UNICEF
Innocenti Research Centre
Report Card 7

Child poverty in perspective:

An overview ofchild well-being
in rich countries
A comprehensive assessment of the lives
and well-being of children and adolescentsin the economically advanced nations

For every child
Health, Education, Equality, Protection
ADVANCE HUMANITY

This publication is the seventh in a series of Innocenti Report
Cards, designed to monitor and compare the performance of
the OECD countries in securing the rights of their children.
Any part of the Innocenti Report Card may be freely
reproduced using the following reference:
UNICEF, Child poverty in perspective:
An overview of child well-being in rich countries,
Innocenti Report Card 7, 2007
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.
© The United Nations Children’s Fund, 2007
Full text and supporting documentation can be downloaded
from the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre website.
The support of the German Committee for UNICEF in thedevelopment of Report Card 7 is gratefully acknowledged.
Additional support was provided by the Swiss Committee for
UNICEF.
The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, wasestablished in 1988 to strengthen the research capability of
the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and to support
its advocacy for children worldwide.
The Centre (formally known as the International Child
Development Centre) generates research into current andfuture areas of UNICEF’s work. Its prime objectives are to
improve international understanding of issues relating tochildren’s rights and to help facilitate the full implementationof the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Childin both industrialized and developing countries.
The Centre’s publications are contributions to a global debate
on child rights issues and include a wide range of opinions.
For that reason, the Centre may produce publications that do
not necessarily reflect UNICEF policies or approaches onsome topics.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the policy or views of UNICEF.
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
Piazza SS. Annunziata, 1250122 Florence, Italy
Tel: (+39) 055 20 330
Fax: (+39) 055 2033 220
florence@unicef.org
www.unicef.org/irc

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UNICEF
Innocenti Research Centre

The true measure of a nation’s standing is
how well it attends to its children – theirhealth and safety, their material security,
their education and socialization, andtheir sense of being loved, valued, andincluded in the families and societies into
which they are born.

Report Card 7

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C hi l d w e l l - being ina summar y tab l erich

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c o untries :The chart below presents the findings of this Report Card in summary form. Countries are listed in order of theiraverage rank for the six dimensions of child well-being that have been assessed.1 A light blue backgroundindicates a place in the top third of the table; mid-blue denotes the middle third and dark blue the bottom third.
Dimension 1

Dimension 2

Dimension 3

Dimension 4

Dimension 5

Dimension 6

Dimensions ofchild well-being

Averageranking
position(for all 6
dimensions)

Material
well-being

Health andsafetyEducational
well-being

Family andpeer
relationships

Behaviours
and risks

Subjective
well-being

Netherlands

4.2

10

2

6

3

3

1

Sweden

5.0

1

1

5

15

1

7

Denmark

7.2

4

4

8

9

6

12

Finland

7.5

3

3

4

17

7

11

Spain

8.0

12

6

15

8

5

2

Switzerland

8.3

5

9

14

4

12

6

Norway

8.7

2

8

11

10

13

8

Italy

10.0

14

5

20

1

10

10

Ireland

10.2

19

19

7

7

4

5

Belgium

10.7

7

16

1

5

19

16

Germany

11.2

13

11

10

13

11

9

Canada

11.8

6

13

2

18

17

15

Greece

11.8

15

18

16

11

8

3

Poland

12.3

21

15

3

14

2

19

Czech Republic

12.5

11

10

9

19

9

17

France

13.0

9

7

18

12

14

18

Portugal

13.7

16

14

21

2

15

14

Austria

13.8

8

20

19

16

16

4

Hungary

14.5

20

17

13

6

18

13

United States

18.0

17

21

12

20

20

–

United Kingdom

18.2

18

12

17

21

21

20

OECD countries with insufficient data to be included in the overview: Australia, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand,
the Slovak Republic, South Korea, Turkey.

This Report Card provides a comprehensive assessment of
the lives and well-being of children and young people in
21 nations of the industrialized world. Its purpose is toencourage monitoring, to permit comparison, and to
stimulate the discussion and development of policies toimprove children’s lives.

child well-being under six different headings or dimensions:material well-being, health and safety, education, peer andfamily relationships, behaviours and risks, and young
people’s own subjective sense of well-being. In all, it draws
upon 40 separate indicators relevant to children’s lives andchildren’s rights (see pages 42 to 45).

The report represents a significant advance on previous
titles in this series which have used income poverty as aproxy measure for overall child well-being in the OECD
countries. Specifically, it attempts to measure and compare

Although heavily dependent on the available data, thisassessment is also guided by a concept of child well-beingthat is in turn guided by the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child (See box page 40). The impliedI nnocenti

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definition of child well-being that permeates the report isone that will also correspond to the views and theexperience of a wide public.
Each chapter of the report begins by setting out astransparently as possible the methods by which these
dimensions have been assessed.

Main findings
 The Netherlands heads the table of overall child wellbeing, ranking in the top 10 for all six dimensions ofchild well-being covered by this report.
 European countries dominate the top half of the overall
league table, with Northern European countries
claiming the top four places.
 All countries have weaknesses that need to be addressedand no country features in the top third of the rankings
for all six dimensions of child well-being (though the
Netherlands and Sweden come close to doing so).
 The United Kingdom and the United States findthemselves in the bottom third of the rankings for fiveof the six dimensions reviewed.
 No single dimension of well-being stands as a reliable
proxy for child well-being as a whole and several
OECD countries find themselves with widely differingrankings for different dimensions of child well-being.
 There is no obvious relationship between levels of childwell-being and GDP per capita. The Czech Republic,
for example, achieves a higher overall rank for childwell-being than several much wealthier countries
including France, Austria, the United States and theUnited Kingdom.

Measurement and policy
What is to be gained by measuring and comparing childwell-being in different countries?
The answer lies in the maxim ‘to improve something, firstmeasure it’.Even the decision to measure helps set
directions and priorities by demanding a degree ofconsensus on what is to be measured – i.e. on what
constitutes progress. Over the long-term, measurementserves as the handrail of policy, keeping efforts on track
towards goals, encouraging sustained attention, giving early
warning of failure or success, fuelling advocacy, sharpening
accountability, and helping to allocate resources more
effectively.
Internationally, measurement and comparison gives anindication of each country’s strengths and weaknesses. It
shows what is achievable in practice and provides bothgovernment and civil society with the information to argue
for and work towards the fulfilment of children’s rights andthe improvement of their lives. Above all, such comparisonsdemonstrate that given levels of child well-being are notinevitable but policy-susceptible; the wide differences inchild well-being seen throughout this Report Card cantherefore be interpreted as a broad and realistic guide to thepotential for improvement in all OECD countries.
Given the potential value of this exercise, every attempt has
been made to overcome data limitations. Nonetheless, it isacknowledged throughout that the available data may beless than ideal and that there are prominent gaps. Children’s
exposure to violence in the home both as victims and as
witnesses,2 for example, could not be included because ofproblems of cross-national definition and measurement.
Children’s mental health and emotional well-being may
also be under-represented, though attempts have been madeto reflect these difficult-to-measure dimensions (see, forexample, the results of surveys into children’s own
perceptions of their own lives on pages 34 and 38). Age andgender differences are also insufficiently attended to, again
reflecting a lack of disaggregated data and the fact that the
majority of the available statistics relate to the lives of older
children. A particularly important omission is the level ofparticipation by three and four year-olds in early childhood
education (for which, again, no internationally comparable
data are available).
Acknowledging these limitations, Report Card 7
nonetheless invites debate and breaks new ground bybringing together the best of currently available data andrepresents a significant step towards a multi-dimensional
overview of the state of childhood in a majority of theeconomically advanced nations of the world. I nnocenti

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Dimension 1
M ateria l

w e l l - being

Figure 1.0 The material well-being of children, an OECD overview
Three components were selected to represent children's material well-being (see box below).
Figure 1.0 averages each country’s score over the three components and is scaled to show eachcountry’s distance above or below the average (set at 100) for the 21 countries featured.

SwedenNorwayFinlandDenmark
Switzerland
CanadaBelgium
Austria
FranceNetherlands
Czech Republic
Spain
Australia
Germany
Italy
New Zealand
GreeceJapan
Portugal
United States
United Kingdom
Ireland
Hungary
Poland
80

85

90

95

100

105

110

115

120

Note: Each country has been placed on a scale determined by the average score for the group as a whole. The unit used is the standard deviation(the average deviation from the average). To ease interpretation, the results are presented on a scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of
10.

Assessing material well-being
The table on the right shows how the index of

COMP ONENTS

INDICATORS

relative income
poverty– percentage of children living inhomes with equivalent incomes
below 50% of the national
medianhouseholds
without jobs

– percentage of children infamilies without an employedadult

reported
deprivation– percentage of children reporting
low family affluencechildren’s material well-being has been constructed.
The choice of individual indicators reflects the

For each indicator, countries have been given a score
which reveals how far that country stands above or
below the OECD average. Where more than one
indicator has been used, scores have been averaged.
In the same way, the three component scores havebeen averaged to arrive at each country’s overallrating for children’s material well-being (see box onpage 5).

Material well-being

availability of internationally comparable data.

– percentage of children reportingfew educational resources– percentage of children reporting
fewer than 10 books in thehomeDimension 1

Material well-be i n g

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Children’s material well-being
This overview of child well-being
looks first at material well-being.
Three different components have been
considered – relative income poverty,
children in households without anemployed adult, and direct measures ofdeprivation. Figure 1.0 (opposite)brings these three components into
one overall ranking table of childmaterial well-being.

Main findings
 The lowest rates of relative income
poverty (under 5%) have beenachieved in the four Nordic
countries.
 A total of nine countries – all innorthern Europe – have broughtchild poverty rates below 10%.
 Child poverty remains above the
15% mark in the three Southern
European countries (Portugal, Spain,
Italy) and in three anglophonecountries (the United States, theUnited Kingdom, and Ireland).
 The Czech Republic ranks above
several of the world’s wealthiest
countries including Germany, Italy,
Japan, the United States and theUnited Kingdom.
 Ireland, despite the strong economic
growth of the 1990s and sustained
anti-poverty efforts, is placed 22ndout of the 25 countries.

Income Poverty
Two previous issues of the Report
Card have been devoted to childincome poverty in the OECD
countries (see Box 7).

Dimension 1

Material well-being

The evidence from many countries
persistently shows that children whogrow up in poverty are more
vulnerable: specifically, they are more
likely to be in poor health, to havelearning and behavioural difficulties,
to underachieve at school, to become
pregnant at too early an age, to havelower skills and aspirations, to be low
paid, unemployed, and welfare
dependent. Such a catalogue ofpoverty’s ills runs the risk of failing torespect the fact that many children of
low-income families do not fall into
any of these categories. But it does
not alter the fact that, on average,children who grow up in poverty arelikely to be at a decided anddemonstrable disadvantage.

Ideally child poverty would beassessed by bringing together data
under a variety of poverty headings
including relative poverty, absolutedeprivation, and depth of poverty(revealing not only how many fall
below poverty lines but also by how
far and for how long). Nonetheless,the ‘poverty measure’ used here
represents a more comprehensive viewof child poverty than has previously
been available.

Relative income poverty
Child poverty can be measured in an
absolute sense – the lack of somefixed minimum package of goods andservices. Or it can be measured in a
relative sense – falling behind, by

A common scale Throughout this Report Card, a country’s overall score for eachdimension of child well-being has been calculated by averaging its
score for the three components chosen to represent that dimension.
If more than one indicator has been used to assess a component,
indicator scores have been averaged. This gives an equal weighting
to the components that make up each dimension, and to theindicators that make up each component. Equal weighting is thestandard approach used in the absence of any compelling reason to
apply different weightings and is not intended to imply that allelements used are considered of equal significance.
 In all cases, scores have been calculated by the ‘z scores’ method –i.e. by using a common scale whose upper and lower limits aredefined by all the countries in the group. The advantage of thismethod is that it reveals how far a country falls above or below theaverage for the group as a whole. The unit of measurement used on
this scale is the standard deviation (the average deviation from theaverage). In other words a score of +1.5 means that a country’sscore is 1.5 times the average deviation from the average. To easeinterpretation, the scores for each dimension are presented on ascale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10.

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Figure 1.1 Relative income poverty: Percentage of children (0-17 years) inR eportC ard

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more than a certain degree, from theaverage standard of living of thesociety in which one lives.

households with equivalent income less than 50% of the median.
OECD Nations
Denmark
Finland

The European Union offered its
definition of poverty in 1984: “thepoor are those whose resources (material,
cultural, and social) are so limited as to
exclude them from the minimum
acceptable way of life in the Member
States in which they live”. For practicaland statistical purposes, this has usuallymeant drawing national poverty lines
at a certain percentage of national
median income.

NorwaySwedenBelgium
Switzerland
Czech Republic
FranceNetherlands
Germany
Australia
GreeceHungary
Austria
CanadaJapan
PolandNew ZealandPortugal
Spain
Ireland
Italy
United Kingdom
United States
0

5

10

15

20

25

Date: 2000,1999 (Australia, Austria and Greece), 2001 (Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland).

Critics have argued that relative
poverty is not ‘real’ poverty, pointing
out that many of those who fall below
relative poverty lines enjoy a standardof living higher than at any time in
the past or than most of the world’s
children in the present. But this fails
to acknowledge that in today’s OECDnations the cutting edge of poverty is
the contrast, daily perceived, between
the lives of the poor and the lives of
those around them.

Figure 1.2 Percentage of working-age householdswith children without an employed parent
OECD Nations
Japan
Portugal
Switzerland
Austria
United States
GreeceSwedenCanadaFinland
Italy
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
NorwayNetherlands
FranceIreland
New ZealandCzech Republic
United Kingdom
Germany
PolandAustralia
Hungary
Non-OECD Nations
Israel
0

2

4

6

8

10

Figure 1.1 shows the percentage ofchildren growing up in relative
poverty – defined as living in ahousehold where the equivalent
income is less than 50% of thenational median – for 24 OECD
countries. 3

12Date: 2000, 1999 (Japan and Canada), 1998 (Switzerland), 2001 (Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany), 2002 (Austria, Norway and Poland).
Non-OECD, 2004 (Israel).

Nonetheless an international
comparison based on a poverty line
drawn at 50% of the median national
income presents only a partial picturein that it makes no allowance fordifferences in national wealth. It
shows, for example, that the childpoverty rate in the United States ishigher than in Hungary, but fails toshow that 50% of median income (fora couple with two children) is
approximately $7,000 in Hungary and$24,000 in the United States. The factthat a smaller percentage of children
are growing up poor in the Czech

Dimension 1

Material well-be i n g

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Republic than in France, or in Poland
than in Italy, does not mean that
Czech or Polish children are more
affluent but that their countries have amore equal distribution of income. In
other words Figure 1.1 tells us muchabout inequality and exclusion but
little about absolute material
deprivation.
Even within individual countries,
relative income poverty does notreveal how far families fall below
poverty lines, or for how long.
Furthermore all such measurements ofchild poverty are based on householdincome and assume a wellfunctioning family in which available
resources are allocated with reasonable
fairness – with necessities taking
priority over luxuries. A childsuffering acute material deprivation
caused by a parent's alcohol or drug
habit, for example, is not counted aspoor if the family income is greaterthan 50% of the national median.
Relative poverty is therefore anecessary but not sufficient indicatorof children’s material well-being, andneeds to be complemented by somemeasure of deprivation.

Unemployment
Various studies have found thatgrowing up in a household without
an employed adult is closely associatedwith deprivation, particularly if theunemployment is persistent. The
proportion of children who are
growing up in households with noemployed adult has therefore beenchosen as the second component forbuilding a more rounded picture ofchildren’s material poverty.
Figure 1.2 is clearly measuring a
different aspect of poverty. The UnitedStates, for example, has risen from thebottom of Figure 1.1 to fifth place inFigure 1.2, while Norway has fallen

Dimension 1

Material well-being

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From previous Report Cards

Report Card 1 (2000) and Report Card 6 (2005) addressed the issue ofchild income poverty in the OECD countries. Some of the main findings:
 In recent years, child poverty has risen in 17 out of 24 OECD
countries for which data are available.
 Norway is the only OECD country where child poverty can be
described as very low and continuing to fall.
 Higher government spending on family and social benefits is
associated with lower child poverty rates. No OECD country devoting
10% or more of GDP to social transfers has a child poverty rate
higher than 10%. No country devoting less than 5% of GDP to socialtransfers has a child poverty rate of less than 15%.
 Variation in government policy appears to account for most of thevariation in child poverty levels between OECD countries.
 There appears to be little relationship between levels of employment
and levels of child poverty. It is the distribution of employment among
different kinds of household, the proportion of those in work who areon low-pay, and the level of state benefits for the unemployed andthe low-paid, that contribute most to differences in child poverty rates
between countries.
 Variations between countries in the proportion of children growing up
in lone-parent families do not explain national poverty rates. Sweden,
for example, has a higher proportion of its children living in loneparent families than the United States or the United Kingdom but amuch lower child poverty rate than either.
 There is considerable variation in child poverty rates even in countries
with broadly similar levels of government spending.
 A realistic target for all OECD countries would be to bring relative
child poverty rates below 10%. For the countries that have alreadyachieved this, the next aim might be to emulate the four Nordic
countries in bringing child poverty rates below 5%.
 In many OECD countries there is a pronounced trend towards lower
relative earnings for the lowest paid.
 There is a trend for any increase in social spending in OECD countries
to be allocated principally to pensions and health care, leaving little
for further investment in children.

