Photo: Ryan Orr (flickr)

Congratulations: Children in the United States do not have the worst quality of life in the developed world. That honor is held by Britain — with the United States a close second.

— editorial in The Nation

Because the focus of alleviating child poverty is usually the developing world, it is easy to forget there are poor kids in rich nations, too. In fact, according to the UN’s 2007 overview of child well-being in rich countries, “there is no obvious relationship between levels of child
well-being and GDP per capita.”

It may be of a surprise that despite America’s vast wealth, the country has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world. In fact, the total number of children in the country in poverty has increased by one million from 2000 to 2006. According to Kids Count, a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States, between 2000 and 2006 child poverty increased in 32 states and the District of Columbia.

The numbers are no better in the United Kingdom – recent figures showed that 2.9 million children in the U.K. are officially living below the poverty line – up 100,000 since 2005-06.

Although these children bear no responsibility for living in poverty, they are penalized by their governments’ neglect and disinvestment in poverty-reduction policies. As The Nation observes:

One can talk about military as opposed to social spending; about pro-business, oil-driven economies; about the distractions of patriotism and the culture of aggression; about valuing the imperatives of power above the duty of care. But however one chooses to name it, the deep, intractable connection between military adventurism abroad and the neglect of needs at home has never been more starkly evident. The pity is that it's so difficult to fight the problem, so hard to focus on a pregnant teenager too scared to ask for help or a child hungry at school when the casualty figures from Baghdad demand our attention. The fog of war may be most blinding for the folks back home.

Iraqi refugees living in Jordan. Photo: Jacob Colie/Mercy Corps

Life has been hard for many Iraqi refugees. They flee their homes in the thousands each day to reach unwelcoming neighboring countries that do not have enough room or resources for them.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is leading the effort to help these refugees with food, jobs, health care, and education. Accomplishing this mission, however, has become increasingly difficult for the UNHCR due to a lack of funds and the recent spike in food and energy prices. Many Iraqi refugees now face a very precarious future.

This dire situation, however, is not the case for all Iraqi refugees. Especially in Jordan, some Iraqis have found that their lives have actually improved away from the conflict-torn Iraq. A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor recounts the stories of Iraqi refugees who have been able to start over and even establish their own businesses in Jordan.

These Iraqi refugees have the training and resources to start over because many of the roughly half-million Iraqis in Jordan are from the well-educated middle class. A study by the Norwegian Research Institute Fafo of Iraqis in Jordan found that 46 percent of adult males and 42 percent of adult females have some type of university degree.

UNHCR is promoting awareness and raising concerns about the most vulnerable of the 4.7 million Iraqis who are either refugees or have been internally displaced. Equal concern should also be given to the most valuable — those who, by departing, drain Iraq of the brains needed to rebuild.