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U.S. rich with poor kid quality
By Andrew Flohr-Spence
spencand@mscd.edu

Why are Dutch children so happy, the headline on BBC News wanted to know. I cleverly assumed the answer was that Holland’s legalization of marijuana and prostitution had the adolescents of Amsterdam wandering through life in jubilant bliss.

Despite how uncomfortable it must be to wear those wooden shoes and funny hats, the consumption of so much cheese probably helped soften the hard realities of life, or at least give a layer of fat for protection. And all the tulips everywhere surely made life a bit more livable.

I sat down to read the article and was shocked to find my cliché prejudices well off the mark.
The United Nations Children Fund published a report ranking the well-being of children among the 21 richest countries and its findings revealed that the lives of children depended on more tangible realities.

The northern European countries – the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland – held the top of the list. Having been to Holland a number of times and having seen the orderly yet open and liberal society, the rank didn’t really surprise me.

I read further, expecting to see the United States, if not near the top, at least somewhere in the middle of the rankings. I mean, we are one of the richest countries – the sixth-highest income per capita in 2005. We all have a chance at our own piece of pie, right? Americans are healthy. We have decent schools. The U.S. couldn’t rate too bad, could it?

Well, the good news is we are not the worst. The award for least kid-friendly rich country is England. The U.S. is second to worst.

We may look rich on paper, but the UNICEF report was not impressed.

The study looked at 40 indicators, including poverty and material circumstances, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and even attempted to measure what the children thought about their own lives.

Although the U.S. does rate in the top five for parents having employment, we have by far the highest number of children living below the poverty line.

The U.S. rates No. 13 for immunization, but our infant mortality rate is only better than Poland’s, and the number of deaths from accidents is only lower than New Zealand’s.

In education, our math, reading and science scores are not far off the average, but our dropout rates are third from the bottom.

In peer and family relationships, we also scrape the bottom. The number of U.S. children living in single-family homes is in a league of its own, and the percentage of students who eat their main meal with their parents is third from last.

The behavior and risk category also has the U.S. with the lowest marks in every category but tobacco-smoking. Contrary to the anti-legalization rhetoric we are force-fed every day, while Holland has opened the gates of hell by legalizing soft-drugs and prostitutes, the Dutch have much lower rates of young people smoking cannabis, and their pregnancy rate is one-tenth of ours. Not even all the cheese-eating brings Holland anywhere close to our dead-last ranking in overweight children.

There is a saying in Holland: God made the Earth, and the Dutch made the Netherlands. While this relates to how the Dutch must constantly work to keep their country from being washed away by the ocean, it also speaks to the active role the government takes in creating a stable society.
Despite the mountains of wealth in America and constant lip service to giving the next generation all the tools for success, the reality is that little is done.

Talk is cheap, and our undying faith in the free market’s invisible hand doesn’t seem to be working its magic in this respect. It’s time for the United States to stop waiting for a miracle to trickle down, put our money where our mouth is and give future generations a fair chance at the pie.