by oldfrog
Wed Feb 14th, 2007 at 06:38:28 PM EST
U.S., Britain faulted on child welfare By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer
BERLIN - The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey of child welfare in 21 wealthy countries that assessed everything from infant mortality to whether children ate dinner with their parents or were bullied at school.
The Netherlands, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland, finished at the top of the rankings, while the U.S. was 20th and Britain 21st, according to the report released Wednesday by UNICEF in Germany.
One of the study's researchers, Jonathan Bradshaw, said children fared worse in the U.S. and Britain -- despite high overall levels of national wealth -- because of greater economic inequality and poor levels of public support for families.
"What they have in common are very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty, which is also associated with inequality, and in rather different ways poorly developed services to families with children," said Bradshaw, a professor of social policy at the University of York in Britain.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070214/ap_on_re_eu/child_welfare_4
France is nr 16, which is something not to be proud about.
the whole report can be read here :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_02_07_nn_unicef.pdf
what sinks France is not really health or material welfare (even if it could be much better) but educational well-being and subjective well-being. I won't discuss the later, but the educational part is interesting in the light of the current political debate, specially since in the subjective well-being the question "like school a lot" is an important one.
It's clear for me that national education the way it is managed in France today is a failure. This is explosive material and nobody really wants to take a grasp of the holy cow (or "mammoth" as some say here). Thus sacrificing coming generations.
