UNICEF ranks Canada 17th for well-being of children

Canada ranks 17th out of 29 nations in UNICEF’s new ranking of overall child well-being among industrialized countries.

The Child Well-Being in Rich Countries: A Comparative Overview, the second report of this kind done by UNICEF, covers children up to age 19. The first one was released in 2007 and looked at a variety of indicators in areas ranging from health to education using data from 2000 to 2003. The 2013 report looks at figures from 2009 to 2010.

The country with the top ranking was the Netherlands. The United Kingdom ranked 16th, and the United States ranked 26th. The last-place country was Romania.

In the previous study, Canada ranked 14th out of 20 countries examined at the time.

Canada ranked very low in the category of health and safety, ahead of only Latvia and Romania. According to UNICEF, the category looked at such things as infant mortality, low birth weight, national immunization and overall child and youth mortality.

Canada had the worst ranking in terms of youth cannabis users at 28 per cent; was 24th in participation in higher education (though that figure was 81 per cent); and ranked 27th in fighting obesity, with 20 per cent of children thought to be obese. Eightyfive per cent of Canadian youth were immunized, good enough for a ranking of 28th.

“We haven’t invested as much in public education, public awareness, about vaccinations and the need to do them,” said David Morley, UNICEF Canada president and CEO. “Perhaps we’ve allowed things to slip a bit.”

Even so, Canada has improved in 10 key indicators while declining in only two. For instance, reported cannabis use has gone down more than 10 per cent in the last decade.

“Behaviours do change,” said Morley. “When we use intelligent social marketing we can improve and influence people’s behaviour.”

Canada has a good ranking — third — on youth not smoking tobacco which he said “shows things can work and we just need to apply it to a few more places.”

The country ranked second in educational achievement by age 15.

But on five broad themes — behaviours and risk, housing and environment, material well-being and education — Canada ranks from 11th to 16th, at the middle of the pack.

“There’s good stuff as well,” said Morley. “It’s not all doom and gloom. It’s that we believe we could be doing better.”