The United States scored last, or second-to-last in the UNICEF 2020 report on children’s rights and well-being among the 12 countries in this comparison.
Child Welfare 1
| COLOR CODING | |
|---|---|
| Green | Ranked first for statistic |
| Red | Ranked last for statistic |
| UNICEF 2017 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mental well-being | Physical Health | Skills | Child income poverty | ||
| Australia | 35 | 28 | 19 | 10.9 | |
| Canada | 31 | 30 | 18 | 13.3 | |
| Denmark | 5 | 4 | 7 | 6.5 | |
| France | 7 | 18 | 5 | 8.8 | |
| Germany | 16 | 10 | 21 | 8.5 | |
| Italy | 9 | 31 | 15 | 15.9 | |
| Japan | 37 | 1 | 27 | 14.9 | |
| Netherlands | 1 | 9 | 3 | 6.1 | |
| Norway | 11 | 8 | 1 | 6.1 | |
| Sweden | 22 | 5 | 14 | 7.3 | |
| United Kingdom | 29 | 19 | 26 | 12.1 | |
| United States | 32 | 38 | 32 | 23.1 | |
SOURCES
UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 16, 2020
Country performance across six child-relevant indicators, pg. 9.
Mental Well-being
Rank of average country performance across two indicators: life satisfaction (15 years of age) and adolescent suicide (15-19 years of age).
Physical Health
Rank of average country performance across two indicators: child mortality rate (5-14 years of age) and percentage of children overweight (5–19 years).
Skills
Rank of average country performance across two indicators: proficiency in mathematics and reading (15 years of age) and social skills (15 years of age).
Child income poverty
Report Card 10: Measuring Child Poverty (2012)
Index of Health and Social Problems Rankings
Income inequality after taxes ranking
Page updated on 2/5/2023.
NOTES
“School Shootings Spark Everyday Worries: Parent and Child Trends Survey 2018”
September 18, 2018.
Children’s Defense Fund. According to a survey conducted by YouGov, fear of a school shooting is the second top worry for 6 – 17 year old children. Over a third of children report not feeling safe in their neighborhood. Four in ten children do not feel safe in school.
Four times as many children agree than disagree that guns are too easy to get in America (53 percent to 14 percent) and more than three times as many parents agree than disagree (71 percent to 20 percent). Black children and parents were more likely to agree with this statement. 70 percent of Black children and 85 percent of Black parents agree it is too easy to get a gun in America.