Being a Poor Child in the U.S. Is Worse Than in Slovakia or Turkey
A new study by UNICEF places the United States at 18 out of 41 among the world’s wealthiest countries in terms of the well-being of their impoverished children.
Joana Ceccarelli / CC-BY-2.0
A new study published by UNICEF places the United States at 18 out of 41 among the world’s wealthiest countries in terms of the well-being of their impoverished children.
From U.S. News & World Report:
For context, the U.S. ranks No. 1 in total wealth.
The study took a comprehensive approach, comparing the gap between children at the very bottom to those in the middle across a range of criteria – including household income, educational achievement and self-reported health and life satisfaction. The central question was this: How far do countries let those at the very bottom fall?
In the United States, the answer seems to be distressingly far.
On income inequality, the U.S. ranked No. 30, coming in behind countries like Turkey, Estonia and Slovakia. Driving the gap is the fact that one in five American children lives in poverty – a figure among the worst in the world. On education, the U.S. fared better at No. 10, with a relatively small achievement gap between those at the bottom and those at the middle, but plunged to No. 21 on life satisfaction – coming in well behind even recession-plagued countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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