New UNICEF report highlights risks to child wellbeing as a result of COVID-19

Freya Lucas

Sep 07, 2020

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The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway are the best among EU and OECD countries for child wellbeing, a new report, released late last week by the UNICEF Office of Research -- Innocenti has found.

Children and young in higher income countries, however, are plagued by suicide, unhappiness, obesity and poor social and academic skill, the report found, saying such issues had become “far-too-common features of childhood”.

UNICEF's Report Card Series, of which this report is the latest, has now been running for 20 years, and uses comparable national data to rank EU and OECD countries on childhood.

Worlds of Influence: Understanding what shapes child well-being in rich countries uses pre-COVID-19 data and features a league table according to children's mental and physical health and academic and social skillset.

Based on these indicators the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway rank as the top three places to be a child among wealthy countries.

Gunilla Olsson, Director of UNICEF Innocenti said that many of the world’s richest countries, which have the resources they need to provide good childhoods for all, are failing children.

"Unless governments take rapid and decisive action to protect child wellbeing as part of their pandemic responses, we can continue to expect soaring child poverty rates, deteriorating mental and physical health, and a deepening skill divide among children. COVID-19 related support for families and children are woefully inadequate. More must be done to provide children with a safe and happy childhood - now," she added

Key findings from the Report Card

Mental health: in most countries, less than four-fifths of children report being satisfied with their lives. Turkey has the lowest rate of life satisfaction at 53 per cent, followed by Japan and the United Kingdom. Children who have less supportive families and those who are bullied have significantly poorer mental health.

Physical health: obesity and overweight rates among children have increased in recent years. Around one in three children across all countries are either obese or overweight, with rates in Southern Europe also sharply increasing. In more than a quarter of rich countries child mortality is still above 1 per 1,000.

Skills: on average 40 per cent of children across all OECD and EU countries do not have basic reading and mathematics skills by age 15.

Children in Bulgaria, Romania and Chile are the least proficient in these skills. Estonia, Ireland and Finland the most proficient.

In most countries, at least one in five children lack confidence in their social skills to make new friends. Children in Chile, Japan and Iceland are the least confident in this area.

The report also contains data on clear areas of progress in child well-being. On average, 95 per cent of pre-school aged children are now enrolled in organised learning programmes, and the number of young people aged 15-19 not in education, employment or training has declined in 30 out of 37 countries. Yet, these important gains are at risk of falling back due to the impact of COVID-19, authors note.

Countries are also ranked based on their policies that support child well-being and other factors including the economy, society and environment. Norway, Iceland and Finland have the highest-ranking policies and context to support child well-being. On average, countries spend less than 3 per cent of their GDP on family and child policies.

Deputy Executive Director at UNICEF, Fayaz King, said it was important for governments and workplaces to support families during this challenging time, in order to raise the next generation of happy and healthy citizens.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in the first half of 2020 most of the countries covered in the report kept schools closed for more than 100 days while strict stay-at-home policies were also implemented.

The report notes that loss of family members and friends, anxiety, stay-at-home restrictions, lack of support, school closures, the balancing of work and family life, poor access to healthcare, combined with the economic loss caused by the pandemic are catastrophic for children's wellbeing, affecting their mental and physical health, and their development.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak the average relative child poverty rate across the 41 countries was 20 per cent. With GDP expected to fall over a two-year period in almost all of these countries, unless governments take immediate remedial actions child poverty will rise.

"As the economic, educational and social fallout of the pandemic continues to take hold, without concerted effort, there will be a worsening, devastating impact on the well-being of today's children, their families and the societies they live in," Ms Olsson said. "But these risks do not have to become the reality, if governments take decisive action now to protect children's well-being."

On the basis of the report and these recent developments UNICEF is calling for the following steps to protect and improve child wellbeing:

Take decisive action to reduce income inequality and poverty and ensure that all children have access to the resources they need.

Rapidly address the serious gap in mental health services for children and adolescents.

Expand family-friendly policies to improve work-family balance, especially access to high-quality, flexible and affordable early-years childcare.

Strengthen efforts to protect children from preventable diseases, including reversing recent falls in measles immunization.

Improve COVID-19 policies that support families with children and ensure budgets that support child well-being are protected entirely from austerity measures.

To view the full report, please see here.

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