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I nnocentifrom third to fourteenth place. Suchchanges could reflect low pay for
employed adults in some countries andgenerous benefits for unemployed
adults in others. Either way, it adds tothe picture of child poverty. But whatis lacking is some more direct measureof children’s material deprivation.

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Figure 1.3a Percentage of children age 11, 13 and 15 reporting low family affluence
OECD Nations
NorwayNetherlands
SwedenCanadaSwitzerland
United States
Denmark
United Kingdom

Deprivation
Unfortunately, there are nointernationally comparable measures ofmaterial deprivation or agreed
definitions of what ‘the right to an
adequate standard of living’ means. It istherefore not possible to compare theproportion of children in each country
who are materially deprived in thesense that they lack such basics asadequate nutrition, clothing, andhousing. Again, individual governments
may have indicators reflecting thiskind of deprivation at national levelbut, in the absence of cross-national
definitions and data, three indicators
have been selected which, taken
together, may offer a reasonable guide(Figures 1.3a, 1.3b, and 1.3c).

FranceGermany
Austria
Belgium
Finland
IrelandSpain
GreecePortugal
Hungary
Czech Republic
PolandNon-OECD Nations
Slovenia
IsraelEstonia
Malta
Croatia
Lithuania
LatviaRussian Federation
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Date: 2001/02

Relative Poverty

In recent years, relative child poverty has become akey indicator for the governments of many OECD
countries. The European Union’s efforts to monitor its
Social Inclusion Programme, for example, include
relative child poverty and the percentage of children inworkless families as the only indicators specificallyrelated to children (drawing the poverty line as the
proportion of children in each country living inhouseholds with an equivalent income of less than
60% of the median for that country).
Almost always, it is the national median that is used as
the basis for the measurement of relative poverty. But
from the point of view of the child it could be argued
that the basis of comparison should be a different
entity – the province, state, city, or neighbourhood.
Would the picture of child poverty change radically if
the question ‘poverty relative to what?’ were to beanswered in these different ways?

Little data are available to answer this question, but
Report Card 1 drew upon the evidence available inthe year 2000 to suggest some answers. It pointed
out, for example, that the child poverty rate inAmerica’s richest state, New Jersey, would have
jumped from 14% to 22% if the basis of comparison
had been the median income for New Jersey rather
than for the United States as a whole. On the same
basis, the child poverty rate in Arkansas would havefallen from 26% to 14%. Similar changes would
undoubtedly be revealed in other countries where themean state income differs significantly from the meannational income. Spain’s poorest province,
Extremadura, for example would have seen its childpoverty rate almost halved if the poverty line had
been re-drawn in this way. In countries such as
Australia and Canada, where variations in average
income between regions are smaller, the changes
would be less dramatic.

Dimension 1

Material well-be i n g

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Figure 1.3b Percentage of children age 15 reporting lessFigure 1.3a uses the Family Affluence
Scale, deployed as part of WHO’s
survey of Health Behaviour in Schoolage Children (see box on page 17). The
survey put four questions torepresentative samples of children aged
11, 13 and 15 in each of 35 countries.
The questions were:than six educational possessions
OECD Nations
NorwayAustralia
Austria
Germany
SwedenNetherlands
United Kingdom

 Does your family own a car,van or truck?

Finland
Belgium
Canada Do you have your own
bedroom for yourself?

New Zealand
Switzerland During the past 12 months,
how many times did you
travel away on holiday withyour family?

United States
Spain
FranceItaly
Denmark
Czech Republic How many computers does
your family own?

Ireland
Portugal
PolandHungaryJapan
GreeceNon-OECD Nations
IsraelLatviaRussian Federation
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

The results were scored and scaled togive a maximum affluence score of 8with ‘low family affluence’ being
defined as a score of 0-3. Figure 1.3ashows the percentage of children ineach country reporting ‘low family
affluence’ so defined.

Date: 2003. Non-OECD 2003, 2000 (Israel)

Among the world’s wealthiest countries, it is in Italy
that the change in the basis of comparison produces
the most dramatic results. In 2000, nationally-based
poverty lines revealed a child poverty rate that wasfour times higher in the mid-South than in Lombardy,
whereas state-based poverty lines showed almost no
difference between the two. In other words, it waspossible for a family living in Sicily or Calabria to fall
below the national poverty line whilst being no worse
off than most of their fellow Sicilians and Calabrians(the relative child poverty rate for Sicily and Calabria
fell by more than half, from 45% to 19%, when thestate rather than the national median was used).
The child’s own context of comparison needs to betaken into account and it would be helpful to havemore data on differences in child well-being within
nations as well as between nations. But it is at thenational level that policy is made and for most practical

Dimension 1

Material well-being

purposes it makes sense for poverty lines to be drawn
in relation to national medians. As Report Card 1
concluded: “In a world where national andinternational media are enlarging the society thatpeople feel themselves to be living in – unifying
expectations and homogenizing the concept of ‘theminimum acceptable way of life’ – it is probable thatthe nation will remain the most widely used basis ofcomparison. Children in Arkansas or Sicily or
Extremadura watch the same television programmes as
their contemporaries in New Hampshire or Emilia
Romagna or Madrid. Which brings us to theuncomfortable thought that the same programmes andthe same commercials are today also watched bychildren in Lagos and Delhi and Mexico City. In theory,
there is as strong a case for enlarging the basic unit ofcomparison as for shrinking it.”

1 0

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Figure 1.3c Percentage of children age 15 reporting less than 10 books in the home

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Affluence Scale. Variations in thenumber of vehicles owned by thefamily, for example, may indicate levelsof urbanization, or the quality of public
transport systems. The number ofholidays taken may reflect traditions
such as regular holidays taken withrelatives. Not sharing a bedroom may
also reflect different cultural traditions,average family size, or rural/urban
differences. 4

OECD Nations
Czech RepublicHungary
Spain
SwedenNorwayAustralia
Finland
New Zealand
CanadaGermany
GreeceDenmark
PolandItaly

Perhaps the greater problem with
Figure 1.3a, for present purposes, isthat it tells us little about the more
severe kinds of deprivation.
Nonetheless the Family Affluence Scale
has the advantage of being based ontangible definitions that correspond to
widely held notions of material wellbeing.

FranceAustria
United Kingdom
Japan
Ireland
Switzerland
Belgium
United States
Netherlands
Portugal
Non-OECD Nations
LatviaRussian Federation
Israel
0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Date: 2003. Non-OECD 2003, 2000 (Israel)

Figure 1.3 Composite table of child material deprivation(combining Figures 1.3a, 1.3b and 1.3c)
NorwaySwedenAustralia
CanadaFinland
New ZealandGermany
Spain

Cultural and educational
resources

Denmark
Austria
United Kingdom
Netherlands
FranceSwitzerland
Czech Republic
Italy
Belgium
United States
Ireland
Hungary
Portugal
GreecePolandJapan-1.5

For present purposes, Figure 1.3a also
provides a snapshot that is clearly
different from the picture of relative
poverty depicted in Figure 1.1. It can
immediately be seen, for example, that
Hungary, the Czech Republic andPoland, all ranked mid-table whenmeasured by relative income poverty,
drop to the bottom of the league whenranked by the Family Affluence Scale.
Conversely the United States and theUnited Kingdom move from thebottom of the table into the top ten.

-1.0

-0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

Another important way of looking atchildren's material well-being is to ask
whether, in the words of theConvention on the Rights of the Child,the child’s circumstances are such as toallow ‘the development of the child's
personality, talents and mental andphysical abilities to their fullest potential’.
In this respect, many commentators
have argued that the lack of
educational and cultural resources
should rank alongside lack of income,and that the educational resources ofDimension 1

Material well-be i n g

I nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

1 1

the home, in particular, play a criticalrole in children's educational
achievement.

Figure 1.3b shows the percentage whoreport having fewer than six of theseresources.

The difficulties of measuring ‘culturaland educational deprivation’ areevident, but some insight into this
aspect of child poverty is offered bytables 1.3b and 1.3c. Both draw ondata from the Programme ofInternational Student Assessment (seebox on page 17) which, among manyother questions, asked representative
groups of 15 year-olds in 41 countries
whether they had the following eighteducational items at home: a desk for study a quiet place to work
 a computer for schoolwork
 educational software an internet connection
 a calculator a dictionary
 school textbooks.

Drawing on the same source, Figure
1.3c shows the percentage of children
reporting fewer than 10 books in thehome – a suggested indicator of thedeprivation of cultural resources.
Combined as in Figure 1.3, thesethree indicators show that children
appear to be most deprived of
educational and cultural resources insome of the world’s mosteconomically developed countries.

Conclusion
The available data fall short ofcapturing all the complexities of childpoverty, being unable, for example, toaddress important issues such as thedepth and duration of child poverty,or the extent of more extreme forms

of deprivation. Clearly, there is a needfor more understanding of the links
between income poverty and material
deprivation. In particular, there is aneed to know more about the links
between income poverty, deprivation,and the kind of social exclusion which
inhibits the development of potential
and increases the risk of perpetuating
poverty from one generation to thenext.
Despite these necessary reservations, it
is argued that the indicators deployed
and combined in the summary table
for this chapter (Figure 1.0) represent
a significant improvement on income
poverty measures alone, and that they
offer the best currently available
comparative overview of children’smaterial well-being in the world’s
developed economies.

Data Comparable survey findings from a wide variety of sources, covering
as many OECD countries as possible, have been brought together
and analysed for this report. A full description of the data sources andmethodologies (including sensitivity analyses) is available in the
background paper referred to on page 13.
 All of the raw data used in this report are set out on pages 42 to 45.
In all cases, the data sets used are the latest available and in general
apply to the period 2000-2003 (see pages 46 to 47 for dates to which
individual data sets refer).
 Comparable data on several OECD countries such as Turkey and
Mexico are unfortunately not available.
 Some non-OECD countries have been included as a separate list insome of the tables used in this Report Card. These have been
selected on the basis of data availability (and in the hope that they
will demonstrate the potential usefulness of this approach to many
middle-income countries not currently members of the OECD).

Dimension 1

Material well-being

1 2

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R eportC ard

7

Dimension 2
H ea l thand

S afet y

Figure 2.0 The health and safety of children, an OECD overview
The league table of children’s health and safety shows each country’s performance in relation to the averagefor the OECD countries under review.
Each country's overall score is the average of its scores for the three components chosen to represent
children's health and safety – infant health, preventative health services, and child safety (see box below).
The table is scaled to show each country’s distance above or below the OECD average of 100.

SwedenIcelandNetherlands
FinlandDenmark
Italy
Spain
FranceNorwaySwitzerland
Czech Republic
GermanyJapan
Australia
United Kingdom
CanadaPortugal
PolandBelgium
Hungary
GreeceIreland
Austria
New ZealandUnited States
85

90

95

100

105

Assessing child health and safety

110

which reveals how far that country stands above or
below the average for the OECD countries under review.
Where more than one indicator has been used, scores
have been averaged. In the same way, the threecomponent scores have been averaged to arrive at eachcountry’s overall rating for children’s health and safety(see box on page 5).

125

health at age 0-1– number of infants dying before
age 1 per 1,000 births– percentage of infants born withlow birth weight (<2500g.)

preventative
health services– percentage of children age 12 to
23 months immunized against
measles, DPT, and polio

safety– deaths from accidents andinjuries per 100,000 aged 0 – 19

individual indicators reflects the availability ofFor each indicator, countries have been given a score

120

INDICATORS

health and safety has been constructed. The choice ofinternationally comparable data.

115

COMP ONENTS

The table on the right shows how the index of children’s

Health and Safety80

Dimension 2

Health and sa f e t yI nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

1 3

Children’s health and safety
By almost any available measure, thegreat majority of children born into
today’s developed societies enjoy
unprecedented levels of health andsafety. Almost within living memory,
one child in every five in the cities ofEurope could be expected to die
before his or her fifth birthday; todaythat risk is less than one in a hundred.
Loss of life among older children iseven more uncommon; fewer than
one in every 10,000 young people die
before the age of 19 as a result ofaccident, murder, suicide or violence.
This, too, represents an historicallyunheard of level of safety.
Nonetheless, health and safety remaina basic concern of all families and abasic dimension of child well-being. It
can also be argued that the levels of
health and safety achieved in aparticular country are an indicator of
the society's overall level ofcommitment to its children.
Health and safety are assessed here by
three components for whichinternationally comparable data are
available: child health at birth, child
immunization rates for children aged
12 to 23 months, and deaths from
accidents and injuries among young
people aged 0 to 19 years.
The chart opposite (Figure 2.0) brings
these components together into an
overview table of child health andsafety in 25 OECD countries.
European countries occupy the top
half of the table, with the top fiveplaces claimed by the four Nordic
countries and the Netherlands. The
Czech Republic ranks ahead ofDimension 2

Health and safety

wealthier countries such as Germany,
Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada
and the United States.

Infant survival and health
The first component of the index,
child health at birth, has been assessedby two separate indicators: the infantmortality rate (the number of deaths
before the age of one per thousand
live births) and the prevalence of lowbirth weight (the percentage of babies
born weighing less than 2500g.).
The infant mortality rate (IMR) is astandard indicator of child health 5 andreflects a basic provision of theConvention on the Rights of the Child
which calls on all countries ‘to ensure
the child’s enjoyment of the highest
attainable standard of health, including
by diminishing infant and childmortality’. In the developing world, inparticular, the IMR reflects the extent
to which children’s rights are met insuch fundamental areas as adequate
nutrition, clean water, safe sanitation,and the availability and take-up ofbasic preventative health services. In
the OECD countries it could beargued that infant deaths have now
been reduced to such low levels that
the IMR is no longer a revealing
indicator. But as Figure 2.1b shows,substantial differences still exist among
OECD countries – with IMR
ranging from under 3 per 1,000 births
in Iceland and Japan to over 6 per
1,000 in Hungary, Poland and theUnited States.
Significant in itself, the infantmortality rate can also be interpreted
as a measure of how well eachcountry lives up to the ideal ofprotecting every pregnancy, including
pregnancies in its marginalized
populations, and taking all necessary
precautionary and preventative
measures – from regular antenatal
check-ups to the ready availability ofemergency obstetric care – by whichinfant mortality rates have been so
dramatically reduced over the last 80
years. A society that manages this soeffectively as to reduce infant deaths
below 5 per 1,000 live births is clearlya society that has the capacity and thecommitment to deliver other criticalcomponents of child health.

Background toReport Card 7

This Report Card is supported
by a background paper –Comparing Child Well-Being inOECD Countries: Concepts
and Methods, Innocenti
Working Paper No. 2006-03,
Jonathan Bradshaw, Petra
Hoelscher and Dominic
Richardson, UNICEF Innocenti
Research Centre, Florence,
2006.
The paper, setting out in moredetail the methods andsources used in this overview,
is available on the Innocenti
web-site (www.unicef.org/irc).

