The Child Development Index
The Save the Children Fund 2008
Overall, child well-being as improved by 34% since 1990, but progress is slow. Leaders must consider how children are doing and how their decisions impact them.
· Download the full report The Child Development Index: Holding governments to account for children's wellbeing (PDF 228KB).
· Download the data The Child Development Index - data (.xls 143KB).
What does the index tell us about how children are faring in different regions?
Africa
Children are doing worse in Sub-Saharan Africa than any other region.
However, progress has been very mixed; some countries in
East Asia
East Asia has made considerable progress in child well-being in recent years, improving it by 45% over 1990-2006, reducing deprivation to a score of just 8.5; only one other developing region, Latin America, scores better. It has the best level of primary school enrolment and has managed to halve its child mortality rate over 1990-2006. Much of this progress is because of
South Asia
South Asia has a high level of deprivation, scoring 26.4; this is 3 times worse than
Latin America and the Caribbean
The region made substantial progress in improving child well-being in the 1990s, scoring 6.8 in our index of child deprivation, the lowest of any developing country region. It made the most percentage improvement of any region in the world, reducing child deprivation by 57% over the period, 1990-2006. This improvement was largely driven by reductions in child mortality and increases in primary school enrolment. The region’s child mortality rate is now the lowest of any developing region. The region’s poorer countries, like
East and North Africa
The Middle East and North Africa region scores 11.2 in our index, worse than East Asia but only a third as bad as Sub-Saharan Africa, and has reduced its level of child deprivation by 41% over 1990-06. However, there is considerable variation within the region.
Central & Eastern Europe and Central Asia
The region containing Central & Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, for which data are much sparser in the early 1990s, saw an improvement of almost 15% in its Index score between 1995-99 and 2000-06. Its score stands at 9.2, slightly worse than East Asia and slightly better than the Middle East and
Developed countries
Our Child Development Index shows that there is a low level of deprivation in developed countries in the three basic areas of child rights that it measures. On our scale of 0-100, these countries score 2.1, the lowest regional Index score worldwide. There is still some variation between these countries however; for example the
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