U.S., Britain ranked last in child welfare

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Britain finished at the bottom in behaviors and risks, which considered factors such as the percentage of children who had breakfast, ate fruit regularly, exercised, were overweight, used drugs or alcohol, were sexually active or became pregnant.

Both the U.S. and British governments criticized the report.

Wade Horn, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the study’s standard of measuring poverty differed from that of the United States.

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Defining poverty
A family of four is defined by the U.S. as living in poverty if its combined income is less than $20,650 a year. The poverty threshold used by the report was an income of $35,000 a year for a family of four, he said.

“I think when you try to compare nations in a report like this, you tend to ignore so many other factors specific to those nations that the comparison becomes somewhat meaningless,” Horn said.

State Department spokesman Paul Denig was also critical of the report and said his department first learned of the study through the media and was not asked to provide input.

Britain said the report did not take account of recent improvements to education, health and general living standards in the country. Some of the statistics also went back as far as 2001, it said.

In general, northern European countries with strong social welfare systems dominated the upper half of the rankings. Southern European countries, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, ranked higher in terms of family support and levels of trust with friends and peers.

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