1 4

I nnocenti

Figure 2.1a Infant mortality rate

Figure 2.1b Low birth weight rate

(deaths before the age of 12 months per 1000 live births)(% births less than 2500g)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

C ard

OECD Nations

OECD Nations

Iceland

IcelandJapan

FinlandFinlandSwedenSwedenIreland

NorwayNorwayCzech RepublicNetherlands

FranceDenmark

Portugal

CanadaSpain

PolandGermany

New Zealand

Belgium

Australia

Italy

Belgium

Switzerland

Italy

Denmark

Switzerland

Austria

Czech Republic

Australia

FranceGreeceGermany

Netherlands

Spain

Ireland

Austria

United Kingdom

Portugal

CanadaUnited Kingdom

New ZealandUnited States

PolandGreeceUnited States

Hungary

HungaryJapan

Non-OECD Nations

Non-OECD Nations

Slovenia

Estonia

IsraelLithuania

Malta

LatviaCroatia

Croatia

Estonia

Malta

Lithuania

Russian Federation

LatviaSlovenia

Russian Federation

Israel

12

13

14

15

16

Date: 2003, 2002 (Canada and the USA), 2001 (New Zealand). Non-OECD 2003

The second of the two indicators
chosen to represent health in theearliest stage of life is the prevalenceof low birth weight (Figure 2.1a). Thisis a well-established measure ofincreased risk to life and health in theearly days and weeks of life, but has
also been associated with a greater risk
to cognitive and physical development
throughout childhood. 6 It may also
speak to wider issues in that low birthweight is known to be associated withthe mother’s health and socioeconomic status. Mothers whose own
diets have been poor in their teenage
years and in pregnancy, or who smokeor drink alcohol in pregnancy, aresignificantly more likely to have low

R eport

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

7

10

Date: 2003, 2002 (Australia, Canada, Greece, Switzerland), 2001 (Spain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands),
1995 (Belgium). Non-OECD 2001, 2000 (Croatia).

birth weight babies. This indicator
therefore also reflects the well-beingof mothers – a critical factor for
virtually all aspects of child well-being.

Immunization
The second component selected forthe assessment of child health is thenational immunization rate, reflecting
not only the level of protection
against vaccine preventable diseases
but also the comprehensiveness of
preventative health services forchildren. 7 Immunization levels also
serve as a measure of national
commitment to primary health care
for all children (Article 24 of theConvention on the Rights of the Child).

Figure 2.2 ranks 25 OECD countries
by the percentage of children aged
between 12 and 23 months who havereceived immunization against
measles, polio, and diphtheria,
pertussis and tetanus (DPT3). Overall,it shows high levels of coverage withno country falling below an averagerate of 80%. But in the case of
immunization the standard mustsurely be set at a very high level
indeed. Vaccination is cheap, effective,
safe, and offers protection against
several of the most common andserious diseases of childhood (andfailure to reach high levels of
immunization can mean that ‘herd
immunity’ for certain diseases will not

Dimension 2

Health and sa f e t yI nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

1 5

Figure 2.2 Percentage of children age 12-23 months immunized against the
major vaccine-preventable diseases
OECD Nations
Hungary
Czech Republic
PolandDenmark
Netherlands
SwedenFinland
Portugal
Spain
FranceAustralia
IcelandUnited StatesJapan
Germany
CanadaItaly
Switzerland
NorwayGreeceUnited Kingdom
Belgium
New ZealandIreland
Austria
Non-OECD Nations
LatviaLithuania
Estonia
Russian Federation
Croatia
Israelpartial breast-feeding at the age of six
months’ show unusually wide
variations across the OECD – from ahigh of 80% in Norway to a low ofjust over 10% in Belgium).

SafetyThe third and final component used
to assess child health and safety is therate of deaths among children andyoung people caused by accidents,
murder, suicide, and violence.
Although this bundles together risksof very different kinds, it nonethelessserves as an approximate guide to
overall levels of safety for a nation’s
young people.
Drawing on the World HealthOrganization’s mortality database,
Figure 2.3 ranks 25 OECD countries
according to the annual number ofdeaths from such causes for every
100,000 people in the 0-19 age group.
As deaths at this age are thankfully
rare, random year-on-year variations
have been smoothed by averaging thestatistics over the latest three years forwhich data are available.

Malta
Slovenia
70

75

80

85

90

95

100

Date: Measles data , all countries (2003), Pol3 and DPT3 data, all countries (2002)

be achieved and that many morechildren will fall victim to disease).
Furthermore, immunization rates may
have broader significance in as muchas the small differences in levels may
be indicative of the effort made byeach nation to 'reach the unreached’
and provide every child, andparticularly the children of
marginalized groups, with basic
preventative health services.
Had adequate data been available, thepercentage of infants who are breastfed up to six months of age would
also have been included in this pictureof child health in the first year of life.

Dimension 2

Health and safety

Apart from its unrivalled nutritional
and immunological advantages in theearliest months, breast milk has also
been associated with long-term
advantages from improved cognitive
development to reduced risk of heartdisease. The percentage of infants
being breast-fed in each country
might also be interpreted as anindicator of the extent to which theresults of today’s health research are
put at the disposal of, and adopted by,
the public at large. Unfortunately
definitional problems and a lack ofdata for the majority of OECD
countries led to the exclusion of thisindicator (though it is worth noting inpassing that available data on ‘at least

Four countries – Sweden, United
Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy –can be seen to have reduced theincidence of deaths from accidents andinjuries to the remarkably low level offewer than 10 per 100,000. Of theother OECD countries, all but two
are recording rates of fewer than 20
per 100,000.
These figures represent rapid andremarkable progress; over the last 30
years, child deaths by injury in OECD
countries have fallen by about 50%. 8
Nonetheless, some countries haveclearly achieved higher standards ofchild safety than others and thedifferences are significant. If all OECD
countries had the same child injury
death rate as Sweden, for example,
then approximately 12,000 childdeaths a year could be prevented. As is1 6

I nnocenti

so often the case, the likelihood of achild being injured or killed isassociated with poverty, singleparenthood, low maternal education,
low maternal age at birth, poor
housing, weak family ties, and parental
drug or alcohol abuse. 9

Omissions
There are important omissions in thispicture of child health and safety. In
particular, some direct indicator ofchildren’s mental and emotional healthwould have been a valuable addition.
National suicide rates among
adolescents were considered, but the
research suggests that suicide is more

to be seen as a rare event related toparticular circumstance than as anindicator of overall mental healthamong a nation’s young people.
The overview would also havebenefited from some indicator of thelevel of child abuse and neglect ineach nation. The lack of common
definitions and researchmethodologies, plus inconsistencies
between countries in the current
classification and reporting of childabuse, have for the moment ruled out
this possibility. Report Card 5(September 2003) reported that asmall group of OECD countries –Figure 2.3 Deaths from accidents and injuries per 100,000 under 19 years(average of latest three years available)
OECD Nations
SwedenUnited Kingdom
Netherlands
Italy
Iceland

R eportC ard

7Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland andNorway – have the lowest rates ofchild death from maltreatment. Onceagain, the risk factors most closely andconsistently associated with childabuse and neglect are poverty, stress,
and parental drug and alcohol abuse.
In total, approximately 3,500 children(under the age of 15) die every year in
the OECD countries frommaltreatment, physical abuse, andneglect. Traffic accidents, drownings,
falls, fires and poisoning carry thistotal to more than 20,000 child deaths
each year. 10 These may not be large
figures in relation to the total
populations of young people in theOECD countries. But as Report Card
2 argued in 2001, such figures need tobe read in the light of theunimaginable anguish and grief of thefamilies concerned, and of the factthat the number of deaths is but the
tip of an iceberg of trauma anddisability.

Spain
Switzerland
FranceJapan
NorwayGermany
GreeceCanadaFinland
Ireland
Austria
Australia
Belgium
Hungary
PolandCzech Republic
Portugal
United States
New Zealand
Non-OECD Nations
Malta
Croatia
Slovenia
Lithuania
Estonia
LatviaRussian Federation
Israel
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Date: 1993-1995 (Finland, Hungary, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway), 1994-1996 (Poland, Sweden), 1995-1997 (Australia, Belgium,
Germany), 1996-1998 (Spain, US), 1997-1999 (Canada, France, New Zealand, UK), 1999-2001 (Austria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal), 2000-2002(Switzerland, Greece). Non-OECD: Israel (2003), Russian Federation (2000-2002) Lithuania (1995-97), Estonia, Slovenia (1994-96), Latvia(1993-95), Malta, Croatia (1992-94).

Dimension 2

Health and sa f e t yI nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

1 7

Pisa and hbsc

Two of the sources drawn upon extensively in this Report Card are the OECD
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the World HealthOrganization’s survey of Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) 2001.
PISA
Beginning in 2000, the PISA is conducted every three
years with the objective of assessing young people’sknowledge and life-skills in economically developed
countries.* The four main areas of assessment are:
 reading, mathematics and science literacy
 study and learning practices
 family resources and structure (including pupils’
own perspectives of their school-life and peers) the organization of schools and school
environments.

HBSC 2001
For more than 20 years, the World Health Organization
survey Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC)
has informed and influenced health policy and healthpromotion by collecting information on such topics asfamily resources and structure, peer interaction, risk
behaviours, subjective health, sexual health, physicalactivity, and eating and self-care habits. The latest
HBSC survey was conducted in 2001 and included 21
OECD countries in its total of 35 nations (Australia,
New Zealand, Japan and Iceland did not take part).

Year 2000 data were collected for 43 countries,
including all of the countries featured in this study. In
its second wave (2003), PISA collected data for 41
countries. PISA 2003 also included a new assessmentof problem solving skills.

In each participating country, HBSC uses cluster survey
techniques to select 1,500 young people at each of
three ages – 11, 13, and 15 years. Consistentprocedures are followed to ensure the comparability ofsurvey methods and data processing techniques.
Trained administrators are present in the classroom forthe administration of all questionnaires.

Data are collected from nationally representative
samples of the school population at around the age of
15 (the end of compulsory schooling in mostcountries). Schools are sampled on the basis of sizewith a random sample of 35 pupils for each school
chosen. Total sample sizes are usually between 4,000
and 10,000 pupils per country .
To ensure comparability, data collection systems
employ standardized translation and assessment
procedures and a collection window is set to ensurethat data are collected at comparable times in theschool year. Where response rates are low, PISA
administrators work with schools and national project
managers to organize follow-up sessions. During each
PISA round, international monitors review both thenational centres and visit at least 25% of the selectedschools in each country to ensure quality andconsistency of data collection procedures.
PISA data have contributed to various dimensions of
this overview, including material well-being,educational well-being, subjective well-being, andchildren’s relationships.

Dimension 2

Health and safety

HBSC data have contributed to various dimensions of
this overview, including children’s material well-being,
children’s relationships, behaviours, and subjective
well-being.

*Results from the 2006 PISA were not available in time to be
included in this overview.
Sources:
Adams, R. & Wu, M., (eds.) (2002) PISA 2000 Technical Report.
Paris, OECD.
Currie, C., et al (eds.) (2004) Young People’s Health in Context.
Health Behaviour in School-age Children Study (HBSC):
International Report from the 2001/2002 Study. WHO Regional
Office for Europe.
HBSC (2005) Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Website(http://www.hbsc.org/index.html), November 2005.
OECD (2004) Learning for Tomorrow’s World: First Results fromPISA 2003. Paris, OECD.

1 8

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R eportC ard

7

Dimension 3
E ducati o na l

w e l l - being

Figure 3.0 The educational well-being of children, an OECD overview
The league table below attempts to show each country’s performance in ‘children’s educational well-being’ in relation to the average for
the OECD countries under review. Scores given are averages of the scores for the three components selected to represent children's
educational well-being (see box below).
This overview table is scaled to show each country’s distance above or below the OECD average of 100.

Belgium
CanadaPolandFinlandSwedenNetherlands
Australia
IrelandDenmark
Czech Republic
Germany
NorwayIcelandUnited States
Hungary
Switzerland
New Zealand
Spain
GreeceUnited Kingdom
FranceAustria
Italy
Portugal
85

90

95

100

Assessing educational well-being
The table on the right shows how children’s
educational well-being has been assessed. The

105

showing how far that country stands above or below
the average for the countries under review. Where
more than one indicator has been used, scores havebeen averaged. In the same way, the threecomponent scores have been averaged to arrive ateach country’s overall rating for children’s
educational well-being (see box on page 5).

115

INDICATORS

schoolachievement
at age 15– average achievement in reading
literacy– average achievement inmathematical literacy– average achievement in science
literacybeyond basics– percentage aged 15-19
remaining in education

the transition toemployment– percentage aged 15-19 not in
education, training or
employment– percentage of 15 year-olds
expecting to find low-skilled
workof internationally comparable data.
For each indicator, countries have been given a score

110

COMP ONENTS

choice of individual indicators reflects the availability

Educational well-being

80

Dimension 3

120

Educational well-be i n g

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R eport

C ard

7

1 9

Children’s educational well-being
A measure of overall child well-being
must include a consideration of how
well children are served by theeducation systems in which so large a
proportion of their childhood is spentand on which so much of their future
well-being is likely to depend. Ideallysuch a measure would reflect theextent to which each country is living
up to its commitment to Article 29 of
the Convention on the Rights of theChild which calls for ‘the developmentof the child’s personality, talents andmental and physical abilities to theirfullest potential’.
Figure 3.0 brings together the threedifferent components chosen to
represent educational well-being into
an OECD overview. Belgium andCanada head the table. The United
Kingdom, France and Austria join thefour Southern European countries at
the foot of the rankings. But perhaps
the most remarkable result is recorded
by Poland which takes third place inthe table despite being, by somemargin, the poorest country out of the
24 countries listed (with a per capita
GDP 11 of less than half that of the
only two countries ranking higher inthe table).

students to become lifelong learners andto play constructive roles as citizens insociety.” 12 To complete this survey
approximately 250,000 students in 41
countries are given a two-hourexamination designed to measure theirabilities in reading, maths and science.
The examination is set by aninternational expert group, including
both employers and educationalists, andis based on the ability to apply basic
literacy, numeracy, and scientific skills
to the management of everyday life.
Figure 3.1 combines the results into an
overall league table of school
achievement.

Some salient features: Finland, Canada, Australia, andJapan head the table.
 Four southern European countries– Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal– occupy the bottom four places.
 Norway and Denmark, usually
outstanding performers in league
tables of social indicators, are to befound in 18th and 19th places
respectively.
 The Czech Republic ranks
comfortably above the majority ofOECD countries, including manyof its larger and wealthier
European neighbours.

Figure 3.1 Educational achievement of 15 year-olds, an overview of reading,mathematical and scientific literacy.
Finland
CanadaAustralia
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
Belgium
Switzerland
United Kingdom
SwedenIrelandCzech Republic
FranceIcelandGermany

Achievement
The first component chosen to
represent educational well-being isyoung people's educational
achievements in reading, maths andscience. This is made possible by theOECD’s Programme of International
Student Assessment (PISA) which sets
out to measure, every three years, “theextent to which education systems inparticipating countries are preparing their

Dimension 3

Educational well-being

PolandAustria
NorwayDenmark
Hungary
United States
Spain
Italy
Portugal
Greece-2.0
Date: 2003

-1.5

-1.0

-0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

2 0

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Ideally, an overview of educational
well-being would also have included
some measure of the extent to which
different OECD countries prevent
low-achieving pupils from falling too
far behind the average level ofachievement. This was the issue
addressed in Report Card 4 (2002)
which found wide variations in
educational disadvantage within theOECD countries. The same study also
found that high absolute standards ofeducational achievement are notincompatible with low levels of
relative disadvantage – i.e. the besteducation systems allow highachieving pupils to fulfil theirpotential whilst not allowing others tofall too far behind.

– work and careers, families and homes,
finance and banking, leisure andcitizenship – is becoming ever more
complex. The corollary of this is thatthose with low skills and few
qualifications face a steepening inclineof disadvantage. The basic literacy,
maths and science skills measured in
Figure 3.1 are the foundation for
coping with these demands. But moreadvanced skills are increasingly
necessary if young people are to copewell with the changing demands oflabour markets. A measure of ‘beyond
basic’ skills is presented in Figure 3.2
which shows the percentage of children
who continue in education beyond thecompulsory stages. Once again, the top
half of the table is captured by
Northern European countries.

Beyond basic skills

Transition to employment

Those growing up in the OECD
countries today face a world in which
managing the ordinary business of life

How well young people manage thetransition from education to

Figure 3.2 Percentage of 15-19 year-olds in full time or part time education
OECD Nations
Belgium
Czech Republic
Germany

R eportC ard

7

employment is the third component
selected to represent educational
well-being.
Clearly the transition to paid work is
dependent not only on skills andqualifications acquired in school but
also on the training and employment
opportunities available thereafter.
Nonetheless, the transition to earning aliving is one of the important outcomesof education and is a critical stage inthe life of almost every young person.
Two complementary indicators havebeen chosen to represent that transition.
The first is the percentage of young
people aged 15 to 19 in each country
who are not in education, employment,
or training (Figure 3.3a). The second is
the percentage of young people in eachcountry who, when asked ‘what kind of
job do you expect to have when you
are about 30 years old?’, replied bylisting a job requiring low skills (Figure3.3b). Work requiring low skills isdefined using an internationallystandardized index and implies ‘notrequiring further training or
qualifications’.

