Turkish children report lowest life satisfaction rates in UNICEF report card
Turkish children reported the lowest life satisfaction among 38 developed and emerging countries, a UNICEF report said on Sept. 3. Turkey also has the second highest rate of child mortality, following Mexico.
Duvar English
The percentage of children with high satisfaction about life is drastically low in Turkey, a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report card revealed on Sept. 3, ranking the country to have the lowest percentage of children with "reasonable" satisfaction.
The findings were based on U.N. statistics covering members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union.
Children aged 15 years were each asked to say how satisfied they felt with their life as a whole using a scale from 0 (worst possible life) to 10 (best possible life). Turkey ranked bottom at just 53 percent.
Japan and the United Kingdom followed Turkey with 62 and 64 percent of children reporting life satisfaction.
Happiest kids in the world were in the Netherlands, with 90 percent reporting life satisfaction, followed by Mexico with 86 percent and Romania with 85 percent.
Turkey was ranked the second country to have the highest fatality rate among kids aged 5 to 14, reporting a 1.96 percent mortality rate. Mexico ranked at the top with a 2.47 percent child mortality rate.
Some 30 percent of children in Turkey reportedly suffer from being overweight or obese.
Turkey wasn't included in an assessment of children's general well-being, including mental and physical health and skills, "due to shortages of data."