Children's education deprivation

"Educational deprivation
The educational deprivation indicator measures the resources available for children’s
learning. Fifteen-year-old children are considered deprived when they have fewer than four of
eight basic items. The eight items include a desk to study, a quiet place to work, a computer for
schoolwork, educational software, an internet connection, a calculator, a dictionary, and
school textbooks. As with the variation in child poverty rates, the variation between countries
in terms of educational deprivation is large. "

Extras from the report

"An efficiency rationale for a policy focus on child deficits is that they often generate
high costs for the rest of society. These include the monetary and non-monetary costs of
crime and anti-social behaviour. These costs can be large for example in countries such as
the United States where crime rates are high compared to the OECD average."

"High overall levels of child well-being are achieved by the Netherlands and Sweden
and low levels by the United States and the United Kingdom. Even at the top performing
end, both the Netherlands and Sweden have a dimension along which performance is at
best only adequate (material well-being for the Netherlands and Family relationships for
Sweden). At the bottom, both the United States and the United Kingdom perform worse
than the median country on all dimensions."

"Child income poverty
Child poverty is measured here by the proportion of children who have an equivalised
family income below 50% of the median family income of the total population. Child
poverty rates across OECD countries vary considerably. Denmark has the lowest proportion
of children living in poor families, with around one in 40 children being poor. The other
Nordic countries – Sweden, Finland, and Norway – are also outstanding performers on this
indicator. On the other hand, as many as one in five or more children in the United States,Poland, Mexico, and Turkey live in poor families"

"Housing and environment
As part of recognising each child’s right to a living standard adequate for physical,
mental, spiritual, moral and social development, the UNCRC gives a specific role to
governments in regard to children’s housing conditions (art. 27.3).
Two indicators are included in the housing and environment dimension. The first
indicator is a simple measure of the quality of housing for children, recording the number
of children living in overcrowded conditions. The second indicator records how many
children experience noise in their house and dirt and grime in their local area.
Housing and environment indicators are child-centred insofar as they refer to a child’s
experienced conditions. The data themselves are not directly collected from the children.
The collection of data for the EU countries is standardised. For additional countries, similar
items have been drawn from nationally representative surveys and reported for the same
age groups. Although the best efforts have been made to ensure comparability, a cautious
interpretation of the results is required.
The indicators in the housing and environment dimension are for children aged 0 to 17.
Data are representative for all families with children in each country.
Housing and environmental conditions are the defining aspects of the living
conditions of children and their families. They are directly amenable to policy, for example
through ownership and maintenance of public housing stock, the availability of housing
benefits, and laws against local pollution.
Both efficiency and equity are addressed in the housing and environment dimension.
While the measures deal with the bottom tail of a distribution, the size of this tail likely
correlates strongly with the average child experience of housing and environmental
conditions. While Housing and environment indicators may relate to some child
developmental outcomes, the dimension has a strong focus on the here-and-now and is
not primarily future-focused."

"Quality of the local environment
The quality of the local environment is measured using indicators of noisy conditions
at home and in the local area, and dirt, grime, pollution or litter around the home and
in the area. On average one in four children in the OECD experiences poor local environmental conditions. Australia and several Nordics perform well, with between one
in ten and two in ten children experiencing problems. However, over one-third of children
in the Netherlands and in Germany live in homes that report experiencing poor
environmental conditions (both countries have comparatively low crowding within the
home). There is no systematic pattern pointing to differences in local environmental
conditions for children in different age groups (Figure 2.5)"