Author Topic: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?  (Read 2544 times)

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Mucho

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if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« on: February 15, 2007, 01:09:34 PM »
We are behind Hungary for Chrissakes!


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-children15feb15,0,5374235.story?coll=la-home-headlines
U.S., Britain fare poorly in children survey
UNICEF ranks the well-being of youngsters in 21 developed countries.
By Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writer

February 15, 2007

UNITED NATIONS — 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.

Britain had the highest rate of children involved in activities that endangered their welfare: 31% of those studied said they had been drunk at least twice by the age of 15 (compared with 11.6% for the United States), and 38% had had sexual intercourse by that age (statistics unavailable for the U.S.). Canada had the highest rate of children who had smoked marijuana by age 15 — 40.4% (compared with 31.4% in the U.S.). Japan ranked the worst on "subjective well-being," with 30% of children agreeing with the statement "I am lonely" — three times higher than the next-highest-scoring country.

Children in the Netherlands, Spain and Greece said they were the happiest, and those in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands spent the most time with their families and friends.

Because of a lack of comparable data, the study did not address children's exposure to domestic violence, both as victims and as witnesses, and children's mental and emotional health.

The report acknowledges that some of the assessment scales have "weak spots."

The study, for example, measured relative affluence by asking whether a family owned a vehicle, a computer, whether children had their own bedroom, and how often the family traveled on holidays. Some answers might depend on the quality of public transit and real estate prices, making the average child in New York's affluent areas seem equal to one in a less-developed country because of the constraints of city living.

The authors wrote that as the first attempt at a multidimensional overview of children's well-being in developed countries, the survey was "a work in progress in need of improved definitions and better data."

But they said it was nonetheless a first step in providing benchmarks for comparing countries and highlighting poor performance in otherwise rich nations.

"All countries have weaknesses to be addressed," said Santos Pais, the study's director.

maggie.farley@latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Children's well-being

The U.S. and Britain landed at the bottom of a U.N. ranking of the quality of life for children in developed countries.

Average ranking position of child well-being in developed countries

Netherlands   4.2
Sweden   5.0
Denmark   7.2
Finland   7.5
Spain   8.0
Portugal   13.7
Austria   13.8
Hungary   14.5
United States   18.0
Britain   18.2


Source: UNICEF

Associated Press

Amianthus

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2007, 02:03:28 PM »
UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center in Italy ranked the countries in six categories: ... young people's own sense of happiness.

Well, obviously there was a bunch of kids in the US and UK that didn't have a PS3.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

Amianthus

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2007, 02:09:32 PM »
Well, obviously there was a bunch of kids in the US and UK that didn't have a PS3.

Before anyone goes off on my snarky comment, this report is nothing more than a poll.

After all, my daughter has never been hungry, never gone without utilities, always had a roof over her head, always had access to the Internet, always had cable or satellite TV, had the best healthcare, always had good clothing, went on vacations every year, including cruises and flights to foreign countries several times.

But she will tell you that her life sucks. Why?

Because we moved twice during her school years and she doesn't have a PS3 yet.

And that's the main reason that the US and UK are at the bottom of the list - because our kids have an enormous sense of entitlement.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

sirs

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2007, 02:15:20 PM »
Before anyone goes off on my snarky comment, this report is nothing more than a poll.... that's the main reason that the US and UK are at the bottom of the list - because our kids have an enormous sense of entitlement.

Well articulated and assessed, Ami

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Mucho

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2007, 02:26:13 PM »
Before anyone goes off on my snarky comment, this report is nothing more than a poll.... that's the main reason that the US and UK are at the bottom of the list - because our kids have an enormous sense of entitlement.

Well articulated and assessed, Ami



In other words, they are spoiled brats brought up by greedy tax cut loving losers?

sirs

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2007, 03:06:21 PM »
In other words, they are spoiled brats brought up by greedy tax cut loving losers?

Close but not quite.  You did get the spoiled part right.  But the sense of entitlement education is generally facilitated by those that claim the government can do & provide everything for you, because one is entitled to any and everything that those same minds decide they're entitled to.  That, and that individual responsibility really doesn't exist
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

_JS

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2007, 03:24:12 PM »
I'm not sure how much of this report is really valuable, but I will say that this:

Quote
But the sense of entitlement education is generally facilitated by those that claim the government can do & provide everything for you, because one is entitled to any and everything that those same minds decide they're entitled to.  That, and that individual responsibility really doesn't exist

...is the biggest pile of horse feces I've seen in a long time (and I live quite close to a horse farm :) ).

In fact, the statement turns out to be an oxymoron. The entire first convoluted run-on sentence is a bashing of others for harming this country's children. Then the short second sentence claims that individual responsibility is no more - but notice it is merely an afterthought and that the entire first sentence never mentions the parents but attacks a part of society that debatably has any influence on children (or even exists).

I think to really answer this question one needs to think about their role as a parent, but also the time they spent as a child.

Personally, I think happiness is such a nebulous concept and there are so many variables involved that any conclusion drawn would be speculation at best.
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sirs

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Re: if the US is so great , why are our kids so bad off?
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2007, 04:37:56 PM »
....snip....

Well, that's one opinion     ;)
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle