Suffer the children?

JUDGING by the loud howls of concern this week, the lot of children in Britain and America is a rather terrible one. On Wednesday February 14th Unicef published a report comparing the well-being of young people in 21 rich countries, and concluded that British and American youths endure the worst quality of life of any. In contrast, North European children, especially the Nordics, apparently have a lovely time. Cue hand-wringing from a lot of worried Anglo-American parents.
...there is much in the report that is worth noting. The authors drew on 40 different indicators of child welfare, divided into six general categories, and ranked the countries accordingly. Anglo-Americans with many single-parent families, greater household-income inequality and worse social habits consistently scored badly on almost every measure. What is particularly instructive, however, are the clues to why this is the case. ,a href=" Economist