PolandFranceSwedenFinland
NorwayNetherlands
Denmark
Ireland
Hungary
Switzerland
Iceland
GreeceAustralia
Spain
Italy
Austria
United Kingdom
United States
Portugal
New Zealand
Non-OECD Nations
IsraelRussian Federation
20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

School leavers who are neither intraining nor employment are clearly at
greater risk of exclusion or
marginalization. Figure 3.3a is therefore
worrying for those countries at thefoot of the table – including France
and Italy. High percentages of 15 yearolds expecting to be in low-skilled
work would also appear to be a cause
for concern in labour markets where
many low-skill jobs are under threat
from either outsourcing or
technological innovation or both. In
countries like France, Germany, and theUnited Kingdom, the proportion ofyoung people not looking beyond lowskilled work is more than 30%. In the
United States, it is less than 15%.

100

Date: 2003. Non-OECD 2003, 2002 (Russian Federation).

Dimension 3

Educational well-be i n g

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R eport

C ard

7

2 1

Figure 3.3a Percentage of 15-19 year-olds not in education,

Figure 3.3b Percentage of pupils age 15 expecting to findtraining or employment

work requiring low skills
OECD Nations

OECD Nations

NorwayUnited States

Denmark

PolandPolandGreeceSwedenPortugal

Iceland

Belgium

Netherlands

Denmark

Germany

CanadaIreland

IrelandCzech Republic

New Zealand

CanadaAustralia

Australia

Italy

Hungary

Spain

United States

Finland

Belgium

SwedenSpain

NorwaySwitzerland

Hungary

Portugal

Iceland

GreeceAustria

United Kingdom

Netherlands

FinlandGermany

Austria

United Kingdom

Italy

Czech Republic

FranceSwitzerland

Non-OECD Nations

FranceJapan

Israel
0

5

10

15

20

25

Non-OECD Nations

30

LatviaDate: 2003, 2002 (Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States). Non-OECD: 2003,
2002 (Israel).

Russian Federation
Israel
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Date: 2000

Early childhood
There is a glaring omission from thisattempt to build an overview pictureof children’s educational well-being in
the OECD countries.
For several decades, educational
research has consistently pointed to
the fact that the foundations forlearning are constructed in the earliest
months and years of life and that theeffort to give every child the best
possible start needs to begin wellbefore the years of formal education.
This growing realization, combinedwith other changes such as the rapidly
increasing participation of women in
the workforce and the steep rise in
the number of single-parent families,
has made child care into one of thebiggest issues facing both families andgovernments in the OECD countries

Dimension 3

Educational well-being

today. By the same token, it must also
be regarded as a major factor inchildren’s educational well-being.
Unfortunately, adequate andcomparable data are not available topermit the quality and availability ofchild care in different countries to be
included in this overview.
International statistics are available
showing the percentage of children
aged 0 to 2 years who are in
registered child care, but these data
speak more to the availability ofwomen for paid work and havenothing to say about the quality of thechild care provided; nor do they
address the current and considerable
controversy about the benefits of day
care for children under the age of two.
Ideally, data would have been included

on day care or pre-school provision
for 3-to-6 year-olds, and thisrepresents an obvious area for future
improvements in this overview.
On the question of how ‘quality childcare’ should be defined there is broadbut vague agreement. The OECD’s
own review of child care services has
described the essence of quality careas “a stimulating close, warm andsupportive interaction with children”. A
similar review in the United States has
concluded that “warm, sensitive andresponsive interaction between caregiverand child is considered the cornerstone ofquality” – a characteristic that is asdifficult to define and measure as it is
to deliver.

2 2

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

7

Dimension 4
R e l ati o nships
Figure 4.0 Young people’s family and peer relationships, an OECD overview
The quality of children’s relationships is as difficult to measure as it is critical to well-being. Nonetheless it was considered too importanta factor to be omitted altogether and an attempt has therefore been made to measure the quality of ‘family and peer relationships’ using
data on family structures, plus children’s own answers to survey questions. The table below shows each country’s approximate standing
in relation to the average recorded for the OECD as a whole.
The table is scaled to show each country’s distance above or below the OECD average of 100.

Italy
Portugal
Netherlands
Switzerland
Belgium
Hungary
IrelandSpain
Denmark
NorwayGreeceFranceGermany
PolandSwedenAustria
Finland
CanadaCzech Republic
United States
United Kingdom
80

85

90

95

100

Assessing young people’s relationships

105

family structure– percentage of children living insingle-parent families– percentage of children living in
stepfamilies

familyrelationships– percentage of children who
report eating the main meal ofthe day with parents more thanonce a week
– percentage of children who
report that parents spend time
‘just talking’ to thempeer relationships– percentage of 11, 13 and 15
year-olds who report finding
their peers ‘kind and helpful’

indicators used reflect the limited availability ofFor each indicator, countries have been given a score
which reveals how far that country stands above or
below the average for the OECD countries underreview. Where more than one indicator has been used,scores have been averaged. In the same way, thethree component scores have been averaged to arriveat each country’s overall rating for this ‘Relationships’
dimension of children’s well-being (see box on page 5).

115

INDICATORS‘children’s relationships’ has been constructed. Theinternationally comparable data.

110

COMP ONENTS

The box on the right shows how the index ofRelationships

75

Dimension 4120

Relationsh i p s

I nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

2 3

Children’s relationships
Relationships with family and friends
matter a great deal to children in thehere and now, and are also important tolong-term emotional and psychologicaldevelopment. Despite the obvious
problems of definition and measurement,
an attempt has therefore been made tocapture something of this criticaldimension of children’s well-being.
From the limited data available, threecomponents have been selected torepresent this dimension – family
structure, relationships with parents, andrelationships with friends and peers.
Figure 4.0 combines these into atentative OECD overview of the‘relationships’ dimension of child wellbeing.

stepfamilies have been taken into
account (although it might be notedthat the research establishing these links
has largely been conducted in the
United States and the United Kingdom
and it is not certain that the same
patterns prevail across the OECD).
It is in this context that Figures 4.1aand 4.1b present data from 25 OECD
countries showing the proportion ofchildren age 11, 13, and 15 in eachcountry who are living either with asingle-parent or in a stepfamily.
Both tables show rather different
country groupings from many of theother ranking tables in this report, with
the Southern European countries
dominating the top of the table. Overall,approximately 80% of children in the
countries under review are living withboth parents. But the range isconsiderable – from more than 90% in
Greece and Italy to less than 70% in the
United Kingdom and 60% in the
United States. 13

Parental time
In an attempt to get closer to the issue– the quality of family relationships –Figures 4.2a and 4.2b offer a measure of
how much time families devote toconversation and interaction with

Figure 4.1a Percentage of young people living in single-parent families(age 11, 13 and 15)

Family structure
The use of data on the proportion ofchildren living in single-parent families
and stepfamilies as an indicator of wellbeing may seem unfair and insensitive.
Plenty of children in two-parent families
are damaged by their parents’relationships; plenty of children insingle-parent and stepfamilies are
growing up secure and happy. Nor can
the terms ‘single-parent families’ and‘stepfamilies’ do justice to the manydifferent kinds of family unit that havebecome common in recent decades. But
at the statistical level there is evidence toassociate growing up in single-parent
families and stepfamilies with greaterrisk to well-being – including a greaterrisk of dropping out of school, ofleaving home early, of poorer health, of
low skills, and of low pay. Furthermore
such risks appear to persist even when
the substantial effect of increased
poverty levels in single-parent andDimension 4

Relationships

OECD Nations
Italy
GreeceSpain
Belgium
Portugal
PolandIrelandNetherlands
FranceAustria
Switzerland
Germany
Czech RepublicHungary
CanadaFinland
NorwayDenmark
SwedenUnited Kingdom
United States
Non-OECD Nations
Malta
Croatia
Slovenia
IsraelLithuania
Russian Federation
Estonia
Latvia0Date: 2001/02

5

10

15

20

25

2 4

I nnocenti

Figure 4.1b Percentage of young people (age 11, 13 and 15) living in stepfamilies

R eportC ard

7children. The data in these two tables
draw on the previously mentioned
Programme of International Student
Assessment (PISA) which, in addition
to testing for educational achievement,
also asks a variety of questions about
the home lives of the students whotake part in the survey.

OECD Nations
Greece
Italy
PolandSpain
Ireland
Portugal
Netherlands
Switzerland
Hungary
Austria

Among those questions: In general, how often do your parents
eat the main meal with you arounda table?
 In general, how often do your parents
spend time just talking to you?

Belgium
Germany
FranceCanadaFinlandCzech Republic
NorwaySwedenDenmark

Figures 4.2a and 4.2b show whatpercentage of young people in eachcountry answered these questions bychecking the box marked ‘several
times a week’.

United Kingdom
United States
Non-OECD Nations
Malta
Croatia
Slovenia
IsraelLithuania
Russian Federation
Estonia
Latvia
0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Date: 2001/02

Figure 4.2a Percentage of 15 year-olds who eat the main meal of the day with
their parents ‘several times per week’
OECD Nations
Italy
IcelandFranceNetherlands
Switzerland
Belgium
NorwayPortugalJapan
Denmark
SwedenEven in the lowest ranked countries,
almost two-thirds of children still
regularly eat the main meal of the daywith their families, with France and
Italy maintaining the tradition more
tenaciously. But there are significant
differences between the two tables. A
much smaller number of children
report talking regularly with theirparents, with the proportion falling
towards 50% in Germany, Iceland andCanada. The United Kingdom and theUnited States are to be found in the
top half of the ‘talking regularly’ table.
Italy is the only OECD country tofeature in the top level of both tables.

Spain
Germany
PolandIreland
Hungary
Czech Republic
CanadaAustralia
GreeceAustria
United Kingdom
United States
New ZealandFinland
Non-OECD Nations
Russian Federation
LatviaIsrael40
Date: 2000

50

60

70

80

90

100

Other data on this topic are available
from the World Health Organization’s
study Health Behaviour in School-agedChildren (HBSC). Among its findings
are that young people, and especiallygirls, find it easier to talk to theirmothers than to their fathers and thatdifficulty in communicating withparents rises significantly between theages of 11 and 15.

Relationships with friends
Relationships outside the family
assume ever greater importance as

Dimension 4

Relationsh i p s

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

children grow up. According to theWorld Health Organization ‘Being liked
and accepted by peers’ is ‘crucial to young
people's health and development, andthose who are not socially integrated are
far more likely to exhibit difficulties with
their physical and emotional health.’ Anattempt has therefore also been made toincorporate into this overview anindicator of children’s relationships withfriends and contemporaries.

7

2 5

Figure 4.2b Percentage of 15 year-olds whose parents spend time ‘just talking tothem’ several times per week
OECD Nations
Hungary
Italy
FinlandCzech Republic
Denmark
Netherlands
Portugal
United States
NorwayFranceIrelandUnited Kingdom
Japan

Figure 4.3, drawing on the HBSC study,shows the results of surveying 11, 13
and 15 year-olds in more than 30
countries with the question ‘do you findyour peers generally kind and helpful?’.
More than half were able to answer 'yes'in every OECD country except theCzech Republic and the United
Kingdom. Switzerland and Portugal top
the table with scores of around 80%.

Spain
GreeceBelgium
New ZealandSwedenAustralia
PolandSwitzerland
Austria
CanadaIcelandGermany
Non-OECD Nations
Russian Federation
LatviaThese different sets of data attempt torepresent a dimension of child wellbeing that is difficult to define, measure,and compare across nations. In someindividual OECD countries, however,more revealing information is becoming
available. The United Kingdom’s
National Family and Parenting Institute,for example, has conducted surveys toestimate the number of children who
could answer ‘yes’ to questions such as: my parent/s are always there for me
when I need them (76%)
 my parent/s make me feel loved andcared for (65%)
 I can talk to my parent/s about any
problem which I may have (56%)
 my parent/s and I argue a lot (20%)
 my parent/s do not give me theattention I need (11%)
 my parent/s make me feel bad about
myself (7%)

Israel
20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Date: 2000

Figure 4.3 Percentage of young people age 11, 13 and 15 who find their peers‘kind and helpful’OECD Nations
Switzerland
Portugal
Austria
SwedenGermany
NorwayDenmark
Netherlands
Finland
Belgium
Ireland
Hungary
CanadaGreecePolandSpain
Italy
FranceUnited States
Czech Republic
United Kingdom
Non-OECD Nations
Slovenia
Croatia

In the absence of such detailed data forother OECD countries, this attempt toinclude ‘relationships’ in the overview
of child well-being should be regarded
as an initial step towards monitoring
this dimension of child well-being.

Dimension 4

Relationships

Malta
IsraelEstonia
LatviaLithuania
Russian Federation30
Date: 2001/02

40

50

60

70

80

90

2 6

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

7

Dimension 5
B eha v i o urs

and

risks

Figure 5.0 Behaviours and risk-taking of young people, an OECD overview
Any overview of children's well-being must attempt to incorporate aspects of behaviour which are of concern to both young people
themselves and to the society in which they live. This section therefore brings together the available OECD data on such topics as
obesity, substance abuse, violence, and sexual risk-taking.
The league table below ranks each OECD country according to its average ‘behaviours and risks’ score (being the average of its scoresfor the three components selected to represent this dimension of young people’s well-being – see box below). The table is scaled toshow each country’s distance above or below the OECD average of 100.
SwedenPolandNetherlands
IrelandSpain
Denmark
Finland
GreeceCzech Republic
Italy
Germany
Switzerland
NorwayFrancePortugal
Austria
CanadaHungary
Belgium
United States
United Kingdom
75

80

85

90

95

100

The table on the right shows how the index ofrisk
behaviours– percentage of 15 year-olds who
smoke– percentage who have been drunk
more than twice– percentage who use cannabis– percentage having sex by age 15– percentage who use condoms– teenage fertility rate

experience ofviolence– percentage of 11, 13 and 15 yearolds involved in fighting in last 12
months– percentage reporting being bullied
in last 2 months

availability of internationally comparable data.
For each indicator, countries have been given ascore which reveals how far that country stands
above or below the OECD average. Where morecomponent scores have been averaged to arriveat each country’s overall rating for children’s
behaviours and risks (see box on page 5).

115– percentage of children who eat
breakfast– percentage who eat fruit daily– percentage physically active– percentage overweightchoice of individual indicators reflects the

been averaged. In the same way, the three110

healthbehaviours

children’s behaviours has been constructed. The

than one indicator has been used, scores have

105

120

COMP ONENTS INDICATORS

Assessing behaviours and risks

Behaviours and risk

70

Dimension 5

Behaviours and r i s k s

I nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

2 7

Young people’s behaviours and risks
The behaviours and risks discussed inthis section are presented not as acatalogue of social problems but as an
attempt to measure an important andelusive dimension of child well-being.
There may be many reasons why
children and young people abusedrugs, or live unhealthy lifestyles, or
become pregnant at too early an age;
but those reasons often reflect
circumstances, pressures, and selfperceptions that undermine wellbeing. In ways that are not fully
understood, they indicate problems
and pressures facing a significant
proportion of young people in the
countries under review. The outcomes,
shown in the following tables, reflect
in some degree their unpreparedness
and inability to cope with suchpressures.
Through the PISA and HBSC studies
already cited, several behavioural andrisk-taking indicators have become
available for most OECD countries.
Figure 5.0 brings 12 of these
indicators together into the threecomponents selected to represent thisdimension of child well-being –health behaviours, risk behaviours, andexperience of violence.

Figures 5.1a and 5.1b bring together
data on the two indicators that havebeen chosen to represent ‘healthyeating’. Figure 5.1a shows thepercentage of young people age 11,
13 and 15 who regularly eat
breakfast. Its value as an indicator
rests on the finding that skipping
breakfast is associated with midmorning fatigue, reduced
concentration, and a greater
likelihood of high-fat, low-fibre
snacking during the day.
Differentiation by age and gendershows that boys are more likely toeat breakfast than girls.

Dimension 5

Behaviours and risks

Guidelines drawn up by aninternational panel under the directionof the World Health Organization
recommend that all young people
should participate in physical activityof at least moderate intensity for anhour a day (‘moderate intensity’ being
defined as the ‘leaving the participant
feeling warm and slightly out ofbreath’). Figure 5.1c shows how many
11, 13 and 15 year-olds measure up to
this standard. And again the answer is‘not many’. In the OECD countries asa whole, only about a third of young
people exercise for an hour or more
on five or more days a week. Youngpeople take most exercise in Ireland,
Canada and the United States, andleast exercise in Belgium and France.

Figure 5.1b shows the percentage ofyoung people who report eating
fruit every day. Overall, only about athird of young people eat fruit daily(in the 35 countries surveyed). An
even smaller proportion reporteating vegetables every day.

