UNICEF on our appalling child welfare record – but apparently we don’t care

• Anthony R0bins
• 7 years ago
• Categories: class war, national, poverty, same old national, useless
• Tags: brighter future, child poverty, groundhog day, unicef, we don't care

Here’s how the Brighter Future is working out for NZ kids:

Unicef report: New Zealand 34th out of 41 developed countries for child wellbeing

The wellbeing of New Zealand’s children places us 34th out of 41 developed countries, according to a report released by Unicef on Thursday.

The report tracks the progress on goals such as reducing child poverty, inequality and deprivation and improving things like education and health for children.

The 34th placing puts us behind Greece, Hungary and Lithuania – but ahead of the United States, Israel and Turkey.

Unicef said New Zealand’s presence in the bottom end of the rankings is proof that “high national income is no guarantee of a good record in sustaining child wellbeing.”

…

This ranking reflects performance in neonatal mortality, suicide, mental health, drunkenness and teen pregnancy. New Zealand has the highest rate of adolescent suicide of any country in the report.

…

Economic growth and work

Another area where New Zealand performed poorly with a ranking of 34, owing to the 16 per cent of children living in jobless households, only Hungary and Ireland fare worse.

…

Poverty

New Zealand was not ranked against the goal of ending poverty as it only provided data in one of three indicators used in the report. … However, the report’s authors were critical of New Zealand’s measurement of poverty.

Saying, “multidimensional poverty” should be measured as the per cent of children being deprived of only two or more material indicators, while the New Zealand Government now defines it as being deprived of seven.

“New Zealand is clearly capable of reporting against Innocenti’s measures for multidimensional poverty, but hasn’t, and has instead broadened the definitive lines of measurement for multidimensional poverty when reporting internally to New Zealand audiences.” …

Read the full piece for commentary on plenty of other measures (not all of them disastrous), and responses from various politicians.

The full UNICEF report is here. Other coverage:

NZ’s appalling child welfare record

Must Do Better: New Zealand’s Disappointing Report Card Results

‘Awful’ suicide rate hits NZ’s child welfare rating

We’ve been here before. Following a similar report in 2012 I wrote:

Another shaming poverty report for the government to ignore

In the full knowledge that we’ve written about such reports before, and in the dreadful expectation that we’ll be writing about them again, here is yet another shaming report on poverty in NZ

Here I am writing about them again. Because apparently we don’t care enough about the welfare of NZ kids to vote for a better government.