DESCRIPTON:
"This report sets out the latest internationally comparable data on child deprivation and relative child poverty. Taken together, these two different measures offer the best currently available picture of child poverty across the world’s wealthiest nations. Previous reports in this series have shown that failure to protect children from poverty is one of the most costly mistakes a society can make. The heaviest cost of all is borne by the children themselves. But their nations must also pay a very significant price – in reduced skills and productivity, in lower levels of health and educational achievement, in increased likelihood of unemployment and welfare dependence, in the higher costs of judicial and social protection systems, and in the loss of social cohesion.
The economic argument, in anything but the shortest term, is therefore heavily on the side of protecting children from poverty. Even more important is the argument in principle. Because children have only one opportunity to develop normally in mind and body, the commitment to protection from poverty must be upheld in good times and in bad. A society that fails to maintain that commitment, even in difficult economic times, is a society that is failing its most vulnerable citizens and storing up intractable social and economic problems for the years immediately ahead. It is for these reasons that this comparative snapshot of child poverty in the industrialized nations is presented for the attention of political leaders, press and public."
- reprinted from inroduction to report (p.2)