Not Easy To Be A Kid In The USof A

Not all looms well in this country according to a survey done by
UNICEF. If you can believe this, the United States and Britain
placed last among the wealthiest countries. You say how can
this be? Just check out the article below.


The United States and Britain ranked as the worst places to be a child, according to a UNICEF study of more than 20 developed nations released Wednesday. The Netherlands was the best, it says, followed by Sweden and Denmark.UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center in Italy ranked the countries in six categories: material well-being, health, education, relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own sense of happiness.

The finding that children in the richest countries are not necessarily the best-off surprised many, said the director of the study, Marta Santos Pais. The Czech Republic, for example, ranked above countries with a higher per capita income, such as Austria, France, the United States and Britain, in part because of a more equitable distribution of wealth and higher relative investment in education and public health.

Some of the wealthier countries' lower rankings were a result of less spending on social programs and "dog-eat-dog" competition in jobs that led to adults spending less time with their children and heightened alienation among peers, one of the report's authors, Jonathan Bradshaw, said at a televised news conference in London. "The findings that we got today are a consequence of long-term underinvestment in children," said Bradshaw, who is also professor of social policy at York University in England.
The highest ranking for the United States was in education, where it placed 12th among the 21 countries. But the U.S. and Britain landed in the lowest third in five of the six categories.The U.S. was at the bottom of the list in health and safety, mostly because of high rates of child mortality and accidental deaths. It was next to last in family and peer relationships and risk-taking behavior.

The U.S. has the highest proportion of children living in single-family homes, which the study defined as an indicator for increased risk of poverty and poor health, though it "may seem unfair and insensitive," it says. The U.S., which ranked 17th in the percentage of children who live in relative poverty, was also close to last when it comes to children eating and talking frequently with their families.




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