A recent report by UNICEF on child well-being in rich countries seems to vindicate our decision to raise the kids in Ireland.
Across “six dimensions” averaging measures such as “Health and Safety” and “Subjective Well-Being”, the United Nations agency arrives at the conclusion that kids are best off being brought up in either Scandinavia/Switzerland, the Benelux, Spain/Italy, or Ireland.
The US and UK, though scoring high in Education (US) or Health/Safety (UK), manage to come dead last in the 21 OECD nations under analysis.
However, a closer look (click on table image below) reveals that free-market countries tend to fare poorly on these measures. Why? Because the internal wealth disparity is wider than society permits in, say, more socialist-leaning countries such as Sweden or France. And freedom of expression tends to be more valued in the UK and US, leading to lower scores for child “Behaviour and Risks”.
One corollary of this is that if you are wealthy (and thus healthy, safe, and well-educated) in the UK or US, your children’s well-being moves up to par with the countries at the top off the UNICEF table.
(Or it does if your “family and peer relationships” are not fractured: interestingly, the US/UK tradition of self-actualization means that, on that score, the two largest free-traders again trail their wealthy cohorts in Europe.)
Click on images above to enlarge data tables.
Source [PDF]: UNICEF, Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries, Innocenti Report Card 7 (Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2007)
Does this mean we can continue to hate America, until we’re really rich?
Thanks for the comment, Rachel.
By “richâ€, of course, I don’t mean super-rich…I just mean out of the underclass. In the American case, this means the challenge is to reduce the size of that excluded class, more of whom are currently locked up than make it to college.
And regarding the love/hate thing, as the old CSN&Y song goes, Dr Fin says you should always “love the one you’re withâ€.