For more than twenty years, UNICEF Report Cards have measured child and youth well-being in wealthy countries. The first Report Card, in 2000, focused on child poverty for its extensive impacts across children’s lives and futures.
Report Card 18 returns to this focus at a critical time – when child poverty is rising in Canada for the first time in many years. This report compares levels of child poverty amidst wealth in the richest countries; the progress they have been making to end child poverty; and how well their policies protect every child from poverty.
Income support policies have lifted many children out of poverty and lifted Canada up the rankings in UNICEF Report Card 18 to 7th among 39 wealthy countries for its progress to reduce child poverty. Only a handful of countries reduced child poverty at a steeper rate over the past decade. This is because good policies yield good rankings in UNICEF league tables.
But UNICEF Report Card 18 also shows us that Canada can’t check children off the policy to-do list just yet.
To read the latest Report Card, please click here