Children - Worse off in Britain
WORKERS, APR 2007 ISSUE
A new United Nations Children's Fund report, Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries (Unicef Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, 2007) found that Britain and the USA are the worst places to grow up while northern European countries are the best.
American and British youngsters have a more troublesome childhood than their European counterparts. They are poorer, get on worse with their parents and take more risks. In comparison with children living in the other countries studied, those growing up in the USA and Britain have the lowest quality of life.
Despite being among the richest, Britain and the USA occupied the last two places in the list of 21 economically advanced countries, with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark taking the top three slots.
The findings suggest that national wealth does not correspond directly to quality of childhood: the Czech Republic, for example, outranked richer countries like the USA, Japan or Germany.
"The United Kingdom and the United States find themselves in the bottom third of the rankings for five of the six dimensions reviewed," Unicef said in its summary. Britain got the lowest overall score and ranked worst in family and peer relationships – measured by single-parent rates and the frequency of family meals – and behaviours and risks.