Kiwi kids are faring poorly, says Unicef

"High national income is no guarantee of a good record in sustaining child wellbeing." Unicef report

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

The report tracks progress on goals such as reducing child poverty, inequality and deprivation and improving things like education and health for children. The 34th placing puts us behind Greece, Hungary and Lithuania – but ahead of the United States, Israel and Turkey. Unicef said New Zealand’s presence in the bottom end of the rankings was proof ’’high national income is no guarantee of a good record in sustaining child wellbeing’’.

Health and wellbeing: New Zealand ranks 38th, ahead of only Bulgaria and Chile, while Mexico was not ranked.

This reflects performance in neonatal mortality, suicide, mental health, drunkenness and teen pregnancy.

New Zealand has the highest rate of adolescent suicide of any country in the report. The report used figures from 2010 of 15.6 suicides per 100,000 people – about 21⁄2 times the average of 6.1. The most recent figures for New Zealand are slightly up on 2010, with 16 suicides per 100,000 in 2016.

New Zealand’s neonatal mortality rate is slightly higher than average while our teen pregnancy rate places us sixth behind Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Chile and Mexico. Rates of teenage pregnancy have been falling in New Zealand and all other developed nations in the past decade.

Obesity: New Zealand has a very high rate of childhood obesity, with 32 per cent of 2-14-year-olds overweight or obese. However, as New Zealand only reports obesity rates for 11 to 14-year-olds no direct comparison was possible with other countries.

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

Hunger: About 11 per cent of Kiwi children under 15 live in a home with food insecurity, slightly lower than the average of 12.7 per cent.

inequality: New Zealand is ranked 26th in this goal, just behind Latvia, Slovakia and Poland and ahead of Portugal, Spain and Estonia.

The share of income that goes to the top 10 per cent of households with children is nearly 20 per cent higher than the share of income in the bottom 40 per cent.

This inequality flows into our education system where socio-economic advantage has a big impact on performance in reading, maths and science. This effect was only stronger in five countries.

Poverty: New Zealand was not ranked against the goal of ending poverty as it only provided data in one of three indicators used in the report. That was relative income poverty, with 19.8 per cent of Kiwi children living in a household with an income lower than 60 per cent of the median. This was slightly better than the

Reducing

average of 21 per cent.

However, the report’s authors were critical of how we measure poverty, saying ’’multidimensional poverty’’ should be measured as the per cent of children being deprived of only two or more material indicators, while New Zealand now defines it as being deprived of seven.

Promote peace, justice and strong institutions: This ranking comes from rates of child homicide and bullying. New Zealand did not report a rate for bullying but our high rate of child homicide was enough to see us ranked 33rd on this goal.

With 0.78 child homicides per 100,000 children in 2010, New Zealand was seventh highest in the report, Mexico (5.98) and the United States (2.66) had the highest rates of child homicide.

There are some areas that New Zealand performed above average, including education, low air pollution and gender equality.

Ensure

education: New Zealand is ranked 15th on this goal with an above average 71.9 per cent of 15-year-olds achieving baseline competency in reading, maths and science. However that figure has fallen from almost 80 per cent in 2006.

quality