Report says Mexico, U.S. rate worst for child poverty

GENEVA – Nordic countries have the lowest levels of child poverty in the developed world, due in large part to their generous public spending on social benefits for families, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.N. Children’s Fund.

On the other end of the spectrum, the United States and Mexico had the worst rates of child poverty in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – a Paris-based group of the world’s wealthiest countries.

At least one-fifth of U.S. and Mexican children live under the national poverty line, according to the study undertaken by UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Center in Florence, Italy.

“Higher government spending on family and social benefits is very clearly associated with a lower level of child poverty,” said Philip O’Brien, regional director for UNICEF.

Some 40 million to 50 million children in rich countries live in relative poverty, UNICEF estimates. Statistics were available for only 24 of 30 OECD states and represented figures through 2001.

The report acknowledged difficulty in setting a global standard for poverty because it varies from country to country. It said it based its findings on the number of children growing up in households with an income less than half the national median.

Rated the best were Denmark, at 2.4 percent; Finland, at 2.8 percent; Norway, at 3.4 percent; and Sweden, at 4.2 percent. UNICEF praised the Nordics for their commitment to social spending on families – including family allowances, disability and sickness benefits, day care, unemployment insurance and other social assistance.

“There is a history of social transfers in the Nordic countries, which is a very strong history,” O’Brien said. “It’s a government policy that’s attempted to even out the unevenness generated in the market.”

At the bottom end of the table were Mexico, at 27.7 percent, and the United States, at 21.9 percent. Both countries spend less than 5 percent of their GDP on government support for families.

“It cannot just be left to market forces alone,” O’Brien said. “Any OECD country that spends more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product on social transfers, (has) a child poverty rate that is less than 10 percent.”

In the United States, child poverty “dropped significantly” in the 1990s, when many families benefited from an employment boom and higher wages for single mothers, but the problem continues there, the report said.

Such disparity in wealth leaves many children, by no fault of their own, at a social disadvantage and provides “an unambiguous contradiction of equality of opportunity,” according to the report.

“There is a close correlation between growing up in poverty and the likelihood of educational underachievement, poor health, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, criminal and anti-social behavior, low pay, unemployment, and long-term welfare dependance,” the Innocenti study found.