From Salon this morning:
The United States ranked in the bottom four of a United Nations report on child well-being. Among 29 countries, America landed second from the bottom in child poverty and held a similarly dismal position when it came to “child life satisfaction.”
Keeping the U.S. company at the bottom of the report, which gauged material well-being, overall health, access to housing and education, were Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, three of the poorest countries in the survey.
UNICEF said in a statement on the survey that child poverty in countries like the U.S. “is not inevitable but is policy-susceptible” and that there isn’t necessarily a strong relationship between per capita GDP and overall child well-being, explaining: “The Czech Republic is ranked higher than Austria, Slovenia higher than Canada, and Portugal higher than the United States.”
The Netherlands ranked number one on the list, with Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden filling out the top five.
Whenever you hear somebody decrying the "achievement gap", and how America's schools are failing, send them the link to this article. The U.S. is near the top when it comes to per capita GDP, but the more important issue is how the wealth produced by GDP is distributed. There is something terribly wrong with us, and we are incapable of doing anything about it. We have the wealth; we don't have the imagination or the will to distribute it fairly: