New Zealand ranked 25th in the Global Childhood Report 2019, an increase on last year's ranking of 28 - but ten places below Australia. Photo / File
New Zealand ranked 25th in the Global Childhood Report 2019, an increase on last year's ranking of 28 - but ten places below Australia. Photo / File
New Zealand has ranked in the top 15 per cent in a new report that looks at the livelihoods of children across the globe.
The Global Childhood Report 2019 by Save the Children, which was released today, ranked New Zealand 25th out of 176 evaluated countries.
The report examined the major reasons why childhood comes to an early end, including; access to health care, education, nutrition and protection from harmful practices like child labour and child marriage.
Singapore topped the rankings as the country that best protects and provides for its children, followed closely by Sweden, Finland, Norway and Slovenia.
New Zealand ranked 25th, an increase on last year's ranking of 28. Australia ranked 15th, up two places from last year.
Save the Children spokeswoman Jacqui Southey said the report focuses on the gains made for children in the past 19 years.
The gains are measured against eight indicators; childhood death, chronic malnutrition, time out of school, child labour, child marriage, adolescent birth, and child homicide.
"Here in New Zealand childhood has made some gains, including our children staying in school longer and we also have fewer teen pregnancies," the advocacy, strategy and research director said.
"Last year our ranking was 28th, and this year it is up three places, which is really due to those gains."
New Zealand's score for children out of school has decreased and so has the number of teen pregnancies. Photo / File, Glenn Jeffrey
Southey said these gains happened over time due to an investment in encouraging children to stay in school longer.
"Twenty years ago it wasn't uncommon for children to drop out of school at 16 years old and test their luck in the job market, whereas there has been a number of initiatives to help children stay in school longer.
"Also there has been a culture change where children are seeing greater value in education, particularly if they want to go on to some kind of focused career.
"We also know from global statistics that if children are likely to be in higher education then that drops teen pregnancy rates. The knowledge of how to use contraception has also improved."
Despite these gains, New Zealand's score for the number of child homicides has stayed the same.
"Sadly, we have failed to make progress in reducing the number of children who are victims of violent death," Southey said.
"Between January 2004 and March 2019, 135 children aged 14 and under were killed in New Zealand, so that is an average of nine children a year - and shockingly two thirds of those children were aged under two-years-old.
"Even more worrying is our statistics show that most children in New Zealand are harmed by those who should be caring for them, either a parent or someone known to the family - so this is an area that requires urgent action."
Southey said the recent Wellbeing Budget announcement of $320 million to reduce family and sexual violence was welcomed by Save the Children NZ.
"We are incredibly interested to see how some of these funds will directly apply to preventing child violence, and further to this, child homicide in New Zealand," she said.
Circumstances for children have improved in 173 out of 176 countries since 2000. Photo / File, Mike Scott
Southey believes New Zealand could do better in the rankings.
"We are 25th which is reasonably good, but when we look at a country like Australia who are in 15th - they are ten points higher than us, so we would love to see New Zealand ranking in the Top 10.
"It is absolutely possible, and it is exciting that our Government and all major political parties are supporting child poverty reduction initiatives and child wellbeing increases.
"These are very new initiatives that have taken place in the past 18 months, so we would expect to see those initiatives grow our status and ranking as child outcomes increase in New Zealand.
"Let's build on those improvements and keep focusing on how we can keep our children in school, on insuring that our children have high quality health access, and really focusing on reducing violence in the family home because the statistics are brutal and it is time to change."
1 in 4 children still denied a safe and healthy childhood:
The Global Childhood Report shows an estimated 970 million children were robbed of their childhoods in 2000 due to "childhood enders" – life-changing events like child marriage, early pregnancy, exclusion from education, sickness, malnutrition and violent deaths.
That number today has been reduced to 690 million – meaning that at least 280 million children are better off today than they would have been two decades ago.
The report found that circumstances for children have improved in 173 out of 176 countries since 2000, with:
• 11m fewer girls forced into marriage or married early
• 3m fewer teen births per year
• 12,000 fewer child homicides per year
The most dramatic progress was among some of the world's poorest countries, with Sierra Leone making the biggest improvements since 2000, followed by Rwanda, Ethiopia and Niger.
The Central African Republic ranks last, with Niger – despite recent progress - and Chad rounding out the bottom three countries where childhoods are most threatened.
Together, China and India account for more than half of the global decline in stunting alone.
Of the eight "childhood enders" examined in the report, displacement due to conflict is the only one on the rise, with 30.5 million more forcibly displaced people now than there were in 2000, an 80 per cent increase.
