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US, Britain ranked last in UNICEF child well-being study

  • 14-02-2007 1:05pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,222 ✭✭✭


    The United States and Britain are placed last among 21 rich industrial countries in terms of the children's quality of life, according to a UNICEF study released in Berlin on Wednesday.

    Titled 'Child poverty in perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries', the UNICEF report compared 21 industrial countries in six categories namely material well-being, family and peer relationships, educational well-being, health and safety, behavior and risks, and children's subjective well-being.

    Meanwhile children in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have the best future chances, the UNICEF survey said.


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 88,972 ✭✭✭✭mike65


    And your own views are...?

    also here

    Mike.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,222 ✭✭✭\m/_(>_<)_\m/


    we in Ireland should get our act together and al least get into the top 5.

    seeing that you are so interested in my views Mike46,
    what are your views on this...?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 88,972 ✭✭✭✭mike65


    A ranking of 9 somehow feels to high.

    Maybe I'm out of touch but the failings of health and education alone should have Irish children on the back foot relative to most industrialised nations. Also the anecdotal threads on boards suggest the typical teenager is drunk, stoned and having unprotected sex most weekends!

    Mike.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,255 ✭✭✭✭The_Minister


    www.boards.org.uk, if you want to discuss the British ranking OP


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,222 ✭✭✭\m/_(>_<)_\m/


    www.boards.org.uk, if you want to discuss the British ranking OP

    no thank you,
    but I'm sure you can tell that by the way when i was asked "my views" i only talk about Ireland.:rolleyes:


    and what are your views?
    please I'm only interested in Ireland, if you want to talk about the British or American ranking you may have to go to another site. we shouldn't talk about other countries here.:rolleyes:

    right?


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,255 ✭✭✭✭The_Minister


    no thank you,
    but I'm sure you can tell that by the way when i was asked "my views" i only talk about Ireland.
    You're opening post seemed to focus more on the US and UK, with your first sentence being about them. I was merely telling you that if that was the focus of your thread (there is already a thread in AH about this), then you could ask English people at the site that I linked. I didn't see your reply until after I had posted.


    My own view is that we did quite well and we should be happy.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,399 ✭✭✭✭r3nu4l


    www.boards.org.uk, if you want to discuss the British ranking OP

    Hee hee, I started a thread on it here only a few moments ago...I put it in the Society and Culture forum and not AH like I did on boards.ie :o Anyone wanting to comment on the British result please feel free to post there :)

    As for my views on this I'll express them again here. We came 9th which seems like a great result but Ireland and her children still has a lot of problems.

    The average Irish child however (and the result is based on averages) does have a good life. Our education system and standards are far better than those in the UK. Irish children have a huge amount of social activities to engage in, even in the inner cities and the attitudes of the Irish public to children is to my mind far better than other countries.

    In many countries children are viewed as small irksome people who get in the way, for the most part in Ireland children are welcome and appreciated.

    The Irish result is good but there is 'room for improvement' as some of my report cards used to say in school :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,698 ✭✭✭InFront


    My own view is that we did quite well and we should be happy.

    I hope that was intended as sarcasm. Child poverty here is ranked as being above 15%. We didn't do well, we shouldn't be happy.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,560 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    mike65 wrote:
    A ranking of 9 somehow feels to high.
    I totally agree.

    I would have thought that we would have been down there with the states and the UK ourselves.

    ...and I think it's only going to be a matter of time before we are. Funny how the high-taxation so-called socialist-leaning European states are at the top while the low-taxation lasse-faire states are at the bottom.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,334 ✭✭✭OfflerCrocGod


    Funny how the high-taxation so-called socialist-leaning European states are at the top while the low-taxation lasse-faire states are at the bottom.
    Of course they are the report gives a high weighting to expensive government projects like national kinder gardens and high levels of public government support for kids and families. Those programs are expensive and the Nordic countries pay for them with high levels of taxation and I just don't think people would stand for that level of taxation here.

    There are also other considerations which are being ignored apart from Netherlands the other north European countries which scored highly have populations which are smaller then London and their populations are also more homogeneous compared to the UK and the US. Also high taxes don't necessarily mean higher scores as Austria shows. As far as I'm concerned this report is an interesting talking point but I wouldn't take it as a perfect reflection of the truth.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,107 ✭✭✭fly_agaric


    I would have thought that we would have been down there with the states and the UK ourselves.

    ...and I think it's only going to be a matter of time before we are.

    Yeah. We are nicely on track to match the wonderful achievements of AmeriBritain in about a decade or so. We are doing everything right...


This discussion has been closed.
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