Re: UK accused of failing its children I just find your reaction strangely defensive. The British media are all over this and overall seem embarrassed and eager to find out where their went wrong, whereas you simply dismiss the study because all UN organisations are anti-UK and US without even bothering to find out what the study is all about. A natural reaction in my view would be to worry and ask myself 'are they really right about this' and 'are we really failing our children'.
Re: UK accused of failing its children The article have a link to the report where its methodology is described, and another link to an article where the methodology is presented in the medial way (iow without much depth). But I guess it is easier to ignoring the study and bitch about it not presenting the methodology than to click on a link and read the actual report that explains how it was done.
Re: UK accused of failing its children Moderator's Note Reminder to all: This is not the Politics forum. Personal attacks, deliberately offensive posts, etc. will be punished by sending you to your room and taking away phone priveleges for a week. Sachin
Re: UK accused of failing its children I read the methodology and I noticed that one key component of it is the social incentives to have children as measured by national resources put to them. However, women in the Europe simply don't have as many children as American women and are having fewer. So European governments are spending more money (per capita) on fewer kids. I believe that France is the only EU country where the native-born population replenishes itself. On a personal note, one of the things that struck me in Amsterdam and Paris was just how few kids were out when I was there visiting, compared to comprable American cities like New York or Washington. None of this diminishes the very real failings in the United States.
Re: UK accused of failing its children While your sarcasm was unnecessary, your underlying criticism is fair enough. I just don't think there's a good way to measure "well-being" and "failing our children" because that can be defined so many different ways by so many different people. I'm sure their methodology is compelling when taken on its own.
The trouble with these kinds of studies is that the populations of the countries in the top 5 are less, except for Sweden and the Nederlands, than Cook County, the part of Illinois where Chicago is. The Nederlands has no cities with populations greater than 1 million, despite being quite densely populated. It is very easy, therefore, to have centralized distribution of services in the Nederlands. In Finland, 85% of the population lives within 25 miles of the ocean. In the central lakeland area of Finland, it is mostly forest and farmland, with only two or three cities with more than 25K inhabitants.
I understand that you believe that life in a big city is not healthy for kids and you might be onto something there. What I do not understand is why you think life in a city with a population of 500,000 is healthier than living in a city with say 5 million inhabitants. I'm willing to go along with your argument if the argument is that in a smaller city you're more likely to be near the countryside but it wouldn't explain why the Dutch rank first in the Unicef list. 80% of the Dutch live in a city and the whole country basically is one great big urban sprawl (with the exception of the three Northern provinces). We have hardly any pure untouched nature to speak of and we are officially the most densely populated country in Europe.
I think what he may be trying to get at would be a comparison of scandinavian nations to individual US states is more accurate and fair than a nation by nation comparison. Our national distribution network is just so big and so complex in comparison to what is in place in scandinavia and benelux. I would go out on a limb and say that Massachusetts or Connecticut or New Jersey would fare quite comparibly with the upper nations in the survey if taken into accuount. I mean if Sweeden and Bulgaria were in the same nation of course Sweeden's ranking is gonna drop.
thanks. basically my point was that it's an apples and oranges comparison when you get to Sweden and the USA. first of all, the USA's middle name tells a big part of the story. we're a federal republic of 50 states. two of them are geographically remote from the other 48, so putting them into the same batch is a bit silly. Hawaii, being a group of islands, with the distance from one end to the island chain to the other about the same as from Paris to Munich, much over water, it would be difficult to have service delivery potentiated in a similar fashion as within a European nation.
but, as i said, in the Nederlands, there are no huge cities, which as most people know, become infested with pockets of enormous poverty and blight. http://www.streetgangs.com/magazine/062004lapovertygangs.html take Los Angeles and NYC, the two largest American Cities. each of them has more than one "ghetto". the estimated gang population of Los Angeles is more than 40K. think of that!
I can follow your reasoning but don't entirely agree with it. It seems too simplistic. Are you more likely to encounter problems in big cities? Why yes, of course. But there are plenty of big cities in the world that do not have ghettos and street gangs to that extent, consider Japan, for example. The crime rate in big European cities such as London and Paris is higher than in other parts of Europe but at the same time much lower than in most big cities in the US. It seems far more logical to argue that the problems you refer to are a result of how freely guns are available.
That's a fair point, up to a certain extent anyway. So would you rather compare the US to the EU, for example.
the reason for street gans is complex. some of this phenomenon is related directly to criminal activity, drug sales being a prime example. but before the drug scene, there were youth gangs who were more into territory for the sake of such mundane matters as monopolizing the female population. pretty much Darwin at his worst, IMO. the cultural pressure in Japan to maintain honor prevents some criminal activity, but i was more interested in such matters as social services over a widespread area. take California, for example. there are three large population centers: LA Metro, Bay Area ( including San Jose/Sil Val ) and San Diego. in LA Metro, there are two ( or three or four ) counties involved, each having fire, police, health care with different central governance. from county to county there are significant differences in quality of service. LA County is overwhelmed by the illegal immigrant population's demand for services that is not counterbalanced by tax revenue. the situation is far less dire in Orange County. LA County has a population of more than 10 million, close to twice that of two of the Scandinavian nations. the county is home to a third of the states poor.
i would have been interested in more detailed info about how the ratings were made, because you can get statistics to say anything. but having lived a couple of years in holland and working a lot with the scandinavian countries, i can't gainsay the findings. france is only 16th on this list, but from where i'm looking at things there's a lot bigger gap between 16th and 21st than between 1st and 16th. my wife and i were very happy living as a couple in SF, but when it came time to start a family we moved to france for all kinds of reasons, from health care to schools to crime rate... you hear the mantra "family values" all the time in the states, but it's just lip service... maternity leave, socialized medicine, shorter work weeks, subsidized housing? hey that's for the godless communists!!! what do they know about family??? yes, but JN, you can get on a bike from anywhere in the centrum of amsterdam and be in real countryside in 30 minutes. not yosemite, but green and clean. from most american cities you can drive an hour and you're still in smoggy suburban sprawl. as for city life, it's the best thing for a kid. believe me, bored kids in bored suburbs can get into no end of trouble; i've been there. but to live in THE CITY in the states you either have a hundred godzillion dollahs or it's gangbang city.
especially the teen birth rate which is about 10 times europe's i think. but france has among the highest birth rates in europe, and a very high percentage of planned and wanted children. that's key.