Figure 5.1 Children’s health behaviour, an overview of Figures 5.1a to 5.1dPolandNetherlands
Ireland
Portugal
Czech Republic
Germany
Denmark
Austria

Health behaviours
Like several of the measures in thisreview, eating habits in childhood andadolescence are indicators of bothpresent and future well-being. Those
who eat unhealthily during the earlyyears of life are more likely tocontinue the pattern into adulthoodand to be at increased risk from healthproblems including diabetes, heartdisease, and cancer.

Figures 5.1c and 5.1d approach ‘healthbehaviours’ from a different angle byfocusing on physical activity andobesity.

SwedenSwitzerland
Spain
CanadaFranceNorwayItaly
Belgium
United Kingdom
Finland
Hungary
GreeceUnited States
-1.5

-1.0

-0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2 8

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

Figure 5.1a Percentage of young people age 11, 13 and 15

Figure 5.1b Percentage of young people age 11, 13 and 15

who report eating breakfast every school day

who report eating fruit every day

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

OECD Nations

OECD Nations

PortugalPortugal

Netherlands

PolandBelgium

Germany

SwedenCzech Republic

Denmark

Italy

Spain

GreeceIreland

Austria

FranceCanadaNorwaySpain

PolandSwitzerland

FinlandFranceGermany

IrelandItaly

Denmark

CanadaHungary

Austria

NorwayUnited Kingdom

Netherlands

Switzerland

United States

Hungary

SwedenCzech Republic

United Kingdom

United States

Belgium

GreeceFinland

Non-OECD Nations

Non-OECD Nations

LatviaIsraelEstonia

Malta

Lithuania

Slovenia

Croatia

Croatia

Russian Federation

Russian Federation

70

Malta

LatviaIsraelLithuania

Slovenia

Estonia8090

Date: 2001/02

0

10

20

30

40

11, 13, and 15 report being physically active for one hour or moreof the previous/typical week

Figure 5.1d Percentage of young people age 13 and 15 whoreport being overweight
OECD Nations

OECD Nations

Date: 2001/02

60

Date: 2001/02

Figure 5.1c Mean number of days on which young people age

2.5

50

7

3.0

3.5

4.0

Ireland

PolandCanadaNetherlands

United States

Switzerland

Czech RepublicCzech Republic

Austria

Denmark

United Kingdom

Belgium

Netherlands

SwedenPolandFranceGreeceGermany

SwedenNorwaySwitzerland

Austria

Denmark

IrelandFinland

Hungary

Spain

Finland

Hungary

Portugal

Germany

Italy

Italy

United Kingdom

NorwayGreecePortugal

Spain

Belgium

CanadaFranceUnited States

Non-OECD Nations

Non-OECD Nations

Lithuania

Lithuania

Slovenia

Russian Federation

Croatia

LatviaLatviaEstonia

Malta

Croatia

Russian Federation

IsraelEstonia

Slovenia

Israel

Malta

4.5

5.0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Date: 2001/02

Dimension 5

Behaviours and r i s k s

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

In all countries and all age groups
surveyed, boys are more likely to bephysically active than girls.
Figure 5.1d shows the prevalence ofobesity among 13 and 15 year-olds in
21 OECD countries and is based onasking young people to give theirweights and heights (a question whichyielded low response rates, possibly
indicating that the figures areunderestimates). Poland and theNetherlands have the smallest
proportion of overweight young
people. The highest levels of obesity
are to be found in the four Southern
European countries (Spain, Greece,
Italy and Portugal) plus the UnitedStates, Canada, and United Kingdom.
Countries at the foot of this league
table can expect problems in the
future; as the EU HealthCommissioner has said: “Today’s
overweight teenagers are tomorrow's heart
attack victims”.
Figure 5.1 brings all of these factors
together and shows that in mostcountries young people’s healthbehaviours do not deviate very far
from the average for the OECD as awhole. The exceptions are Poland,
where children's health behaviours are
considerably better than average, andthe United States whose overall
ranking suffers because of high levelsof obesity.

7

2 9

occupied by English-speaking
countries and the United Kingdom
finds itself at the foot of the rankings
by a considerable distance.
Figure 5.2a presents data on smoking,well-known as the leading cause ofpremature illness and death in the richworld. Overall, it shows that 10% ormore of young people in OECD
countries are smoking at least once aweek by the age of 15. The HBSC
survey from which the data is drawn
puts the result more positively: “84%of young people report that they do notsmoke. About one third of the 16% who
smoke do so less than once a week.”
The same survey reports that in 23
out of 35 countries girls are more
likely to smoke than boys.
Alcohol, cannabis, sexual relations
Figure 5.2b shows the percentage ofyoung people aged 11, 13 and 15
who, answered ‘two or more times’
when asked ‘how often have you had
so much alcohol that you were reallydrunk?’. In the majority of OECD
countries, fewer than 15% of young
people report being drunk on two or
more occasions. In the Netherlands,
the figure rises to over a quarter andin the UK to almost a third.

The percentage of 15 year-olds who
have used cannabis (Figure 5.2c) also
appears to vary widely across theOECD countries – from fewer than
5% in Greece and Sweden to over
30% in Canada, Spain, Switzerland,
the United States and the United
Kingdom. Canada is the only country
with a cannabis use rate of over 40%
among 15 year-olds. Regular cannabis
use is associated with depression,
physical ill health, problems at school,
and with other forms of risk-taking. It
may also trigger psychoses, especiallyin young people already prone to suchconditions.
There is rather less but still significant
variation in the percentage of young
people who have had sexualintercourse by the age of 15 (Figure5.2d). For 16 of the 17 OECD
countries with available data, theproportion is between 15% and 28%;
for the United Kingdom it is almost
40%. Most countries have made efforts
to educate young people about thedangers of HIV/AIDS and sexuallytransmitted disease and this is reflectedin the rate of condom use. Among
15 year-olds who have had sex, thegreat majority (between 65% and90%) used a condom (Figure 5.2e).

Figure 5.2 Young people’s risk behaviour, an overview of tables 5.2a to 5.2f
GreeceSpain
Italy

Risk behaviours

FranceThe second component chosen to
represent this dimension is theprevalence of risk-taking among
young people – including smoking,drug and alcohol abuse, hazardous
sexual activity, and becoming pregnant
at too early an age.

NorwayNetherlands
PolandIrelandDenmark
SwedenAustria
Switzerland
Belgium
Hungary
Portugal
Czech Republic

Figure 5.2 combines the available dataon all of these risks into an overall
OECD league table of young people’srisk behaviours. Three of the bottom
five places in the league table are

Dimension 5

Behaviours and risks

CanadaUnited States
FinlandGermany
United Kingdom
-2.0

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

3 0

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

Figure 5.2a Percentage of students age 11, 13 and 15 who

Figure 5.2b Percentage of students age 11, 13 and 15 who

smoke cigarettes at least once a weekreport having been drunk two or more times

0

2

4

6

8

10

OECD Nations

OECD Nations

GreeceFranceSwedenItaly

United States

GreeceCanadaSpain

Denmark

United States

Ireland

Portugal

NorwayNetherlands

Belgium

Switzerland

Netherlands

Ireland

Italy

Belgium

Switzerland

Czech Republic

PolandAustria

FrancePolandPortugal

NorwayHungary

SwedenSpain

Hungary

United Kingdom

Germany

Austria

CanadaFinlandDenmark

Czech Republic

FinlandGermany

United Kingdom

Non-OECD Nations

Non-OECD Nations

IsraelIsraelCroatia

Malta

Malta

Croatia

Slovenia

LatviaLithuania

Slovenia

Estonia

Russian Federation

LatviaEstonia

Russian Federation

Lithuania

12

14

16

18

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

7

35

Date: 2001/02

Date: 2001/02

Figure 5.2c Percentage of students age 11, 13 and 15 who

Figure 5.2d Percentage of 15 year-olds who report having hadreport having used cannabis in the last 12 months

sexual intercourse
OECD Nations

OECD Nations

GreecePolandSwedenSpain

FinlandCzech Republic

Austria

Austria

Hungary

Hungary

PolandGreeceGermany

FrancePortugal

Switzerland

IrelandNetherlands

Italy

Italy

Denmark

CanadaNetherlands

Belgium

Belgium

Portugal

Czech Republic

Germany

FranceFinland

Spain

SwedenUnited States

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Non-OECD Nations

Switzerland

Croatia

CanadaEstonia

Non-OECD Nations

LatviaLithuania

Lithuania

Malta

IsraelIsraelSlovenia

LatviaRussian Federation

Russian Federation0

Croatia

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Date: 2001/02

Estonia
Slovenia
0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Date: 2001/02

Dimension 5

Behaviours and r i s k s

I nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

3 1

Figure 5.2e Percentage of 15 year-olds who used a condom

Figure 5.2f Teenage fertility rate: births per 1,000 women

during their last sexual intercourse

age 15-19
OECD Nations

OECD Nations

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Spain

Japan

GreeceNetherlands

FranceSwitzerland

Austria

Denmark

Switzerland

Italy

Hungary

Spain

Netherlands

SwedenCanadaFinland

Portugal

FrancePolandNorwayBelgium

Belgium

United Kingdom

Germany

Germany

IrelandFinland

PolandSwedenGreeceNon-OECD Nations

Australia

IsraelCanada80

LatviaAustria

Lithuania

Czech Republic

Croatia

PortugalSlovenia

Hungary

Estonia

United Kingdom

90

New Zealand

100

United States

Date: 2001/02

Non-OECD Nations
Slovenia
Croatia

Many of the risk behaviours featured
in these tables are related oroverlapping. Young people who smoke
cigarettes, for example, areapproximately three times more likely
to use alcohol regularly and eighttimes more likely to use cannabis.
Teenage births
Teenage fertility rates in OECD
countries (Figure 5.2f) also varyconsiderably – from as few as 5 to as
many as 45 births for every 1,000 girls
aged 15 to 19.
For most girls growing up in anOECD country, the norm today is anextended education, a career, a twoincome household, delayedchildbearing and a small family. And it
is in this context that teenage
pregnancy has become a significant
problem: giving birth at too young an
age is now associated with wideranging disadvantage for both motherand child – including a greater
likelihood of dropping out of school,of having no or low qualifications, of
being unemployed or low-paid, and ofliving in poor housing conditions. But

Dimension 5

Behaviours and risks

IsraelEstonia
LatviaLithuania
Russian Federation
0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Date: 2003

as always, association is not the sameas cause. Many girls who give birth intheir teens have themselves grown up
with the kind of poverty anddisadvantage that would be likely tohave negative consequences whether
or not they wait until they are in their
twenties before having children.
Becoming pregnant while still ateenager may make these problems
worse, but not becoming pregnant
will not make them go away.

having a baby to love and be loved by,with a small income from benefits anda home of her own, may seem a more
attractive option than the alternatives.
A teenager doing well at school andlooking forward to an interesting andwell-paid career, and who issurrounded by family and friends who
have similarly high expectations, islikely to feel that giving birth would
de-rail both present well-being andfuture hopes.

Beyond the immediate problem,
teenage fertility levels may also serveas an indicator of an aspect of young
people’s lives that is otherwise hard tocapture. To a young person with little
sense of current well-being – unhappy
and perhaps mistreated at home,miserable and under-achieving at
school, and with only an unskilled andlow-paid job to look forward to –It is as an approximate measure ofwhat proportion of teenagers fall on
which side of this divide that theteenage fertility rates shown in Figure
5.2f may be an especially significant
indicator of young people’s well-being.

Experience of violence
Aggression and violence in all its
forms – bullying, fighting, abuse –3 2

I nnocenti

shadow the lives of many young
people, making the time of life that
adults like to think of as happy andcarefree into a time of anxiety andmisery. In particular, exposure toviolence in the home – both directly
through child abuse and indirectly
through witnessing aggression andviolence between adults – can be acause of enduring distress and damage
to children of all ages. 14

Both of these tables need to be treatedwith caution. The fact that thechildren of the Czech Republicsimultaneously appear at the top of
the ‘fighting’ table and at the bottomof the ‘bullying’ league, for example, is
not necessarily inconsistent. The
distinction between bullying andfighting is, at the margins, an issue ofperception, and the subtleties of the
distinction may occasionally be erodedin translation. The definition used by
the survey quoted, and submitted tointerviewees as a preliminary to thequestion on bullying, illustrates thedifficulty: “We say a student is beingbullied when another student, or groupof students, says or does nasty andunpleasant things to him or her. It is

In 18 of the 21 countries surveyed,
the proportion of those involved infighting in the previous 12 months(Figure 5.3a) was over one third,
ranging from fewer than 30% in
Finland and Germany to more than
45% in the Czech Republic andHungary. Overall, about 40% of all
young people in countries surveyedreported involvement in at least one
physical fight during the previous year.

C ard

7

also bullying when a student is teased
repeatedly in a way he or she doesn't
like, or when he or she is deliberately left
out of things. But it is not bullying when
two students of about the same strength
quarrel or fight. It is also not bullying
when the teasing is done in a friendly
and playful way.”

The prevalence of bullying (Figure5.3b) varies more widely, with about
15% of children reporting beingbullied in Sweden and the Czech
Republic as opposed to more than
40% in Switzerland, Austria, andPortugal. About a third of young
people in the countries surveyedreport being bullied at least once
during the two months prior to thesurvey. A similar proportion reported
bullying others.

Unfortunately, exposure to violence isdifficult to define and the available
indicators are inadequate to the task ofreflecting either present misery or
future consequence. Figures 5.3a and5.3b bring together the few data on
what children themselves have to say
about this issue.

R eportFigure 5.3 Young people who report not being involved in fighting, or being bullied,an overview of tables 5.3a and 5.3b

Figure 5.3 brings both ‘fighting’ and‘bullying’ indicators into a composite
table, but remains an inadequate
representation of young people’s
experience of violence in the
countries concerned. What is needed
is more information on children’s
exposure to violence of all kinds inthe home. National studies show thatchildren who often witness violence
between others in the home are also
most likely to be victims of violence
themselves, and both forms of
exposure represent incalculable levelsof current misery and long-term
damage to the development and wellbeing of many millions of children.
Report Card 5 (September 2003)
concluded that in some industrialized
nations today as many as one child in
every 15 is the victim of serious
maltreatment and that this is an issue
which needs to be dragged out fromthe shadows of national life and into
the daylight of public and political
scrutiny.

FinlandSwedenGermany
Netherlands
Italy
IrelandSpain
Czech Republic
NorwaySwitzerland
PolandUnited States
Denmark
GreeceCanadaFranceHungary
Belgium
United Kingdom
Portugal
Austria
-1.0

-0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

Dimension 5

Behaviours and r i s k s

I nnocenti

R eport

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7

3 3

Figure 5.3a Percentage of young people age

Figure 5.3b Percentage of young people age

11, 13 and 15 who report having been involved
in fighting in the previous 12 months

11, 13 and 15 who report being bullied in theprevious 2 months
OECD Nations

0

10

20

30

SwedenGermany

Czech Republic

Switzerland

Hungary

SwedenFinland

Portugal

GreeceCanadaSpain

United States

IrelandNetherlands

Italy

NorwayNetherlands

FranceBelgium

Italy

PolandDenmark

Denmark

PolandNorwayAustria

United States

IrelandFranceSpain

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Germany

GreeceCanadaBelgium

Switzerland

Czech Republic

Austria

Hungary

Portugal

Non-OECD Nations

Non-OECD Nations

Croatia

Slovenia

IsraelMalta

LatviaCroatia

Slovenia

IsraelMalta

Russian Federation

Russian Federation

Estonia50

Estonia

LatviaLithuania

Lithuania
60

0

10

Date: 2001/02

Date: 2001/02

Dimension 5

40OECD Nations

Finland

Behaviours and risks

20

30

40

50

60

70

3 4

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7

Dimension 6
S ubjecti v ew e l l - being

Figure 6.0 Subjective well-being of young people, an OECD overview
This section attempts to give depth to this overview of child well-being by taking into account children’s own perceptions, drawing on
international surveys of children’s and young people’s opinions. The table below brings the results into a composite overview ofchildren’s own subjective sense of well-being.
The table is scaled to show each country’s distance above or below the OECD average of 100 and shows each country’s standing in
relation to the average for the OECD as a whole.

Netherlands
Spain
GreeceAustria
Ireland
Switzerland
SwedenNorwayGermany
Italy
FinlandDenmark
Hungary
Portugal
CanadaBelgium
Czech Republic
FrancePolandUnited Kingdom
85

90

95

100

Subjective well-being

105

110

115

120

COMP ONENTS

INDICATORS

health– percentage of young people
rating their own health no morethan ‘fair’ or ‘poor’school life

– percentage of young people‘liking school a lot’

personal wellbeing– percentage of children rating
themselves above the mid-pointof a ‘Life Satisfaction Scale’– percentage of children reporting
negatively about personal wellbeing

The box on the right shows how the index ofchildren’s subjective well-being has been constructed.
The choice of individual indicators reflects theavailability of internationally comparable data.
For each indicator, countries have been given a score
which reveals how far that country stands above or
below the average for the OECD countries underreview. Where more than one indicator has been
used, scores have been averaged. In the same way,
the three component scores have been averaged toarrive at each country’s overall rating for children’s
subjective well-being (see box on page 5).

