Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

U.S., Britain get low marks on child welfare

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 15, 2007

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 Wednesday 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 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 preventative care for children in the United States.

The United States questioned the comparisons made by the study, while Britain said it failed take into account recent social improvements.

The study also gave the United States and Britain low marks for higher incidences of single-parent families and risky behaviors among children, such as drinking alcohol and sexual activity.

The report's authors cautioned that the focus on single-parent families "may seem unfair and insensitive" and noted that many children do well with one parent.

"But at the statistical level there is evidence to associate growing up in single-parent families with greater risk to well-being - including a greater risk of dropping out of school, of leaving home early, poorer health, low skills and of low pay," the report said.

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.

The study ranked the countries in six categories, based on national statistics: material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own subjective sense of well-being. Both the United States and Britain were in the bottom two-thirds of five of the six categories.

The United States finished last in the health and safety category, based on infant mortality, vaccinations for childhood diseases, deaths from injuries and accidents before age 19, and whether children reported fighting in the past year or being bullied in the previous two months.

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.

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.

In general, northern European countries with strong social welfare systems dominated the upper half of the rankings. Southern European countries, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, ranked higher in terms of family support and levels of trust with friends and peers.

[Last modified February 15, 2007, 01:23:04]