Children Around the World - Some Differences Among Developed Nations

Children in Families

The structure of family life is undergoing profound change around the world. Trends such as single motherhood, rising divorce rates, smaller households, and increased poverty among women and their children are not unique to the United States but are a worldwide phenomenon. For example, the percentage of children in single-parent families among member countries of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was 21.3% for Sweden, 20% for the United Kingdom, and 16.6% for the United States (UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, Italy, A League Table of Child Poverty in Rich Nations, June 2000). OECD countries with the lowest percentage of children in single-parent families were Turkey (0.7%), Spain (2.3%), and Italy (2.8%).

Economic Status

According to Social Policies, Family Type, and Child Outcomes in Selected OECD Countries (2003), a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, child poverty was of particular concern in the United States and the United Kingdom because in those two countries poverty among young children was more pronounced and persistent than among the adult population. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre's A League Table of Child Poverty in Rich Nations (2000) reported that children in the United States were more likely to experience poverty than children in every other industrialized nation except Mexico. More than 22% of American children lived in households with incomes below 50% of the national median. In comparison, only 2.6% of Swedish children lived in poor households. UNICEF concluded that one in six of the "rich world's" children (forty-six million) lived in poverty.

Infant Mortality

Differences in infant mortality rates reflect differences in the health status of women before and during pregnancy, and the quality of health care available to women and their infants. Although the United States greatly reduced its infant mortality rate from twenty-six per one thousand live births in 1960 to 6.8 per one thousand live births in 2001, in 1999 the nation ranked twenty-eighth out of thirty-seven among developed countries with at least one million population. (See Table 10.1.) The U.S. infant mortality rate for children twelve months old or younger in 1999 was 7.1 deaths per one thousand births, one of the highest in the industrialized world. In comparison, the 1999 rate in Japan was 3.4 deaths per one thousand births, and Hong Kong, the top-ranked country, reported less than half the U.S. rate (3.1).