
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993                   TAG: 9309230092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. CHILD SECURITY MORE THIRD WORLD THAN WORLD LEADER

The United States ranks well behind other industrialized countries in providing a social safety net for children, according to a new U.N. report, while countries in the Third World have made enormous strides in child welfare over the past decade.

In a comprehensive study, the United Nations Children's Fund found that 20 percent of U.S. children live below the poverty line - twice the child poverty rate of any other industrialized country. Most European countries have child poverty rates of 5 percent or less.

The UNICEF study found that the United States ranks only 19th in child survival, based on the number of deaths of children under the age of 5. In this category, the United States not only lags behind Japan and all the countries of Western Europe except Portugal, but also Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.

In the percentage of children immunized against measles, taken as an indicator of the availability of basic medical services, the United States ranks 21st among industrialized countries, according to the report. Many poor countries - India, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Brazil and Bhutan, among 33 others - immunize more of their children against measles than the United States does, UNICEF found.

The report, called "The Progress of Nations," is intended to assess the standing of the world's nations without using the traditional yardsticks of gross domestic product and military might.

"It's our hope that this report . . . will contribute over the next several years to a revolution in the way people look at progress and the way they look at nations," said James Grant, the executive director of UNICEF.

In addition to adding up the economic figures and counting tanks and troops, Grant said, "people should also look at countries in terms of how they are doing in the well-being of their people." Rich countries that fail to take care of their most defenseless citizens "should be subject to re-examination as societies," he said.

The study found that overall, the developing world is making faster progress toward meeting children's basic needs than is generally assumed. "In little more than one generation . . . child death rates have been halved, malnutrition rates have been reduced by about 30 percent, and life expectancy has increased about a third" in the developing world, UNICEF said.

One of the report's most striking findings is that despite the famines and droughts that have plagued sub-Saharan Africa, child nutrition there is not nearly as big a problem as it is in South Asia. More than 60 percent of children in India and Bangladesh are "significantly underweight," the study found, compared to about 30 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

The United States ranks high - but not at the top - in giving children at least a primary education, lowering birth rates and preventing maternal deaths during childbirth, the report said.

by CNB