Britain’s children are the poorest, the unhappiest, their health is declining and their death rates are increasing. Liz Emerson, IF CEO, outlines shocking statistics.
The Children’s Society’s 13th annual Good Childhood Report has been published and reveals that British 15 year-olds who were surveyed reported the lowest average life satisfaction compared to their European peers.
Overall happiness down
The survey asked 2,000 children aged 10 to 15 years how they feel about family, friends, schools etc in order to evaluate their overall happiness. The 2024 findings were significantly below those when the survey began back in 2009/10.
According to the research, British children are struggling with 25% of 15-year-olds surveyed reporting low life satisfaction compared to a European average of 16.6%. The high cost of living, their mental health and schoolwork were areas of concern for those surveyed.
Waiting longer than adults to be treated
Hot on the heels of this report came new research from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health on the fact that children are waiting longer than adults to access healthcare, with paediatric services not recovering at the same rates as adult services, with the gap between capacity and demand growing. Surely, we should be investing more in preventable and non-preventable childhood illnesses?
Mental ill-health increasing
Meanwhile, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RPSYCH) in August stated that it had seen a dramatic rise in the number of children and young people experiencing anxiety and other mental illnesses, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent cost-of-living crisis and worry for the future as possible factors. With mental health services struggling to manage rising demand, children and young people are facing what they call “unacceptably long waiting lists”, which causes further harm with deteriorating longer-term well-being.
“The situation in England is terrible”
To cap it all, Professor Danny Dorling has published his latest book on inequality to drive home the scale and effect of poverty on our nation’s children with the “shocking” statement that “we may have seen the fastest rise in child poverty in one year in UK economic and social history.”
In Seven Children Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation Dorling lays out a tsunami of statistics that are galling for those of us seeking to improve the social contract for the young: 8.3 million out of over 14 million UK children live in households with no savings or less than £1,500 saved; and 28% of all UK children live in the poorest fifth of households. That is two in every seven children. Dorling continues,
“These are the worst modern child poverty statistics I have ever seen
and I only have space here to cover child poverty in Britain,
and just to merely scratch the surface of the data that was released in March 2024 in the UK.”
Child deaths on the increase
As Dorling drives homes so eloquently, our children are becoming more ill, shorter, more children are going hungry, and tragically, more children are dying than a few years ago. Meanwhile, wealthier older people begrudge the State removing the free “bung” of £200-£300 in winter fuel payments that they simply do not need.
Where is government child investment?
Children today have no say in government spending decisions. They rely on the rest of us to ensure that their generation is better protected and invested in so they can have the same prospects of good health, living standards, and old ages as generations before. On intergenerational fairness grounds we should all hang our heads in shame.
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