US & UK are worst places for childrens' well-being

[Cloud]

According to a UNICEF "report card."

An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries

I think this is a valuable springboard for debate and thought; however I also think it's a mistake to make snap judgments based on the headline/conclusion. This is a complex study based on a particular set of judgments as to what constitutes child well-being. The study itself says over and over again there are problems with the data and the interpretation. For instance, age and gender differences are not adequately taken into account.

I will say this: In my personal opinion the US (as I can't speak for the UK) needs to do much, much better in the area of adolescent education and care. My own belief is that our education system sucks, and parents pay less attention to teenagers than young children, when they should be paying more! Teenagers are more vulnerable today than ever to peer pressure and the sheer pace and press of popular culture, and need to be kept close to home. The big difference here than in the less developed countries is that most of those places still have the extended family network in place as a safety net, which most of the industrialized countries have lost.

Finally, may I say, that I thank the heavens daily that I was born in this country in this century (well, okay--last century).

I

Sending my kid to a private school and teaching him to educate himself, as I did.
The above is the blame game and, IMO, sour grapes.

[Cloud]

keep in mind that this was produced by a UNICEF funded think tank in Italy, so--I'm not sure who you mean is blaming whom, or whose sour grapes it is

If I had my druthers, I'd home school my children/grandchildren, and keep the teenagers isolated. But that's pretty extreme, and most people would not agree with me.

[wolf]

Take study results with larger than average grain of salt. The UN despises the United States and all we stand for. If they think kids with rickets and no education to speak of have a better quality of life than the average American Child, screw 'em.

[Aliantha]

Well I want to know why Australia isn't on the list! Why don't we ever get counted???!!!!

[DanaC]

Much of the information used in that report is six years old. In the last six years a good deal of progress has been made in cutting levels of teen conceptions, cutting teen smoking and, most importantly, reducing the number of children living below the poverty line. We've still a long way to go, but the progress made is serious progress, we aren't talking shaving a couple of per cent off the figures. Surestart centres, family tax credits and children's forums have all helped a great deal, as have the targeted education programmes for schools with high teen pregnancy rates etc, but the situation was allowed to get very serious before anybody started to tackle it and so it isthe taking a long time to turn the juggernaut around. In 1995, for example, a third (yes 1/3) of children in Yorkshire lived below the poverty line. I believe that is now down to about 1/4 and falling. Though in some urban centres, like Leeds it is still abysmally high.

Another consideration is that this report is based primarily children's own responses to questionaires....some of the sections had a very low take up rate (with significant regional variation) which may have skewed the figures somewhat.

That said this shouldn't be ignored. Large numbers of children still live below the poverty line, lots of children feel unhappy and that's not really acceptable in a wealthy, developed nation. There is still a lot to do.


I have an excerpt from a national study on Households Below the Average Income, conducted by the Dept. for Work and Pensions in 2005:

Child poverty grew very rapidly in the 1980s, more slowly in the 1990s and has since begun to fall:

· 1979 14 per cent;
· 1994/95 31 per cent;
· 1996/97 33 per cent;
· 1998/99 33 per cent;
· 2002/03 28 per cent;
· 2003/04 28 per cent.

In terms of numbers, not percentages:

· In 2003/04 3.5 million children were poor;
· Since 1996/97 the number of children who were poor has fallen from 4.2 million to 3.5 million - 700,000 fewer children in poverty;
· Between 2002/03 and 2003/04 the number of children in poverty fell by 100,000.

http://www.cpag.org.uk/info/briefing...AI_2003-04.doc

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Well I want to know why Australia isn't on the list! Why don't we ever get counted???!!!!

Australia is included, but not enough data was present in every category.

Although I think it's an interesting study, I'm not going to be sucked into the UK media's breast-beating "we're failing our children!" self pity.

Many of the answers are opinions asked of children/ teenagers at the most turbulent time of their lives. Cultural weighting does not seem to have been taken into consideration, for example the US scored highest on % of 15 year olds who expect to be in a skilled job by the time they are 30. Good for them - that simply shows good self esteem not educational achievement.

The UK scored worst for children's opinion of their own health - to me it sounds more likely that the British kids were simply aware of what could be wrong with them, as opposed to really being a sickly bunch.

30% of Japanese children answered that they were lonely - the report muses that perhaps there was a translation problem, or a cultural issue. Right. Shows how difficult it is to compare teenagers' opinions about their lives across the world.

I think the most positive thing we can do is make time for children, let them know they're loved and stay out of their way as much as possible when puberty turns them into monsters. And not worrying too much about multiple choice quizzes whether they're in magazines or from Unicef.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's the damn TV commercials convincing kids their not living well. They're missing out on the good life where there are no zits, perfect test scores, fancy cars and beautiful rock star friends. Shows about Biafra's kids eating pebbles should get equal time.

[Shawnee123]

I just finished three good books:

The Law of Dreams: about a boy in Ireland during the potato famine, growing up, trying to get to America. Wow, what those people went through.

The Glass Castle: a memoir of writer Jeannette Walls, growing up in poverty and in flight with her extremely intelligent and eccentric parents.

The Fortunate Son: a white child and black child are raised as brothers until the black child's father takes him back after his mother dies. Kid ends up on the streets. Rough life.

I think: yeah, I could have lived without the Atari 2600 when I was a kid.

Our education truly sucks, that is why no one sends their kids here to get educated, right?
Envy, pure and simple.
I have posted a lot on this in the past, bunch of loser Levi wearin' American bashers who wish they lived here. Self-esteem issues, the root of terrorism and our issues in the UN.

[DanaC]

You do realise that the report was about the way children percieved their lives? American children (like British children) live in a country with wealthy and poor living close to each other. They also live in a country where the media and advertising encourages them to be disatisfied.

[Undertoad]

Wealthy American children do not live close to the poor. They don't watch as much TV as their parents did when young, or pay attention to much media; they IM, play Xboxes, and participate in highly organized activities. They are dissatisfied because they perceive their wealthy American neighbor children to be even better off than they are.

[piercehawkeye45]

America is one of the best places to be raised and it is also one of the worst. It just depends on where you live, your class, your parents, etc.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by wolf

Take study results with larger than average grain of salt. The UN despises the United States and all we stand for.

Yep. They found exactly the results they were looking for.

[DanaC]

So does the UN also despise the Uk?