Save the Children's State of the World’s Mothers Report 2007 [PDF] also includes statistics on wealthy countries, and there's one in there to be proud of: New Zealand ranks third in the world (behind Sweden and Iceland) for women, and fourth (behind Norway) for mothers. In both cases, we are just ahead of Australia. As for why, it seems that the introduction of paid parental leave brought us up to par with most western nations (unlike Australia), while the high percentage of women in Parliament and commitment to women's education pushed us to the top. According to these statistics,women now receive 21 years of formal schooling - which means we now seem to have universal tertiary education (in one form or another) by default.
Something we should be less proud of is ranking 20th in the children's index. It's still ahead of Australia, despte that country's greater investment in education (something we are at least working on). The chief indicator seems to be differencesin infant mortality rates; while to some extent these are masked by the table (how about more significant figures?), its clear that other countries do a hell of a lot better than we do. Though hopefully the progressive re-universalisation of primary care and the effort put into maori health will help there too.
I wonder just how much Australia is driven down by their policy of ignoring aborigines in the hope they'll go away?
ReplyDeleteOne big thing I notice is that in Oz dental care is not state funded, so many people only get dental care in the emergency department at the hospital.
Moz: An interesting question. Unfortunately due to inadequate data collection on aboriginal health (a problem noted in that report), it will be difficult to tell exactly how much it affects overall child mortality rates.
ReplyDeleteOf course the top country,for child deaths, Romania, has banned smacking. We rate 21wt - and over half the countries in the top 20 have not banned smacking.
ReplyDeletethis report is a good reason why we should not make corrective smacking a criminal offence to get rid of child abuse because *surprise surprise* child abuse is caused by factors other than corrective smacking.