Save the Children has recently released a report on the best and worst countries to be a mother in. You can find the full report here.
Norway is ranked first. Afghanistan is last. The United States is 31st. European countries dominate the top ten. African countries, the bottom ten.
Here are some excerpts:
The 10 bottom-ranked countries in this year’s Moth- ers’ Index are a reverse image of the top 10, performing poorly on all indicators. Conditions for mothers and their children in these countries are devastating.
• over half of all births are not attended by skilled health personnel.
• on average, 1 woman in 30 dies from pregnancy- related causes.
• 1 child in 6 dies before his or her fifth birthday.
• 1 child in 3 suffers from malnutrition.
• 1 child in 7 is not enrolled in primary school.
• only 4 girls are enrolled in primary school for every 5 boys.
• on average, females have fewer than 6 years of formal education.
• women earn only 40 percent of what men do.
• 9 out of 10 women are likely to suffer the loss of a child in their lifetime.
• One of the key indicators used to calculate well- being for mothers is lifetime risk of maternal mortality. The United States’ rate for maternal mortality is 1 in 2,100 – the highest of any indus- trialized nation. In fact, only three Tier I developed countries – Albania, the Russian Federation and Moldova – performed worse than the United States on this indicator. A woman in the U.S. is more than 7 times as likely as a woman in Italy or Ireland to die from pregnancy-related causes and her risk of maternal death is 15-fold that of a woman in Greece.
• Similarly, the United States does not do as well as most other developed countries with regard to under-5 mortality. The U.S. under-5 mortality rate is 8 per 1,000 births. This is on par with rates in Latvia. Forty countries performed better than the U.S. on this indicator. At this rate, a child in the U.S. is more than twice as likely as a child in Finland, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, Nor- way, Slovenia, Singapore or Sweden to die before reaching age 5.
• The United States has the least generous maternity leave policy – both in terms of duration and percent of wages paid – of any wealthy nation.
What should be done to bridge the divide between countries that meet the needs of their mothers and those that don’t?
• Governments and international agencies need to increase funding to improve education levels for women and girls, provide access to maternal and child health care and advance women’s economic opportunities.
• The international community also needs to improve current research and conduct new studies that focus specifically on mothers’ and children’s well-being.
• In the United States and other industrialized nations, governments and communities need to work together to improve education and health care for disadvantaged mothers and children.
This raises a bunch of questions. Most center around why the countries get ranked where they do and is that the kind of world we want to live in?
As we celebrate our mothers this weekend, let’s also be aware of those less fortunate.
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