Worlds of Influence: Shaping policies for child well-being in rich countries

A new look at children from the world’s richest countries offers a mixed picture of their health, skills and happiness. For far too many, issues such as poverty, exclusion and pollution threaten their mental well-being, physical health and opportunities to develop skills. Even countries with good social, economic and environmental conditions are a long way from meeting the targets set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Focused and accelerated action is needed if these goals are to be met. The evidence from 41 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Union (EU) countries tells its own story: from children’s chances of survival, growth and protection, to whether they are learning and feel listened to, to whether their parents have the support and resources to give their children the best chance for a healthy, happy childhood. This report reveals children’s experiences against the backdrop of their country’s policies and social, educational, economic and environmental contexts.

This report builds and expands upon the analyses of Report Card No. 6 which considered relative income poverty affecting children and policies to mitigate it. Report Card 7 provides a pioneering, comprehensive picture of child well being through the consideration of six dimensions: material well-being, health and safety, education, family and peer relationships, subjective well-being, behaviours and lifestyles informed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and relevant academic literature.

The Report card considers five dimensions of children’s lives: material well-being, health and safety, education, behaviours and risks, and housing and environment. In total, 26 internationally comparable indicators have been included in the overview. The Report updates and refines the first UNICEF overview of child well-being published in 2007 (Report Card 7 ). Changes in child well-being over the first decade of the 2000s are examined.

An overview of inequalities in child well-being in 41 countries of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

In-depth analysis of the latest comparable data on the well-being of children in high income countries.

A look at children from the world’s richest countries offers a mixed picture of their health, skills, and happiness. For far too many, issues such as poverty, exclusion and pollution threaten their mental well-being, physical health, and opportunities to develop skills. Since 2000, the Innocenti Report Card series focuses on the well-being of children in high income countries.

A recent paper in Child Indicators Research (behind a paywall) shows that girls aged 11, 13 and 15 are more likely to suffer from multidimensional poverty than boys in 26 out of 38 high and middle income countries included. England shows the greatest difference in the prevalence of multidimensional poverty between girls and boys – 8 percentage points, followed by Canada, Italy, Latvia and Wales (7 points). Among the six countries with the lowest rates of multidimensional poverty, girls are more likely to be poor in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden, while there is no statistically significant gender gap in Norway or Iceland. girls are more likely to suffer from several deprivations at once, resulting in higher rates of multidimensional poverty among girls in 60% of the countries studied.Unlike the more standard material aspects of poverty, this study focuses on rights-based outcomes of nutrition, health, protection from violence, and access to information, as well as more relational dimensions of school environment and family environment. Adolescents who are deprived in three or more out of six dimensions are counted as multidimensionally poor. The poverty rate ranges from one in ten in Norway and Sweden to one in three in Bulgaria, Latvia, Russia and Wallonia (Belgium). The Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) survey was administered separately in the regions of Belgium and Great Britain, allowing for sub-national presentation of the results for these two countries. In only one country, Israel, the gender difference goes the other way: the poverty rate is 5 points higher for boys. Boys in Israel are more likely to suffer from the lack of classmate or teacher support (school environment), to be victims of school-based or cyber-bullying (protection from violence), to report a poor quality of family communication or family support (family environment) and not to use computers on week days (information access). *significant at p<0.05.Source: Chzhen et al 2017, Figure 7 (with added information on statistical significance of the gender gap).Out of the six dimensions, perceived health is the most skewed against girls, as they have higher rates of poor self-reported health and health complaints than boys in every single country. This is in line with other research that shows that girls tend to have poorer self-rated health than boys, with the gender gap largest at age 15. In contrast, information access is disadvantaging boys because they are less likely to use computers on weekdays. However, girls are more likely to suffer from several deprivations at once, resulting in higher rates of multidimensional poverty among girls in 60% of the countries studied. Other dimensions show a more mixed picture. While nutrition appears to be gender-balanced overall, girls are more likely to miss breakfast on weekdays, while boys are less likely to eat fruits and vegetables at least once a week. In protection from violence, girls are more likely to suffer from cyber-bullying, while boys are more subject to (otherwise more prevalent) school-based bullying. The gender gap in deprivation risks in the dimensions of school environment and family environment can also go either way, with boys or girls at a higher risk in different countries. However, there are no gender gaps in these dimensions in the majority of the countries. The study uses UNICEF’s Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA) framework, drawing on data from the 2013/14 HBSC survey for 36 European countries, Canada, and Israel. It is children themselves who respond to questions about their lives, rather than parents, teachers or ‘household reference persons’. Adolescence is a critical period in children’s life course, with lasting consequences for adult outcomes. Gender differences among 11-15-year-olds are likely to persist into adulthood. This poses a serious challenge for higher income countries in achieving the universal Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 1 includes a target to reduce poverty in all its dimensions among men, women and children of all ages. Goal 5 calls for achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, and many other Goals and Targets build on the principles of equality and non-discrimination. The article “Multidimensional Poverty Among Adolescents in 38 Countries”, co-authored by researchers at UNICEF Innocenti and four academic institutions, will be included in a guest-edited special issue of Child Indicators Research on multidimensional child poverty. Read the introduction to the special issue here. Yekaterina Chzhen is a social and economic policy specialist at the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. She works on multidimensional child poverty, comparative social policy and child well-being. She recently co-edited a book about the impact of the Great Recession on child poverty in rich countries “Children of Austerity” (a free pdf copy is available here). Follow Yekaterina on Twitter at @kat_chzhen. Follow the UNICEF Office of Research at @UNICEFInnocenti.  

