (24 hrs a day 365 days a year). The kids are dropped off with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
What does % of population with college degrees, or per capita GNP have to do with child welfare? You seem to want to do the opposite of what you're claiming they did - pick categories simply because the US is ranked highly in them. Do you even know all the categories they looked at? Or are you just assuming it must be biased because the US came out on the bottom of the list?