Subjective well-being

80

Dimension 6

Subjective well-be i n g

I nnocenti

R eport

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7

3 5

Young people’s subjective assessments of well-being
Various elements in this overview ofchild well-being have attempted toreflect children's own views and voices– for example the surveys of reported
family affluence, experience ofbullying, or the frequency ofcommunication with parents. The
inclusion of ‘subjective well-being’, asa distinct dimension, represents anattempt to focus more directly onchildren's perceptions of their own
well-being.
Three components have been selected
to represent this dimension – theproportion of young people rating
their own health no more than ‘fair’or ‘poor’, the proportion who report‘liking school a lot’, and a measure ofchildren’s overall satisfaction with theirown lives.

Subjective assessment of healthpercentage of young people rating their own health as ‘fair or poor’11 year-olds

13 year-olds

15 year-olds

Girls

15.7

20.8

27.2

Boys

12.1

13.6

16.1

Source: Young People’s Health in Context, Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) study:
international report from the 2001/2002 survey, WHO, 2004, p. 57

that gender differences in self-reported
health status are related to thedifferent physiological andpsychological pressures brought by theonset of puberty. Girls, for example,
may be under greater pressure toworry about body image and to be
more aware of and/or sensitive totheir own physical and emotional
state (and therefore, perhaps, to havea lower threshold for self reported
poor health).

Figure 6.1 Percentage of young people age 11, 13 and 15
who rate their health as ‘fair or poor’OECD Nations
Spain
Switzerland
GreeceFinlandCzech Republic

Bringing the available data together(Figure 6.0) shows that children's
subjective sense of well-being appears
to be markedly higher in the
Netherlands, Spain, and Greece andmarkedly lower in Poland and theUnited Kingdom. Unfortunately
insufficient data are available for theUnited States which therefore could
not be included in this section.

Italy
Ireland
Belgium
SwedenCanadaPolandDenmark
Germany
Hungary
Austria
Netherlands
NorwayPortugal

Perceptions of health
Surveys of young people’s own
perception of their own health show
that, in virtually all OECD countries
for which data are available, girls
report lower levels of health than boys
and that this difference gradually
increases with age. This finding does
not appear to vary a great deal acrossdifferent national social and culturalcontexts and it therefore seems likely

Dimension 6

Subjective well-being

United States
United Kingdom
Non-OECD Nations
IsraelSlovenia
Estonia
Croatia
Malta
LatviaRussian Federation
Lithuania
5
Date: 2001/02

10

15

20

25

30

35

3 6

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Figure 6.2 Percentage of students age 11, 13 and 15 who report ‘liking school a lot’

R eportC ard

7

Figure 6.1 shows the percentage of11, 13 and 15 year-olds in eachcountry who replied ‘fair’ or ‘poor’when asked the question ‘Would you
say that your health is excellent, good,
fair, or poor?’. Overall, approximately
80% of young people consider theirhealth to be good or excellent inevery OECD country except theUnited Kingdom.

OECD Nations
NorwayAustria
Netherlands
Portugal
Germany
GreeceHungary
United States
Spain
Ireland
Switzerland

SchoolCanadaFranceA broad measure of how happy
young people are during theirschooldays is provided by the HBSC
survey which questioned
representative groups of children in
35 countries about their attitudes tothe time spent in school. Specifically,
it asked children aged 11, 13, and 15
to tick one of four possible attitudes
to school – ‘I like it a lot, I like it abit, I don’t like it very much, or I
don’t like it at all’.

SwedenDenmark
United Kingdom
Belgium
PolandItaly
Czech Republic
Finland
Non-OECD Nations
Malta
Slovenia
LatviaLithuania
IsraelRussian Federation
Croatia
Estonia
0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Figure 6.2 shows how many
answered – ‘I like it a lot’. And theanswer is ‘not many’.

Date: 2001/02

Better data for EU countries
Since 2004, the 25 countries of the European Union(EU) have been developing a new statistical data
source, known as Community Statistics on Incomeand Living Conditions (EU-SILC).
EU-SILC aims to become the reference source ofcomparative statistics on income distribution andliving conditions within the EU. A primary purpose of
EU-SILC is to monitor the common indicators (theso-called Laeken Indicators) by which the EU has
agreed to measure its progress towards reducing
poverty and social exclusion.
EU-SILC therefore replaces the European Community
Household Panel (ECHP) which was the main sourceof such data from 1994 until 2001 (for the then 15
Member States of the EU). Designed to fill some of
the acknowledged gaps and weaknesses of the
ECHP, EU-SILC collects every year comparable andup-to-date cross-sectional data on income, poverty,social exclusion and other aspects of living
conditions – as well as longitudinal data on income

and on a limited set of non-monetary indicators ofsocial exclusion.
The first EU-SILC data for all 25 Member States of thecurrent EU, plus Norway and Iceland, should beavailable by the end of 2006. The first 4-year
longitudinal data on ‘those at-persistent-risk-of-poverty’will be available by the beginning of 2010.
In addition to populating these core indicators, eachround of EU-SILC also gathers data on one particulartheme – beginning in 2005 with data on the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

For more information on EU-SILC and the EU Laeken indicators, aswell as an in-depth analysis of the major challenges facing the EU
Social Inclusion Process, see E. Marlier, A.B. Atkinson, B. Cantillon
and B. Nolan (2006), The EU and social inclusion: Facing thechallenges, Policy Press, Bristol
See also:
Bradshaw, J., Hoelscher, P. and Richardson, D. (2007) An index ofchild well-being in the European Union, Journal of Social
Indicators Research. 1, 2007

Dimension 6

Subjective well-be i n g

I nnocenti

R eport

C ard

The Netherlands and Norway, alongwith Austria, again find themselves at
the head of the table with over a thirdof their schoolchildren admitting to‘liking school a lot’. The proportion
drops below 15% in Finland, theCzech Republic, and Italy.

7

3 7

Figure 6.3a Percentage of young people age 11, 13 and 15 who rate themselves above
the middle of the life satisfaction scaleOECD Nations
Netherlands
GreeceFinland
Switzerland
Austria
Belgium
Spain

Once again this is an overview whichmasks gender and age differences, withgirls tending to like school more thanboys and older children tending tolike school less than younger.

Denmark
Ireland
CanadaSwedenGermany
Italy
FranceWith some exceptions, such as
Finland, there appears to be a positive
relationship between liking school andeducational achievement. A selfreinforcing relationship between thetwo seems likely, with young people
who do well tending to like school
and those who like school tending to
do well.

Hungary
United Kingdom
Czech Republic
United States
NorwayPortugal
PolandNon-OECD Nations
IsraelSlovenia
Malta
Croatia

Life satisfaction

LatviaFigures 6.3a and 6.3b attempt togauge children’s overall satisfaction
with themselves and their lives.
The first (Figure 6.3a) is based on
putting the following question tochildren aged 11, 13, and 15:‘Here is a picture of a ladder. The
top of the ladder,10, is the best
possible life for you and thebottom, 0, is the worst possible life
for you. In general, where on theladder do you feel you stand at
the moment? Tick the box next tothe number that best describes
where you stand.’

Estonia
Russian Federation
Lithuania
40

50

60

A score of 6 or more was treated as apositive level of life satisfaction and
Figure 6.3a clearly shows that thegreat majority of young people
growing up in all OECD countries
score themselves above this midpointon the ‘life satisfaction ladder’.
In the OECD countries as a whole,
there is a slight trend towards
decreasing life satisfaction between theages of 11 and 15, particularly for girls.

‘Life Satisfaction Ladder’
percentage of young people rating themselves above the mid-point
11 year-olds

13 year-olds

15 year-olds

Girls

87.1

82.5

77.4

Boys

88.1

86.9

84.5

Source: Young People’s Health in Context, Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) study:
international report from the 2001/2002 survey, WHO, 2004, p. 57 (note: the table draws not only
on data from OECD countries but from all 35 countries surveyed under the HBSC programme).

Dimension 6

Subjective well-being

70

80

90

100

Date: 2001/02

Out of place
Figure 6.3b attempts to explore
psychological and social aspects ofsubjective well-being, such as feelingsof awkwardness, loneliness, and ‘being
an outsider’ – perceptions of social
exclusion that can significantly affect
the quality of young people’s lives.
The table brings together the resultsof asking young people to agree ordisagree with three statements about
themselves:
 I feel like an outsider or left
out of things
 I feel awkward and out of place I feel lonely
Overall, the responses reveal a
remarkable consistency across most of
the OECD countries and a high levelof life satisfaction among its young

3 8

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Figure 6.3b Percentage of 15 year-olds agreeing with specific negative statements

R eportC ard

7people. In most nations, theproportion of young people agreeing
with the statements is at the lower
end of the 5% to 10% range. A higher
proportion of children agreed withthe statement ‘I feel awkward and outof place’ but even here the proportion
answering ‘yes’ exceeded 10% in only
8 out of 24 OECD countries. The
most striking individual result is the
30% of young people in Japan who
agreed with the statement ‘I feellonely’ – almost three times higher
than the next highest-scoring country.
Either this reflects a difficulty oftranslating the question into a
different language and culture, or a
problem meriting further
investigation, or both. 

about personal well-being
OECD Nations
Australia
Austria
Belgium
CanadaCzech Republic
Denmark
FinlandFranceGermany
GreeceHungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
NorwayPolandPortugal
Spain
SwedenSwitzerland
United Kingdom
Non-OECD Nations
IsraelLatviaRussian Federation
05

Date: 2003. Non-OECD 2003, 2000

10

15

20

25

30

35

I feel like an outsider or left out of things
I feel awkward and out of place
I feel lonely

Dimension 6

Subjective well-be i n g

I nnocenti

R eport

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3 9

c o nc l usi o n

Taken together, the six dimensions ofchild well-being assessed in thesepages represent a significant step
forward in measuring and comparing
children’s well-being across thecountries of the OECD.
There are significant relationships
between some of the dimensions
chosen. Poverty, for example, affects
many aspects of child well-being inmany well-documented ways:
particularly when prolonged, poverty
has been shown to be likely to havean effect on children’s health,cognitive development, achievement at
school, aspirations, self-perceptions,relationships, risk behaviours andemployment prospects. Equally clearly,
economic poverty alone is revealed as
an inadequate measure of children’s
overall well-being. A multidimensional approach to well-being isnecessary to improve understanding,monitoring, and policy effectiveness.
It is tempting to take the process one
stage further and combine the scoresof all countries under all dimensions
into an overall OECD league table ofchild well-being. Other than listing
countries according to their averageranking (page 2), this temptation has
been resisted. In part this is tomaintain opacity and avoid leaning
too hard on limited data; composite
indicators, of which this report has
made plentiful use, need to be astransparent as possible both to keep
the process open to debate and toConclusion

avoid elevating the data to heights ofauthority that their foundations can
not sustain. But in part, also, reducing
the overview to a single score or
number would undermine theemphasis on children’s well-being as amulti-dimensional issue requiring awide range of policy responses.
Sometimes the whole can be less than
the sum of the parts.

Findings that have been recorded andaveraged may create an impression of
precision but are in reality theequivalent of trying to reproduce avast and complex mountain range in
relatively simple geometric shapes. In
addition, the process of international
comparison can never be freed fromquestions of translation, culture, andcustom.

This first multi-dimensional overview
is best regarded as a work in progress,
in need of improved definitions andbetter data. But in the process it iseasy to become ensnared in the data
and to lose sight of what it is that weare trying to capture. When we
attempt to measure children’s wellbeing what we really seek to know iswhether children are adequately
clothed and housed and fed andprotected, whether their circumstances
are such that they are likely to
become all that they are capable ofbecoming, or whether they are
disadvantaged in ways that make it
difficult or impossible for them toparticipate fully in the life andopportunities of the world aroundthem. Above all we seek to knowwhether children feel loved, cherished,special and supported, within thefamily and community, and whether
the family and community are being
supported in this task by public policy
and resources.

But a start has been made.

The measures used in this report fallshort of such nuanced knowledge.

All families in OECD countries today
are aware that childhood is being reshaped by forces whose mainspring is
not necessarily the best interests of thechild. At the same time, a wide publicin the OECD countries is becoming
ever more aware that many of thecorrosive social problems affecting thequality of life have their genesis in thechanging ecology of childhood. Many
therefore feel that it is time to attempt
to re-gain a degree of understanding,control and direction over what ishappening to our children in theirmost vital, vulnerable years.
That process begins withmeasurement and monitoring. And it
is as a contribution to that process that
the Innocenti Research Centre has
published this initial attempt at a
multi-dimensional overview of childwell-being in the countries of theOECD. 

4 0

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Guiding lights
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the ChildThe choice of indicators for this assessment of childwell-being in OECD countries is heavily circumscribedby the limited availability of internationally comparable
data. But the selection and deployment of the data thatare available reflects a concept of child well-being
which needs to be spelt out.
Its starting point is the Convention on the Rights of theChild that has been agreed on by virtually all countries.
Although universal in status, the Convention
acknowledges that child economic, social and culturalrights must be implemented progressively taking into
account the specific context of each nation. The rightto ‘an adequate standard of living’ (Article 27) or to ‘thehighest attainable standard of health care’ (Article 24),for example, calls for national definitions and isdependent on the resources and commitment of thesociety in which the child lives.
By concentrating on the well-being of children in agroup of the world’s economically developed countries,
this Report Card is able to give some degree ofpractical expression to this ideal: a country cannot be
said to be securing for its children the ‘highest
attainable standard of health care’ or investing in its
children ‘to the maximum extent of available resources’
if children have no priority on the national agenda andif other countries at a similar stage of economic
development are demonstrably achieving higher
standards of health care and investing more resourcesin children.
Unfortunately, a lack of internationally comparable data
has prevented the report from adequately addressing
some important dimensions of children’s lives. By andlarge, internationally comparable data tend to depict
the situation of children who are living at home and inmainstream education, whereas the Convention
requires that particular attention be devoted to
excluded and disadvantaged children such as thoseliving with disabilities, those who are refugees, thosefrom ethnic minorities, those from immigrant families,
and those being cared for in institutions.
In other respects, the report is able to shadow theConvention more closely, for example in its emphasison the importance of growing up in a happy and loving
family environment, on the child's right to an adequate
standard of living, to social security, to protection fromviolence and exploitation, to the highest attainable
standard of health care, to social services, and toequitable access to educational opportunity. The report
also attempts to reflect the Convention’s position thatthe promotion of the rights of the child is important for
its own sake as well as being a critical investment in the
future of society.
Finally, the report takes note of the child's right to beheard and, to this end, incorporates a dimension that isbased solely on children's own subjective sense of theirown well-being.
National measures
This overview also draws on other multi-dimensional
measures of child well-being that have been pioneeredby governments, non-governmental organizations, andby academic institutions in individual nations.
In the United States, for example, an annually-updated
composite index of child well-being has been in use formore than 30 years. Grouping 28 indicators into sevencategories (material well-being, health, safety/
behavioural concerns, productive activity, place in thecommunity, social relationships, and emotional/spiritualwell-being), the index enables comparisons to be madebetween states though not, of course, between
countries.
The government of the United Kingdom has also
developed its own system for measuring and monitoringchild well-being. Designed principally as a means of
tracking the performance of different government
departments, the system uses 25 separate indicators
under five headings: be healthy; stay safe; enjoy andachieve; make a positive contribution; achieve economic
well-being. This framework stresses the positive whilstemphasising both the rights and responsibilities ofchildren and families. A more detailed independent
overview of child well-being in the United Kingdom has
also been published by the NGO Save the Children*.
A similarly comprehensive overview was developed in
the 1990s in the Republic of Ireland, with children
participating in the selection of the 42 indicators used.

