Well-Being for the "Youngsters"

Photo courtesy of getmobetter.com

     In my mind, children are the future. And to be perfectly honest, they really are. They will one day be the leaders of this world, holding all control, making all the decisions, choosing how countries will be run and what kind of people will make up this world. Although a scary thought at times, this thought can also be very uplifting and exciting - we have a chance to inspire and influence these children in the best way possible.
     As a camp counselor and a ski instructor, I've seen the innocence of children disappear as the summers and winters have passed, and while it worries me to see how quickly these children grow up compared to how quickly I grew up, I know we all have an opportunity to change that. And why not start by improving children's well-being?
     A recent report put out by the United Nations surveyed children in 29 of the richest countries in the world to get a better look at the well-being of children in those specific countries. The outcome? Children in the Netherlands have the highest ranking with the U.S. coming in at 26 and Romania taking up the end.
    The report looked at five different dimensions - material well-being, health and safety, education, behaviors and risks and housing and environment - to create an overall average for each country.
     The study of children's well-being began back in 2001, but the first report was not put out until 2007 because so much information had been gathered and analyzed. Basically researchers take a two-year period to survey the children before publishing the report. Some of the findings researchers found this time, after surveying children for 2009 and 2010, were very interesting ...

• Finland and the Netherlands have both stayed at the top of the well-being ranking for children in both the 2001/2002 and 2009/2010 periods.
• Portugal has jumped from the bottom of the table to the middle in the span of a decade.
• Canada and the Netherlands have taken the second and third places for educational achievement for the last two periods.
• Teenage pregnancies have actually decreased in 85 percent of the countries from 2003 to 2009.
• While the number of overweight children has increased in 17 out of all the countries in the last decade, the largest increase was in Poland where the percentage has doubled.
• Declines in alcohol use were seen in 75 percent of the countries.
• While Denmark saw the biggest fall in fighting, from 40 to 30 percent, Spain saw the biggest rise, from 40 to 55 percent.

     While the report does not look at all countries in the world, it still gives a good idea as to the well-being of children and what things need to be changed to make them even happier and more comfortable in their lives. With a little more of an in depth look at the report, I think many conclusions could be made about what needs to be changed and what needs to be promoted. We want children to be happy for the simple reason that happiness is a good thing, but on another level, we want children to be happy so they can spread that mentality to everyone else to create a brighter future and a better world for themselves.