By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2000 (IPS)

The United States, the world’s richest nation, has one of the highest ratios of children living in poverty amidst plenty: one in every five.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Wednesday that more than one in five children in the United States (about 22.4 percent) are poor compared with one in 38 in Sweden (2.6 percent) and one in 20 in Denmark (5.1 percent).

In its annual study, the “Progress of Nations, 2000,” released here, UNICEF says that children were best cared for in the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The low levels of poverty in these five countries, UNICEF points out, reflect the high levels of investment in family policies.

The study also says that one child out of six – amounting to about 47 million children – lives in poverty in the world’s 23 rich nations.

The 23 countries are all members of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which includes both industrialised as well as industrialising countries that meet certain criteria: open market economy, democratic pluralism and respect for human rights.

Of the OECD members, Mexico has the largest number of children – more than one in four, or 26.2 percent – living in poverty. With the United States taking second place, the other three worst child poverty rates are in Italy (20.5 percent), Britain (19.8 percent) and Turkey (19.7 percent).

“The high rates of child poverty in rich countries underscore the need for all nations – not just poor ones – to identify the pockets of poverty in their countries and take measures to protect the children who are affected,” UNICEF notes.

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy says that poverty continues to enslave huge populations, denying 1.2 billion people – 600 million of them children aged one to five years – good health and productive lives.

“To change this painful situation, the world needs to begin with children, assuring every one of the 130 million born each year, the best possible start in life,” she adds.

Bellamy argues that “there is no question that the resources exist, but too little money is allotted for children’s survival, growth and development, and too few people understand the implications for all societies of missed opportunities in early childhood.”

Meanwhile, the UNICEF report says that the Nordic countries, besides having the lowest levels of child poverty in the industrialised world, are also the most generous donors.

Of the five major donors on a per capita basis, three were Nordics, namely Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the other two being the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

In 1970, the UN General Assembly set a target of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) as the quantum of official development assistance (ODA) that each of the rich countries was expected to provide developing nations. But so far, only four countries – Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden – have met or exceeded the ODA target.

The two donor countries with the highest levels of child poverty, namely Italy and the United States, contribute the least aid when considered as a percentage of gross national product (GNP).

On a per capita basis, Denmark provides about 323 dollars in aid per person, Norway 299 dollars, Luxembourg 265 dollars, the Netherlands 194 dollars and Sweden 177 dollars.

At the bottom of the table are the United States with 32 dollars in aid per person, Italy 40 dollars, Austria 56 dollars, Spain 35 dollars and Portugal 26 dollars.

Total ODA has averaged around 50-55 billion dollars annually, although it reached a high of 61 billion dollars in 1992. Since then, ODA has been on the decline.

But the UNICEF report says that ODA ended its five-year plummet in 1998, when total aid given increased to 51.9 billion dollars, from 48.3 billion dollars in 1997 – a jump of 9.6 percent in real terms.

The study points out that increased donations by 15 donors gave ODA this turn of events, “due in part to short-term support in the aftermath of the (1997) Asian financial crisis and the decisions by several countries to re-emphasise or rebuild aid programmes after cutbacks in the 1990s.”

Excerpt: