Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Child Poverty in UK

This story in today's Guardian reports on the UK's poor rating in the recent Unicef "report card" on the wellbeing of children and adolescents. Here is an excerpt from the story:

Children growing up in the United Kingdom suffer greater deprivation, worse relationships with their parents and are exposed to more risks from alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex than those in any other wealthy country in the world, according to a study from the United Nations.

The UK is bottom of the league of 21 economically advanced countries according to a "report card"' put together by Unicef on the wellbeing of children and adolescents, trailing the United States which comes second to last.


UPDATE: CNN has the story as well here. That link provides a full list of the rankings, which I reproduce below.

UNICEF RANKING IN FULL
1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12 = Canada
12 = Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. U.S.
21 UK

Cheers,
Colin