7

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7

Material goods and leisure activities were not, ingeneral, seen as top priority by children. Relationships
with family were seen as the most important
determinant of well-being, followed by friends, school,and pets (the fact that 'health and safety' did notfeature highly in children's priorities shows that there is
still a place for adult input in the selection ofindicators).
Efforts to develop multi-dimensional indicators are also
underway in Austria, in France, and in Germany (whereindicators are based on the concept of Lebenslage –defining child well-being by the scope given for thedevelopment of each child's interests and capabilities).
UNICEF has also supported efforts to develop multidimensional indicators of child well-being not only inthe world’s poorest countries but in Ecuador, Argentina
and Mexico (an OECD country which would have been
included in this Report Card had internationallycomparable data been available).
International measurement
The monitoring and comparison of child well-being
faces even greater data problems when the focus
shifts, as in this report, to international comparison.
But this is slowly changing. The HBSC and PISA
surveys quoted extensively in this report (see box)
have added enormously to our knowledge of children’swell-being and of what, in practice, constitutes ‘thehighest available standard’ in such fields as health careand education.
In addition to these efforts, an international expert
group drawn from different academic disciplines
launched the Multi-National Project for Monitoring and
Measuring Children’s Well-Being (http://multinationalindicators.chapinhall.org). This initiative arose partly inresponse to UNICEF’s own Progress of Nations reportwhich attempted to monitor the well-being of children
in developing countries using basic yardsticks such asrates of malnutrition, immunization, and primary school
enrolment. Such measures were found to be of limited
relevance in countries where the most basic ofphysical needs are met for the great majority, and thissparked a search for ways and means of monitoring
progress ‘beyond the basics’. After initial discussions
in the late 1990s, a second stage of the work has

4 1

concentrated on a scientific protocol for collecting dataon child well-being and on building a network of
researchers to collaborate on collecting anddisseminating the necessary data. The participants inthis project agreed on some 50 indicators, grouped
under five domains – safety and physical status,
personal life, civic life, children's economic resources
and contributions, and children's activities. After morethan a decade of work, the project has eventually led,
in 2006, to the establishment of an International
Society for Child Indicators (ISCI). The aim of thesociety is to develop a network dedicated to improving
measurement, data collection, analysis, and thedissemination of information about the status ofchildren. ISCI further seeks to enhance the capacity ofcountries in the initial stages of producing child wellbeing indicators, and to strengthen links between
measurement, analysis and policy.
Six dimensions
The overview of child well-being set out in this Report
Card has drawn upon and learnt from all of these
efforts (which clearly share much common ground).
In practice, data for ‘ideal indicators’ of the different
aspects of child well-being were often unavailable (ornot available on an internationally comparable basis). In
such cases, it was decided to press ahead using thebest data available for the countries under review.
The result is an overview which, despite theacknowledged gaps and inadequacies, represents asignificant improvement on any international
assessment of overall child well-being currently
unavailable.
The Report Card aims to make as transparent as
possible the method by which each dimension has
been assessed. Further information and background
papers, including reference to the raw data used, areavailable via the web site of UNICEF's Innocenti Centre
at www.unicef.org/irc*Bradshaw, J. and Mayhew, E. (eds.) (2005) The well-being ofchildren in the UK, Save the Children, London.

4 2

I nnocenti

Dimensions

7

Health and safety

Measles: % children immunized
aged 12-23 months: 2003

DPT3: % children immunized
aged 12-23 months: 2002.

Polio 3: % children immunized
aged 12-23 months: 2002.

16.4

4.9

9.5

4.8

6.4

93

93

93

16.7

9.3

2.1

4.5

7.1

79

83

82

21.0

11.7

4.0

4.3

6.5

75

90

95

10.7

21.9

6.4

3.0

5.4

5.8

95

91

89

40.2

27.8

1.9

7.2

3.9

6.6

99

98

97

2.4

13.5

27.2

7.4

4.1

4.4

5.5

96

98

98

3.4

17.8

20.5

5.1

3.1

3.1

4.1

97

98

95

France

7.3

16.1

25.4

9.1

6.2

3.9

6.6

86

97

98

Germany

10.9

16.4

17.6

6.9

8.8

4.2

6.8

92

89

95

Greece

12.4

28.7

61.8

7.2

2.4

4.8

8.3

88

88

87

Hungary

13.1

38.7

44.1

4.1

11.3

7.3

8.7

99

99

99

8.4

3.3

2.4

3.1

93

95

91

Ireland

15.7

20.7

31.0

10.4

6.9

5.1

4.9

78

85

84

Italy

15.7

25.8

9.0

3.8

4.3

6.5

83

96

96

Japan

14.3

53.3

9.8

0.4

3.0

9.1

99

96

81

Netherlands

9.0

18.3

12.6

5.7

4.8

5.4

96

98

98

New Zealand

14.6

21.9

6.1

7.1

5.6

6.1

85

90

82

Norway

3.6

5.8

11.9

4.6

4.6

3.4

4.9

84

91

91

Poland

14.5

43.1

42.5

8.4

9.3

7.0

5.9

97

99

98

Portugal

15.6

28.9

33.9

12.9

1.7

4.1

7.4

96

98

96

Spain

15.6

22.4

24.7

4.4

4.2

4.1

6.8

97

96

96

Sweden

3.6

9.2

18.2

4.5

2.7

3.1

4.5

94

98

99

Switzerland

6.8

13.1

22.7

10.9

1.8

4.3

6.5

82

95

94

United Kingdom

16.2

15.3

20.1

9.4

7.9

5.3

7.6

80

91

91

United States

21.7

13.1

24.2

12.2

2.3

7.0

7.9

93

94

90

Mean

11.2

19.8

27.0

7.9

5.0

4.6

6.4

90

94

93

Standard Dev

5.1

10.7

12.2

3.1

2.9

1.2

1.4

8

5

6

REVERSED

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

NO

Percentage of children reporting
low family affluence, aged 11, 13
and 15: 2001.

Low birth rate (% births less than
2500g): most recent data

Immunization

Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live
births): most recent data.

Health at birth

Percentage of working-age
households with children without
an employed parent OECD: mostrecent data.

Work

Percentage of children aged 15
reporting less than ten books in thehome: 2003.

Deprivation

C ard

Percentage of children aged 15
reporting less than six educational
possessions: 2003.

Indicators /Countries

Material well-beingChild
incomepoverty
Percentage of children (0-17) inhouseholds with equivalent income
less than 50 per cent of the median:most recent data.

Components

R eport

Australia

11.6

Austria

13.3

16.8

Belgium

6.7

16.9

Canada13.6

Czech Republic

7.2

Denmark
Finland

Iceland9.0

Non-OECD Countries
Croatia

43.5

6.0

6.0

95

95

95

Estonia

40.1

8.0

4.0

95

97

98

Israel

27.5

13.1

8.8

Latvia

55.9

58.4

3.3

5.0

5.0

8.0

95

97

93

10.0

5.0

99

97

98

Lithuania

53.1

8.0

4.0

98

95

97

Malta

43.1

5.0

6.0

90

95

95

Russian Federation

58.3

16.0

6.0

96

96

97

Slovenia

20.5

4.0

6.0

94

92

93

72.7

4.4

Italics indicates data that have not been used in the corresponding league table because other data relevant to that component were unavailable.

R eport

C ard

7

4 3

Educational well-beingChildmortality

Achievement

FamilyrelationsComponents

525

524

525

82.1

6.8

24.6

15.0

491

506

491

77.3

10.2

33.1

12.5

7.5

68.2

Austria

15.1

507

529

509

93.9

7.1

19.1

9.2

8.1

89.7

Belgium

14.8

528

532

519

6.7

22.0

14.6

10.5

71.8

Canada

18.7

489

516

523

90.1

5.8

39.3

13.4

12.2

72.9

Czech Republic

Percentage of young people living
in step family structure, aged 11, 13
and 15: 2001

Percentage of pupils aged 15 years
aspiring to low skilled work: 2003

15.1

Percentage of young people living insingle-parent family structures, aged
11, 13 and 15: 2001

Percentage of 15-19 year-olds not in
education or employment: 2003

Australia

Full-time and part-time students
in public and private educational
institutions aged 15-19 as apercentage of the population of
15-19 year-olds: 2003

69.9

Science literacy achievement aged
15: 2003

Indicators /Countries

Mathematics literacy achievement
aged 15: 2003

Family structure

Reading literacy achievement aged
15: 2003

Aspirations

Dimensions

Deaths from accidents and injuries per
100,000 under 19 years, average oflatest three years available.

Participation

Peer and family relationships

Percentage of students whose parents
eat their main meal with them arounda table several times a week, aged
15: 2000

I nnocenti

492

514

475

84.7

3.0

21.9

16.5

13.5

85.6

Denmark

14.9

543

544

548

86.0

9.8

27.3

14.6

11.0

59.8

Finland

12.5

496

511

511

87.2

14.0

41.2

11.0

9.7

90.4

France

13.4

491

503

502

89.0

4.7

34.1

12.8

9.2

81.5

Germany

13.5

472

445

481

82.6

9.3

18.3

7.5

1.2

69.6

Greece

16.1

482

490

503

83.4

6.8

30.7

13.4

7.0

74.7

Hungary

11.6

492

515

495

83.0

4.3

32.9

90.8

Iceland

15.0

515

503

505

84.4

5.2

24.2

10.3

3.5

77.1

Ireland

9.2

476

466

486

77.8

10.5

25.1

7.0

2.2

93.8

Italy

12.8

498

534

548

9.0

513

538

524

84.9

4.6

10.7

6.1

23.1

522

523

521

67.0

13.0

500

495

484

85.3

2.7

29.8

16.2

12.5

18.3

497

490

498

88.2

3.3

17.1

10.2

2.4

78.4

Poland

19.9

478

466

468

70.9

8.8

18.5

9.8

5.8

86.2

Portugal

12.1

481

485

487

78.5

7.3

25.3

9.1

3.0

83.4

Spain

7.6

514

509

506

86.8

4.2

28.7

16.8

12.7

84.1

Sweden

12.3

499

527

513

83.1

8.0

39.7

12.5

6.7

89.9

Switzerland

8.4

507

508

518

75.9

9.4

35.3

16.9

14.5

66.7

United Kingdom

22.9

495

483

491

75.4

7.0

14.4

20.8

16.0

65.7

United States

14.3

500

505

504

82.5

6.9

27.5

12.7

8.3

79.4

Mean

50.3
34.0
24.5

85.6

Japan

90.0

Netherlands

64.4

New Zealand

87.3

Norway

4.1

18

24

19

6.3

2.8

7.6

3.5

4.4

9.8

Standard Dev

YES

NO

NO

NO

NO

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

REVERSED

17.7

7.4

2.8

Croatia

39.4

17.7

8.8

Estonia

35.2

9.3

3.9

58.3

Israel

23.5

18.6

9.0

82.9

Latvia

31.7

13.5

6.8

Lithuania

7.3

4.8

1.7

Malta

16.9

6.8

8.7

3.8

Non-OECD Countries

60.0

452

433

434

43.3

491

483

489

56.1
23.3

442

468

489

65.6

29.3

25.2

30.5

90.6

Russian Federation
Slovenia

44

Dimensions

R eportPeer and family
relationships

C ard

7

FamilyrelationsPeerrelationsIndicators /Countries

Percentage of young people finding
their peers ‘kind and helpful’, aged
11, 13 and 15: 2001

Percentage of young people who have
had sexual intercourse, aged 15: 2001

Percentage of young people who useda condom during their last sexualintercourse, aged 15: 2001

Percentage of young people involvedin physical fighting in previous 12
months, aged 11, 13, 15: 2001

Percentage of young people who
were bullied at least once in the last
2 months, aged 11, 13, 15: 2001

Behaviours and risks

Percentage of students whose parents
spend time just talking to them several
times per week, aged 15: 2000

Components

I nnocenti

Experiences ofviolence

Australia

51.3

Austria

47.1

77.2

13.2

15.1

11.7

22.0

20.6

81.9

38.9

44.0

Belgium

55.1

70.1

10.6

14.5

21.8

11.0

25.0

70.5

44.5

30.1

Canada

46.9

64.0

7.5

19.8

40.4

20.0

24.4

75.8

35.8

37.2

Czech Republic

72.0

43.4

14.3

14.7

27.1

23.0

18.3

47.9

16.1

Denmark

71.2

73.4

8.2

20.1

21.3

8.0

38.4

31.3

Finland

78.8

70.4

14.0

24.7

7.5

10.0

28.1

65.6

25.1

23.9

France

63.9

53.7

11.5

8.0

27.5

10.0

22.2

82.0

37.5

35.1

Germany

42.5

76.1

16.4

17.7

18.5

14.0

28.0

70.0

28.1

36.5

Greece

58.1

60.2

6.1

10.0

4.2

17.0

21.6

86.9

44.3

24.5

Hungary

90.2

64.9

12.6

16.4

12.4

27.0

21.0

78.2

48.0

23.0

Iceland43.9

Ireland

62.0

67.0

9.6

13.8

20.0

15.0

39.8

26.1

Italy

87.2

55.1

10.9

9.7

20.5

8.0

38.2

27.3

Japan

60.2

Netherlands

70.6

73.2

10.7

12.9

21.6

36.3

29.4

New Zealand

51.9

Norway

64.0

74.3

10.1

15.6

36.9

32.3

Poland

49.7

60.2

11.2

15.2

15.1

16.0

15.1

73.0

38.7

30.2

Portugal

70.6

80.0

12.5

12.6

19.7

23.0

25.3

73.2

35.2

48.5

Spain

60.2

59.2

12.8

10.2

30.8

9.0

16.4

89.1

40.4

26.0

Sweden

51.6

76.7

7.0

16.1

4.7

9.0

28.1

65.3

34.8

15.0

Switzerland

48.6

81.4

11.0

13.6

37.8

5.0

22.9

80.7

31.2

40.5

United Kingdom

60.5

43.3

13.1

30.8

34.9

28.0

38.1

70.2

43.9

35.8

United States

67.9

53.4

7.3

11.6

31.4

46.0

36.1

33.9

Mean

62.8

65.6

11.0

15.4

21.4

16.0

23.6

76.0

38.1

31.0

Standard Dev

13.1

11.3

2.7

5.2

10.4

9.8

5.3

7.2

5.8

8.2

REVERSED

NO

NO

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

YES

YES

Croatia

72.5

9.7

13.6

14.3

18.0

16.5

74.2

37.7

24.5

Estonia

57.5

12.4

23.9

14.4

28.0

18.0

73.2

47.6

44.2

Adolescent fertility rate, births per1000 women aged 15-19: 2003.

Percentage of young people who haveused cannabis in the last 12 months,
aged 15: 2001

Percentage of young people whohave been drunk two or more times,
aged 11, 13, 15: 2001

Percentage smoking cigarettes at least
once per week, aged 11, 13, 15: 2001

Risk behaviour

18.0

23.9

4.0
5.0

22.9

77.9

30.0
10.0

Non-OECD Countries

Israel

36.9

63.9

8.4

9.3

7.0

23.0

21.1

81.5

39.3

35.8

Latvia

63.7

54.4

12.5

16.5

8.0

32.0

18.0

79.2

40.3

48.4

Lithuania

51.7

12.2

24.7

6.0

33.0

18.6

76.3

49.0

64.3

Malta

69.2

10.0

10.7

6.0

41.5

24.1

45.6

12.5

19.4

8.8

46.0

28.7

43.3

37.7

74.3

12.0

18.2

24.4

9.0

26.2

40.5

21.9

Russian Federation
Slovenia

78.4

74.0

Italics indicates data that have not been used in the corresponding league table because other data relevant to that component were unavailable.

