Child wellbeing and inequalities in rich countries

doi:10.1136/bmj.39377.490984.80

BMJ 2007;335:1054-1055 (24 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.39377.490984.80 (published 16 November 2007)

Editorials

Child wellbeing and inequalities in rich countries

Evidence is needed on how best to reduce inequalities

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A recent Unicef report ranked the wellbeing of children in 21rich countries.¹ The report aggregated national data on morethan 40 indicators from credible sources in six dimensions—materialwellbeing (related to income, poverty, material goods), healthand safety, educational wellbeing, family and peer relationships,behaviours and risks, and subjective wellbeing (how the childsees his or her self). The press had a field day when the reportwas published,² because the United States and the United Kingdomwere in the bottom five countries for five of the dimensions.The UK ranked 12th in health and the US ranked 12th in education;questions were rightly asked about how this could happen andwhat the government was going to do about it.

In this week's BMJ, Pickett and Wilkinson³ attempt to explainthe results of the Unicef report by combining the measures ofwellbeing of children with national data on . . . [Full text of this article]

M E Black, international health consultant and invited lecturer¹, H E Jeffery, clinical associate professor²

¹ Centre School of Public Health, Belgrade University, Senjak, Belgrade 11000 Serbia, ² Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Mothers and Babies and University of Sydney, Camperdown 2050, Sydney, Australia

drmaryblack@gmail.com

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