According to this survey:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6360517.stm

CHILD WELL-BEING TABLE
1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada
13. Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom

Source: Unicef

Yeah, i saw this a few days ago. Typically, the UK gvt is pointing out that it's own results do not reflect the recent changes it made. I had a quick look at the full report and it seems something beyond my limited political knowledge. I couldnt figure out exactly why the UK and US was rating badly for child poverty when these two economies are supposed to be the strongest.

That's very eye-opening. The sheer concept of there being no correlation between national economic well-being and social well-being will keep be thinking for ages.

Also, the UK is supposed to be governed by a "social-democratic" party, and it scored lowest in the results! I find that very concerning too. We could point the fingers at the Iraq war, but maybe the problem goes deeper than that. Labour came into power 1997 after the Thatcher and Major conservative eras which were typically socially stringent.

I've never doubted that the UK is socially and culturally retarded, but never by this much.

Kids don't care about Iraq. The problem with happiness is that you can't measure it like a country's GDP for example. So it's often not picked up in the news. The Economist wrote an article about this some time ago I believe, but you need registration to view it online, and I have to ask my brother for the login codes (he has a subscription). I'll post it here if I find it.

Those results don't surprise me in the slightest. The trouble with being a strong economy is we're also an expensive country; I can go almost any other country in the world and get a lot more crap for my pound. All the wealth goes to the damned government and footballers. Plus of course we have all the chav mums running round with 300 kids on each arm.

As for the risk behaviours, that also doesn't surprise me. In my class at secondary school (thats 11 - 16 for non-english) out of a class of 34, I think probably about 20 of them smoked and at least 6 that I knew of took up some form of drugs.

After spending one weekend in Amsterdam with my girlfriend I can definitely agree with Pev. God we are expensive.