Northern European countries achieved top scores in a recent assessment of children's well-being in industrialized countries. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recently released Report Card 7: Child Poverty in Perspective, which ranks 21 rich countries based on 40 separate indicators relevant to the lives and welfare of children and young people. Although data availability and quality are problematic, Report Card 7 reflects a significant advance over previous studies due to its multi-dimensional approach to understanding child well-being.
Methods and Limitations
Report Card 7 measures and evaluates child well-being based on six dimensions:
- Material well-being, determined by income poverty and direct measures of deprivation.
- Health and safety, such as infant mortality, immunization, and deaths from accidents.
- Education, defined by school attainment and transition to employment.
- Peer and family relationships, including family structure and quality of relationships.
- Behavior and risks, relating to activities affecting both physical and mental health.
- Subjective sense of well-being, as described and experienced by the actual child.
UNICEF acknowledges that the available data are less than complete. For example, exposure to violence, both as a victim or witness, was excluded from the study due to cross-national disparities in definition and measurement. Furthermore, indices such as mental health and emotional well-being, which are highly qualitative, are difficult to assess and may be under-represented in the rankings.
Major Findings
The Netherlands is at the top of the rankings, appearing in the top 10 for all six dimensions of child well-being. The United States and the United Kingdom occupy the bottom two spots respectively. However, no country makes the top third for all dimensions, indicating that all countries have weaknesses that need to be addressed. In addition, no single dimension serves as a reliable indicator by itself. In particular, there is no clear relationship between child well-being and per capita income, despite strong reliance on this indicator in the past. The goal of such cross-country comparisons is to encourage monitoring and the creation of relevant policies to improve children's lives. The Report Card shows that the level of child well-being in a country is not inevitable but strongly linked to the effectiveness of domestic policies.Summary Table of Results
Source: UNICEF, 2007. Report Card 7: Child Poverty in Perspective
RELATED LINKS:
The State of the World's Children 2007
EarthTrends
