New Global Data: New Zealand Ranks Alarmingly Low For Child Wellbeing, Mental Health
New Zealand has ranked fourth lowest out of 36 OECD and EU countries for child wellbeing in a new report just released by UNICEF.
For mental wellbeing, New Zealand was the lowest ranking country, in 36th place out of 36 countries with available data.
New Zealand showed the single highest youth suicide rate in the analysed countries during the reporting period – almost three times higher than the average for high-income countries. The report cites suicide as the fourth most common cause of death globally among adolescents aged 15-19 years.
The latest in a UNICEF Innocenti research series spanning 25 years, Report Card 19: Fragile Gains – Child Wellbeing at Risk in an Unpredictable World uses globally comparable datasets to provide critical insight into child wellbeing in the world's wealthier countries between 2018-2022. While it is encouraging that recent domestic statistics on suspected suicide indicate that rates may be slightly decreasing, New Zealand is still a notable outlier compared to other countries and our rates are much too high.
The report also shows where Aotearoa is falling behind on other key issues facing children – including physical wellbeing, where New Zealand has the third highest percentage of overweight children, and bullying, where the percentage of bullied children is the second highest.
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UNICEF Aotearoa CEO Michelle Sharp says the data should be a wake-up call and the upcoming Budget is an opportunity for the government to create positive change.
'Too many children in Aotearoa are missing out on their childhood. We're calling on the government to direct funding towards addressing these problems and to shift the dial, so New Zealand is not ranked so alarmingly close to the bottom of the table when it comes to child wellbeing. The government can act now, and act quickly to make positive impacts if it chooses to,' she says.
UNICEF Aotearoa is deeply concerned about what the report tells us on children and young people's wellbeing in our country, and the trajectory this continues to take since 2022. Recent data captured in the Government's own Annual Report on the Child and Youth Strategy, as well as the most recent child poverty data from Statistics NZ, indicates that on major themes relating to poverty and mental wellbeing, the data has not improved in the last two years.
Food security, affordable housing, hospital admissions and material hardship all continue to show negative trends.
Faced with this stark data, UNICEF Aotearoa is calling on the government to address economic inequality and to prioritise funding for suicide prevention in the upcoming Budget, particularly for Māori and Pacific youth, who are disproportionately represented in negative statistics.
UNICEF Aotearoa Director of Advocacy and Programmes Teresa Tepania-Ashton says there are several measures that could be implemented quickly.
'Immediately expanding eligibility for the Best Start payment to all children up to the age of five and laying out a roadmap for expanding eligibility up to the age of 18 would help tackle economic inequality and make a positive difference to many whānau in Aotearoa who are doing it really tough at the moment,' she says.
'We also support calls for the government to address food insecurity by fully funding an expanded Ka Ora Ka Ako healthy school lunches programme, ensuring that all children across every school and early childhood centre have access to nutritious meals, thereby tackling food insecurity quickly'.
Sharp says child wellbeing in New Zealand is a political choice.
'The quality of life being experienced by the tamariki and rangatahi in this country is down to political choice, and we urge our decision-makers to make the right choices and directly invest in children in the imminent Budget and beyond'.
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