Finland near top in UNICEF comparison on well-being of children

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Children in Finland are not doing too badly when set against most other industrialised countries, a new UNICEF report reveals.
      Finland came in fourth in a study comparing the well-being of children in 21 OECD countries.
      The report probed into the well-being of children in the economically advanced nations of the world, using 40 indicators relating to children's rights and their overall quality of life.
     
According to the report, Finnish children enjoy a safe and healthy living environment, a good material basis for their life, and good education.
      For example, the literacy of the Finnish 15-year-olds was ranked highest of the entire group of countries, a finding that comes as no great surprise in the wake of recent PISA results.
      Room for improvement was found in peer and family relationships in particular, but also in perceived personal well-being Finland ranked below average.
      Finland came in last when focusing on children eating the main meal of the day together with their families. Of the 16-year-old Finnish schoolchildren, only six out of ten will sit down to enjoy dinner together with their parents several times a week.
      UNICEF Finland vice-chairperson Sirpa Taskinen is of the opinion that there is room for improvement in the social environment of Finnish children. Parents should spend more time with their offspring, she claims.
     
According to the report, children's well-being is highest in the Netherlands. Also Denmark and Sweden ranked immediately above Finland. The United Kingdom and the United States, in turn, found themselves at the bottom of the comparison, and in the UK in particular the results have been seen as a damning indictment of government policies. The countries fared much worse than many others with lower levels of national wealth, because of greater economic inequality and inadequate levels of public support for families.
      "What these two countries have in common are very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty (which is also associated with inequality), and poorly developed services for families with children", argued one of the writers and researchers Jonathan Bradshaw, a professor of social policy at the University of York in England.
      The report acknowledges that comparing well-being in the light of statistics is not without problems. Violence against children, for one, had to be left outside the scope of the study.


Links:
  UNICEF report on childhood in industrialised countries
  UNICEF: Report Card 7, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries

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