US And The UK are Failing it's Youth, page 1

A UNICEF report shows the US and the UK's children have the lowest standard of wellbeing in rich developed countries.

www.unicef.org.uk
New UNICEF report assesses for the first time the well-being of children and young people in 21 industrialised countries; UK ranks bottom in child wellbeing assessment.

North-European countries dominate the top half of the table, with child well-being at its highest in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The United Kingdom and the United States find themselves in the bottom of the ranking.

The report, does not attempt to explain each country’s individual rankings but is intended to stimulate national debate and encourage countries to address areas in which they have room for improvement. “As the maxim goes, if you want to improve something, first you have to measure it,” continued Bull.

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Well, what can one say? We ARE failing our children! The US and the UK are very rich and influential countries, they owe this success to their citizens. If these countries do not take the appropriate steps to look after their children then the adults of the future may not be equipped to keep their countries strong.

The points brought up on education are very worrying indeed. More and more unskilled jobs are being outsourced to poor countries. If we do not equip our children with the neccessary knowledge to work in a high-tech, high-skilled workforce then with all the low skilled jobs gone we will have unemployment on epic scales.

Finally the issues about relative poverty are important ones, it shows the growing divide between the rich and the poor if we see this gap grow any larger then we might see peasant revolts, reminiscent of medievil/renaissance europe and we all know what happened to the French aristocricy! Our generation must fix this now, we might be rich nations now but if we don't invest in our future then we have no future!

Related News Links:
UNICEF report in .pdf format
www.guardian.co.uk

[edit on 15/2/07 by Jimmy1880]

[edit on 15-2-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]

[edit on 15-2-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]