I nnocenti

R eport

C ard

7

4 5

Subjective well-being

Percentage of students who agreewith the statement ‘I feel like anoutsider or left out of things’,
aged 15: 2003

Percentage of students who agreewith the statement ‘I feel awkward
and out of place’, aged 15: 2003

Percentage of students who agreewith the statement ‘I feel lonely’,
aged 15: 2003

7.7

8.9

6.5

Percentage of young people ‘liking
school a lot’, aged 11, 13, 15: 2001

Schoolwellbeing

Personal well-being

Percentage of young people withscores above the middle of thelife satisfaction scale, aged 11, 13
and 15: 2001

Percentage of young people rating
their health as ‘fair or poor’, aged
11, 13 and 15: 2001

HealthPercentage of young people who
are overweight according to BMI,
aged 13 and 15: 2001

Mean number of days when young
people are physically active for one
hour or more of the previous /typicalweek, aged 11, 13, 15: 2001

Percentage of young people who
eat breakfast every school day, aged
11, 13, 15 years: 2001

Percentage of young people who
eat fruit every day, aged 11, 13, 15
years: 2001

Health behaviour

Dimensions
Components

Indicators /Countries

Australia

37.4

57.4

4.2

11.9

15.6

88.1

5.8

8.2

7.2

36.1

Austria

26.2

74.6

3.1

10.4

13.1

87.8

7.9

15.6

6.4

17.9

Belgium

37.3

58.2

4.4

19.5

13.7

86.3

8.9

10.5

7.6

21.9

Canada

42.2

51.8

4.3

9.4

11.8

83.4

9.7

6.4

7.0

11.6

Czech Republic

31.9

72.8

3.8

10.3

14.8

87.7

5.3

11.8

6.2

21.4

Denmark

21.5

67.5

3.8

13.3

11.0

91.6

5.5

8.4

6.2

8.0

Finland

34.2

71.4

3.1

11.2

85.1

7.7

12.3

6.4

21.7

France

42.4

67.0

3.6

11.3

14.9

85.4

6.1

11.4

6.2

29.5

Germany

38.1

45.6

3.9

16.0

10.1

92.2

6.3

8.3

6.5

29.5

Greece

31.3

53.4

3.7

12.8

14.9

84.4

9.3

7.6

7.3

26.3

Hungary

9.8

10.9

10.3

32.6

71.8

4.5

12.1

12.9

86.8

5.6

7.8

4.6

22.3

Ireland

38.4

62.4

3.5

15.2

12.5

85.2

4.9

6.2

6.0

13.0

Italy

5.9

18.1

29.8

28.1

78.0

4.1

7.6

17.2

94.2

3.9

6.9

2.9

34.4

Netherlands

7.7

10.4

6.6

29.1

69.3

3.5

11.8

18.5

82.9

5.6

9.1

7.0

38.9

46.1

69.0

4.0

7.1

14.4

80.0

8.2

9.9

8.4

17.3

Poland

47.8

80.8

3.4

14.3

19.1

80.5

6.4

11.7

5.0

31.1

Portugal

36.6

72.2

3.8

16.9

9.0

87.8

3.3

8.9

4.4

22.8

Spain

26.7

73.4

3.9

10.4

13.2

86.0

5.2

4.9

6.7

21.6

Sweden

35.5

53.5

3.9

8.5

9.1

89.0

7.1

11.7

6.6

22.3

Switzerland

26.7

56.1

4.2

15.8

22.6

83.5

6.8

8.7

5.4

19.0

United Kingdom

27.7

47.2

4.4

25.1

19.8

83.1

23.4

United States

34.2

64.4

3.9

12.9

14.1

85.8

6.7

9.8

7.4

23.3

Mean

IcelandJapanNew Zealand
Norway

7.0

10.4

0.4

4.2

3.5

4.5

1.7

3.0

5.0

8.1

Standard Dev

NO

NO

NO

YES

YES

NO

YES

YES

YES

NO

REVERSED

35.0

69.9

3.8

10.4

20.0

81.3

11.5

Croatia

20.1

73.7

3.5

7.1

17.5

76.7

11.1

Estonia

51.2

40.1

3.5

11.3

9.2

89.1

2.3

3.6

2.7

22.2

Israel

23.8

74.8

3.8

6.0

27.4

77.0

5.2

9.6

9.0

28.4

Latvia

22.3

72.0

4.3

4.4

32.4

75.2

25.8

Lithuania

47.1

52.2

3.7

25.5

21.2

83.0

34.3

Malta

27.0

68.8

3.7

5.2

31.9

76.2

15.8

Russian Federation

38.5

39.2

4.2

13.4

12.7

85.6

32.1

Slovenia

Non-OECD Countries

6.1

14.3

8.5

46

I nnocenti

R eportC ard

7

n o tes

1 The overall ranking for the UnitedStates is determined by its average rankover five of the six indicators, insufficient
data being available for the ‘Subjective
well-being’ category.
2 But see Report Card 5, September,
2003, which attempted to address thisissue.
3 This is the same measure used inReport Card 6: Child Poverty in RichCountries. (Sources may differ as the data
has here been updated.)
4 It is notable that over 90% of young
people in Northern and Western Europe
have their own bedrooms.
5 Countries with systematic ante-natal
screening for serious disability, and theoption of abortion, tend to have lower
infant mortality rates. National efforts tocombat Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
may also lower IMRs.

11 Using Purchasing Power Parities.

6 There are some limitations to thevalidity of low birth weight as an indicatorof infant and child health in different
societies. It is more common, forexample, in some ethnic groups and in
multiple births (often associated with invitro fertilization).
7 Misleading publicity linking the MMR
vaccine to autism may affect measles
immunization levels as an indicator ofhealth service comprehensiveness, as
lower levels of take-up in some countries
may reflect the extent of parental alarm
rather than inadequacies in outreach.
8 Innocenti Report Card 2 (2001) page 2
9 Innocenti Report Card 2 (2001) page 2

12 Innocenti Report Card 4, November
2002, ref 3, p. 6.
13 HBSC. p 28
14 Innocenti Report Card 5, September
2003
15 In the HBSC survey Belgian data werecollected separately from both French andFlemish speaking regions. For the
purposes of international comparison the
Flemish data (the largest sample) has
been used in this Report Card. In the caseof the United Kingdom, data werecollected separately for England, Scotland
and Wales; data for England (the largest
sample) has been used here. In Germany
data was collected using a regional
sample (Berlin, Hessen, North RhineWestphalia and Saxony).

10 Innocenti Report Card 2 (2001)

S o urces

andMaterial deprivation
The data for Figure 1.1 are from Förster,M. and D’Ercole, M. (2005) ‘Income
Distribution and Poverty in OECDCountries in the Second Half of the
1990s’, OECD Social, Employment andMigration Working Papers: Paris France,
OECD. Belgian data come from the
Luxembourg Income Study (LIS),
accessed at http://www.lisproject.org/
keyfigures.htm on May 30th 2006. In bothcases the poverty threshold is set at 50
per cent of the median disposable incomeof the total population.
Figure 1.2 uses data from the OECD
Income Distribution questionnaires for thevarious years. Assistance with the accessto these data was provided by Anna
D’Addio at the Directorate for
Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at
the OECD. Israeli data was provided byAsher Ben-Arieh from The Paul Baerwald
School of Social Work and Social Welfare,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Sources drawn upon extensively in thisReport Card include the OECD
Programme for International Student

backgr o und

inf o rmati o n

Assessment (PISA); and the World HealthOrganization’s survey of Health Behaviourin School-age Children (HBSC) 2001,
reported in Currie, C., et al (eds) (2004)‘Young People’s Health in Context. HealthBehaviour in School-age Children Study’(HBSC): International report from the
2001/2002 study, WHO Regional Office forEurope. Figures 1.3a through 1.3c arederived from these sources.
Figure 1.3a reports results from the Family
Affluence Scale (FAS) which identifies thepercentage of children from each country
who self report low levels of wealth based
upon ‘family item’ ownership of a car, vanor truck, whether they have their own
bedroom, the number of family holidays
in the last twelve months, and the numberof computers owned by the family. With
positive answers adding to a possible
score of eight, the percentage of children
in each nation scoring three points or
below on the FAS scale is used as theindicator of deprivation (Currie et al.,
2004: 15). For all of the HBSC data in thisReport Card, German data are from a
regional sample of four lander; Flemish
data are used for Belgium. and English
15
data for the UK.

Figures 1.3 b and c are sourced from theOECD PISA survey (2003). A copy of theinternational dataset was downloaded at
http://pisaweb.acer.edu.au/oecd_2003/
oecd_pisa_data.html in August 2005. Aswith all 2003 OECD PISA data for the UK
in this Report Card, results are to betreated with caution due to low initialsample response rates and low
replacement rates for the English subsample. A sampling problem is also found
for the Netherlands data for OECD PISA
2000. The indicator for Figure 1.3b
identifies the percentage of children aged
15 in each country with less than six (theOECD median) educational items (out ofeight). The eight items include: a desk to
study at, a quiet place to study, acomputer for school work, educational
software, an internet connection, acalculator, a dictionary, and school text
books. Israeli data for Figures 1.3b and1.3c are taken from comparable questionsin the OECD PISA survey 2000. A copy of
the international dataset for OECD PISA
2000 was downloaded at http://pisaweb.
acer.edu.au/oecd/oecd_pisa_data.html in
August 2005.

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Health and safety

Children’s relationships

OECD health data for 2005 were used topopulate Figures 2.1a and 2.1b accessedat the Source OECD website http://www.
sourceoecd.org /database/healthdata in
January 2006. Figure 2.2 is made up of
immunization rates for Measles, DPT3 andPOL3. The figures for the latter two
measures were accessed using the WorldBank’s Health Nutrition and Population
Database at http://devdata.worldbank.org/
hnpstats /query/default.html in August
2005, and in each case represent the final
dose in a series of immunizations that can
prevent diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, andpoliomyelitis. Measles data were takenfrom the World Development Indicators2005 accessed at http://www.worldbank.
org/data/wdi2005/index.html in August
2005.

The majority of the data for Children’s
relationships were taken from Currie, C.,et al (eds) (2004) ‘Young People’s Healthin Context. Health Behaviour in Schoolage Children Study’(HBSC): International
report from the 2001/2002 Study, WHO
Regional Office for Europe. Figures 4.1a,
4.1b and 4.3 are all derived from thisreport. The data for single and step parent
proportions are living condition data as
opposed to outcome data, and as suchare applicable for all age groups who livewith an individual of the sample agegroup. Furthermore the impact of growing
up with a single-parent on children’s wellbeing might differ across countries. Somecountries (for example the Nordic group)
have much higher rates of single-parent
families than, for example, the countriesof Southern Europe. Cross-national
differences in public acceptance of singleparenthood, in legislation and practiceconcerning custody and the extent towhich policies cater for the needs ofsingle-parents (e.g. benefits, child care,flexible employment arrangements) might
be reflected in children’s well-being.

Child mortality data are the average of thelatest three years available, and takenfrom the World Health Organization’s
Mortality Database, a version of which
was downloaded from http://www3.who.
int/whosis/ menu.cfm?path=whosis,mort&language=english in August 2005. Data
were combined for all kinds of accidental
deaths – murder, suicide and deaths with
undetermined cause – into one variable.
For Switzerland and the RussianFederation data are based on the new
ICD10 classification. All other countries
use ICD9 classifications. Interpretation
and analysis of the WHO Mortality data isthat of the authors and not of the World
Health Organization. Israeli data were
provided by Asher Ben-Arieh from The
Paul Baerwald School of Social Work andSocial Welfare, The Hebrew University ofJerusalem.

Education
Figure 3.1 provides a standardized
composite for literacy data taken from theOECD PISA (2003) survey for measures ofreading literacy, mathematics literacy andscience literacy. UK results are to betreated with caution (see above).
The data for Figures 3.2 and 3.3a aresourced from the OECD’s ‘Education at a
Glance Report 2005’, accessed at http://
www.oecd.org/edu/eag2005 in April 2006.
The data for Figure 3.3b are taken from
‘Education at a Glance 2004’ accessed inAugust 2005 at http://www.oecd.org/edu/
eag2004. The data used for Figure 3.3b
are generated using responses given in
the OECD PISA survey (2000); for thisreason, data for the Netherlands are to betreated with caution.

Data for Figures 4.2a and 4.2b are takenfrom OECD PISA (2000), downloaded at
http://pisaweb.acer.edu.au/oecd/ oecd_
pisa_data.html in August 2005.

Behaviour and lifestyles
This dimension is made up entirely of data
derived from Currie, C., et al (eds) (2004)‘Young People’s Health in Context. HealthBehaviour in School-age Children Study’(HBSC): International report from the
2001/2002 Study, WHO Regional Office forEurope, with the exception of Figure 5.2f
which used the World Development
Indicators data accessed at http://www.
worldbank.org/data/wdi2005/index.html in
August 2005.
For Figures 5.1a to 5.1c cross-national
differences may influence final standings.
For Figure 5.1a differences acrosscountries might be influenced by culturaldifferences regarding eating habits. For
5.1b country variation might be influenced
by the availability and prices of fruit
across countries. The authors of the HBSC
report also point to seasonal differencesin the timing of fieldwork that may have
impacted on the results. For Figure 5.1c arange of factors might influence children’s
physical activity within and acrosscountries, including the amount andorganization of physical education at
school, children’s mode of travel toschool, and the availability andaccessibility of leisure facilities. For Figure
5.1d data response rates were particularly
low; this led to data for 11 year-olds being
omitted. As the Body Mass Index data
were calculated using self-reported weightand height, this meant children wererequired to know (and be willing to report)
their height and weight. An analysis ofcases with missing data showed thatyoung people who did not report theirheight and weight were less likely tocome from higher socio-economic
groups, less likely to be physically active
and to consume fruit, vegetables andsweets and in many countries more likely
to be dieting or to feel the need to lose
weight. It is therefore likely that theprevalence of overweight isunderestimated (Currie et al., 2004).
For Figure 5.2e, identifying condom use in
the countries of study, there is a relatively
high number of missing countries as not
all countries that participated in HBSC
included questions on sexual behaviour.
This question was only answered by the
sub-sample that already had sexual
relationships so that sample sizes are
reduced for each country to 15 to 38 percent of the original sample.

Subjective well-being
Data for the figures presented in the final
dimension were also taken in the majority
from Currie, C., et al (eds) (2004) ‘Young
People’s Health in Context. HealthBehaviour in School-age Children Study’(HBSC): International report from the
2001/2002 study, WHO Regional Office forEurope. Figures 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3a are allderived from this source, and as such UK
and Belgian results are to be treated withcaution (See note on Figure 1.3a). For
Figure 6.3a, which reports levels of life
satisfaction, children aged 11, 13 and 15
were asked to score their lives at present
on a scale (ladder) of one to ten in termsof satisfaction (the Cantril self-anchoring
life satisfaction Ladder); the resultspresented are the proportions of eachcountry's sample reporting six or over(best possible life at the top, worst
possible life at the bottom).
Figure 6.3b is sourced from the OECDPISA survey 2003 accessed at http://pisaweb.acer.edu.au/oecd_2003/ oecd_
pisa_data.html in August 2005. UK results
should be treated with caution. The
United States did not provide responses
to these items.

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R eportC ard

A ckn o w l edgements

This Innocenti Report Card was written byPeter Adamson drawing on research, data
and background papers provided by
Jonathan Bradshaw, Petra Hoelscher, andDominic Richardson. The project was coordinated by UNICEF’s Innocenti ResearchCentre and assisted by an international
panel of advisors. A detailed background
paper to this report is available on the
UNICEF web site.

UNICEF Innocenti ResearchCentre advisors
Marta Santos Pais
Director
David Parker
Deputy Director
Eva Jespersen
Social and Economic Policies Unit

External advisors

Asher Ben-Arieh
Associate Director for Researchand Development
Israel National Council for the ChildPaul Baerwald School of Social Work
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
IsraelAnna Cristina D’Addio
ELS/Social Policy
Directorate of Employment, Labour
and Social Affairs
OECD
Paris
FranceMike Lewis
Director
Children in Wales
Cardiff
UK

Gordon Alexander
UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS
GenevaPatrice Engle
UNICEF, New York
Alberto Miniujn
Consultant
Yuko Nonoyama
UNICEF, New York

Design and layout by Garry Peasleyand Angela Bartlett of mccdesign.

Eric Marlier
International Senior Advisor
CEPS/INSTEAD Research Institute
Luxembourg

Jonathan Bradshaw
Professor of Social Policy
Department of Social Policy
and Social Work
University of York
United Kingdom

Brian Nolan
Research Professor
Social Policy Research
Economic and Social
Research Institute (ESRI)
DublinIreland

Dominic Richardson
Research Fellow
Social Policy Research Unit
Department of Social Policy
and Social Work
University of York
United Kingdom

Sue Richardson
Director
National Institute of Labour Studies
Flinders University
Adelaide
Australia

Petra Hoelscher
Research Fellow
University of Stirling
ScotlandAdditional comments
were provided by:

Hirokazu Yoshikawa
Associate Professor of Psychology
and Public Policy
Department of Psychology
New York University
New York, NY 10003

Child well-being in Germany
Also available from the UNICEF
Innocenti Research Centre: Bertram,
Hans (2006), ‘Overview Of Child Well
Being In Germany’: Policy Towards A
Supportive Environment For
Children? Innocenti Working Paper
No. 2006-02. Florence, UNICEF
Innocenti Research Centre.

7

Previous issues in this series:
Innocenti Report Card 1
A league table of child poverty in rich nations
Innocenti Report Card 2
A league table of child deaths by injury in rich nations
Innocenti Report Card 3
A league table of teenage births in rich nations
Innocenti Report Card 4
A league table of educational disadvantage in rich nations
Innocenti Report Card 5
A league table of child maltreatment deaths in rich nations
Innocenti Report Card 6
Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005

Graphics: mccdesign.com
Printed by: Tipografia Giuntina, Florence, Italy

Innocenti Report Card 7, 2007
Child poverty in perspective:
An overview of child well-being in rich countries
The most comprehensive assessment to date of
the lives and well-being of children and adolescentsin the economically advanced nations.
ISSN: 1605-7317
ISBN-10: 88-89129-43-3
ISBN-13: 978-88-89129-43-2