Posted on 02/14/2007 3:56:18 AM PST by Tulsa Ramjet
Britain and the United States are the worst places in the industrialised world for children to live, according to a report by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).
They ranked among the bottom third in the study which looked at overall well-being, health and safety, education, relationships, risk and their own sense of well-being.
The study said that child poverty - defined as the percentage of children living in homes with incomes below 50 per cent of the national median - remains above the 15 per cent mark in Britain, the US and Ireland, as well as Spain, Portugal and Italy.
"The evidence from many countries persistently shows that children who grow up in poverty are more vulnerable," the report said, especially in terms of academic underachievement, chances of unemployment and low self-esteem.
Child well-being was rated highest in northern Europe, with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark leading the list.
"All countries have weaknesses that need to be addressed and no country features in the top third of the rankings for all six dimensions," David Bull, the UK executive director of Unicef, said.
Risk behaviours
Britain lived up to its reputation for "binge-drinking," hazardous sexual activity and drug use, with the report putting the country at the bottom of the rankings for risk behaviours "by a considerable distance".
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
"It's neither about wealth alone - it's about education (own desk - time to learn etc. etc.) health and so on."
The mere fact that the "study" uses such a politically loaded and *face it* silly definition of poverty means that the whole study is suspect. It doesn't matter that it is only of "industrialized nation" another foggy concept. They lost any credibility with me with that ridiculous and class warfare prompting definition.
Lol - your so proud on your errors you just cannot be critisized. I guess that's typical American. What we germans do to an excess - beeing critic about our nation - you do to less.
In the US like in other countries of this world national pride still inhibits improvements.
This is even stronger in arabian countries.
LOL - if you follow politics over here we are nothing BUT critical of the US, in some fashion or other.
Right off the bat, when you define "poverty" as 49% or less of median income you put more capitalistic nations at a disadvantage. Those nations who practice socialism will always come out ahead on those scales. Secondly, based on one of the criteria (desk), in the US we often have our kids do homework at the kitchen table. My kid, as an older teenager, prefers to lounge on her bed or recline on the floor while doing homework. The availability of a desk is just a convenient counting device, not an indication of "neglect".
Additionally, a UN report published by aljazeera is suspect in its methodology alone - both the UN and aljazeera are unashamedly engaged in making anything done by the US, the UK or Australia to be inferior to those countries like France, China, Russia and Germany who propped up Saddam Hussein while he was killing hundreds of thousands of his people by barbaric means.
If you read the list of nations they deride as problematic, you miraculously come up with the more prominent members of the "Coalition of the Willing".
You need to be more critical of studies like this instead of blindly gloating in their conclusions - they always have an agenda that determines the result - in most cases anti-US, anti-UK.
I suggest you stick to worrying about the current sorry state of FC Bayern and leave Americans to worry about Americans, m'kay?
>> Right off the bat, when you define "poverty" as 49% or less of median income you put more capitalistic nations at a disadvantage
I agree that to define poverty as to be middle class american you probably have smoked something wrong. That wasn't my point.
my point was that many people in the US find it hard to believe that the upbringing of children works better in other places...
...as it is generally hard to believe for many americans that live could be nice elsewhere.
Maybe that's just another definition of beeing lucky and you certainly should be lucky.
The train stops when people from the US try to bring the 'light' to europe or as it happens now to the middle east.
Believe it or not - I'd rather bring up children in norway then in virginia.
It's just a factthat it's better there and it's pathetic to link that to saddam, hitler, lenin or mc carthy.
If only your concept would be more popular to american foreign politics.
Funny you should say this. I lived in Norway for a year at age 17, in 1974. I attended the University of Oslo international summer school and then attended Ronningen folkehogskole in Kjelsas the rest of the school year.
All of my classmates were committed Communists and avowed Socialists, most praising Che Guevara, Mao and Castro as models of communist paradises. I learned to speak Norwegian like a native so I would be able to debate and survive the daily/hourly drumbeat of anti-Americanisms, anti-capitalisms and anti-anything-Western that was everywhere around me.
The intolerance and blind belief in anything collective we currently see here in the US by liberals and far-left-wingers closely matches what I lived with in Norway that year. If anything was American it was evil and bad with no investigation into whether it was true or not. If it emanated from Communism, it was good without question.
I would rather live in poverty with freedom than to live in a country where belief in liberal orthodoxy is enforced by the thought police. I have lived in both and know the difference.
Yes, today Norway is a little different but ... they are like many other oil-exporting nations. They are living on oil money and when their oil revenues diminish, they will have to make some hard choices in their social programs. Most Norwegian young parents are not married and are no more likely to stay together than young families in the US. You might want to read this: http://iussp2005.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=52636
I have been back to Norway many times since my initial time there, and in fact was visited this past summer by friends with whom I still maintain contact. I find it a beautiful place to visit and enjoy my time there very much, but I much prefer living in the US.
Yeah, I always laugh when someone applies the term "poor" to American citizens living in the USA.
"Street people" in the USA still have more resources available to them (Free by both government and private sources) than most of the folks in the rest of the world.
When someone starts in on some rant about the "poor" in the USA I quickly point out that we don't truly have "poor" people (folks who most likely won't make it to their 25th birthday cuz they will die of starvation) we just have folks who have "less money" than others.
"poor" in the USA means you can only afford one car and basic cable.
"Poor" in most African nations means you will most likely die very young from starvation or complications from severe malnutrition.
>> All of my classmates were committed Communists and avowed Socialists, most praising Che Guevara, Mao and Castro as models of communist paradises
Well... if you aren't red in your youth you don't have a heart - if you aren't republican at 30 you don't have a brain.
I guess norwegians are free - they mostly speak english and have access to the internet. Also they may emigrate on their own will at any given time. They got a much better eduction then germans or US americans - wich is most important to be free.
When you are 17 you don't see much worth in tollerance and teenage group dynamics are legendary.
There's regions in the US where wearing a black T-shirt to school makes you 'look-wierd'.
If you doubt gobal warming is man made over here - you're wierd.
If you think global warming might be man made on Freep - you're wierd also.
If you are on Freep Sadam was protected and used by the french - if you talked to germans he was installed by Mr. Rumsfeld in person.
We all have our cliches - especially if you're 17 you don't look behind them but it doesn't get easy if you grow old.
The scandinavian countries are also rampant with drugs and sexual immorality. It's as bad as we are.
Fifty years ago, yes. We couldn't get away with anything without the neighbors blabbing to the folks (darn). Now, you don't even see people outside their homes! Folks used to sit on their front porches and talk to people, get together for coffee klatch's, watch out for neighbors' kids; kids don't even play outside much now. It's changed a LOT.
UNICEF counts those as virtues in a country.
But then that assumes you all wouldn't still be running around saying "Sieg Heil" and burning bodies in the concentration camps. Another possibility under the type of foreign policy you suggest for my country (the Nazi's never attacked the US, right?)
Anything else stupid you'd like to add, Fritz?
Oh, and when Del Piero put in that second goal this past summer, meaning mighty Germany had lost AT HOME to a team that couldn't beat the lowly US, I laughed and I laughed! (and your beloved coach came running back home to THIS COUNTRY!)
I guess my heart is stone - I was a fan of Ludwig von Mises at the time.
And don't forget that jolly Muslim holiday when mommies pour out into the streets smashing their male kiddies' heads with metal objects. One of my favorite holidays - up there with British bank holidays and America's arbor day!
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