 It is no surprise that children who are bullied do worse in academic tests. However, after  re-analyzing children’s reading test data for 30 school systems in some of the world’s richest countries, we found that an environment of bullying drags everyone’s achievement down, not just that of the victims. We published our findings on bullying and more indicators contributing to educational inequalities in a recent UNICEF report “An Unfair Start: Inequality in Children’s Education in Rich Countries”.The share of fourth-grade students who reported they were bullied at least monthly ranged from 25% in Finland to 60% in New Zealand (see figure below).Nearly half of children in the US (45 %) reported they were bullied at least once a month.One in three (33%) of these children said they were bullied on a weekly basis, one of the highest levels in the comparison (ahead of only nine of 30 school systems in the study). Our research shows that  school-level prevalence of weekly bullying is associated with significantly lower individual reading test scores in 24 of the 30 school systems. In the United States, a one percentage point difference in school-level bullying is associated with 1.1 score points lower reading achievement, one of the strongest correlations in the study. The association is greater in only three other countries in the comparison- Chile, Ireland and Sweden, all of which had lower rates of bullying victimization than the US.Only 6% of children in the US sample were in schools where no one reported being bullied weekly and a quarter were in schools with a bullying prevalence of 20% or greater. This amounts to a difference in reading scores of 22 points. This is a large effect, especially as it remains after we have accounted for a host of other factors linked to children’s reading achievement: the child’s gender and age, the language of testing and the language the child speaks at home, the location of the school, whether the child comes to school hungry or tired, or has breakfast on school days, as well as the share of students from disadvantaged families in the school (reported by the principal).It is now understood that childhood bullying casts a “long shadow” on both the victims and perpetrators, but a more nuanced understanding of how it affects bystanders is over-due. Children who get victimized as well as those who bully others tend to suffer from ill health and poor employment outcomes as they grow into adulthood. Yet our findings suggest that even children who are not necessarily involved in bullying end up being dragged down in their academic achievement.Our research demonstrates that anti-bullying interventions need to consider the whole school context, while the evaluations of such interventions should measure the impacts on children not directly involved in peer violence.  Read more:UNICEF Innocenti’s working paper: Developing a Global Indicator on Bullying of School-Aged ChildrenFor global bullying statistics and examples of anti-bullying policies and interventions, see the 2016 United Nations report “Ending the Torment: Tackling Bullying from the Schoolyard to Cyberspace”.Yekaterina Chzhen is the lead author of the newly released UNICEF report An Unfair Start: Inequality in Children’s Education in Rich Countries. The Office of Research–Innocenti, is UNICEF’s dedicated research centre. It undertakes research on emerging or current issues to inform the strategic directions, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners, shape global debates on child rights and development, and inform the global research and policy agenda for all children, and particularly for the most vulnerable. Please visit us on Twitter and Facebook.  

If UNICEF were a rich country instead of my employer, it would rank 24th out of 41 EU and OECD countries in the league table of our new report “Are the world’s richest countries family friendly?” on the indicator of full-rate equivalent childcare leave available to female staff (see figure below, which shows where UNICEF would fall among 41 countries).This may not sound generous compared with countries like Estonia and Hungary, where mothers can stay at home until the child’s third birthday and earn the equivalent of more than 70 weeks at full pay for an average earner. But on a closer look, UNICEF’s policy is pretty good.Consider the concept of full-rate equivalent. It combines the duration and generosity of childcare leave so that we can compare policies across countries. It is the number of weeks of leave multiplied by the rate of pay (for an average earner). But in practice are 20 weeks on full pay really the same as 40 weeks on half pay?Only six countries out of 41 allow female employees on average earnings stay at home at full pay for the whole duration of their leave: Mexico (12 weeks), Israel (14 weeks), the Netherlands (16 weeks), Spain (16 weeks), Chile (30 weeks) and Lithuania (62 weeks). Compared to these countries, UNICEF’s provision of 24 weeks at full pay is only behind Chile and Lithuania.When I gave birth to my child in 2016, as a UNICEF staff member, I took advantage of 24 weeks at full pay. I would not have wanted to stay at home for nearly a year on half my pay instead. I was eager to resume my full responsibilities and was keeping up with office developments. I took part in key meetings, worked on research papers, increased my Twitter following and prepared for the launch of my edited book Children of Austerity. A study on maternity leave policies offered by universities across the United Kingdom shows that institutions with more generous maternity benefits (over and above national statutory provision) have a higher share of female academics who passed productivity-based promotion hurdles in their child-bearing years to become professors. Institutions that employ high-skilled staff do their best to give them incentives to stay.Yet well-paid leave is just one part of the story. I would not have managed to get any research done while on maternity leave or sweep into my old job as I returned from leave if I had been the sole carer of my child with no resources. Between the end of my maternity leave and the start of my child’s nursery entitlement at 12 months I’ve scrambled together a combination of: annual leave, having my partner stay home full-time with the child, unpaid help from extended family and paid babysitters.I was privileged to have had these options. What about those who do not?Note: entitlements in place as of April 2016.Source: OECD Family Database (Table PF2.1).Read more:Global indicators of family policies compiled by the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.An OECD brief ‘Parental leave: Where are all the fathers? Men’s uptake of parental leave is rising but still low’ (2016) Yekaterina Chzhen is the lead author of the newly released UNICEF report “Are the world’s richest countries family friendly?”. Follow her on Twitter @kat_chzhen. The Office of Research–Innocenti, is UNICEF’s dedicated research centre. It undertakes research on emerging or current issues to inform the strategic directions, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners, shape global debates on child rights and development, and inform the global research and policy agenda for all children, and particularly for the most vulnerable. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook.