Children with Blond Hair and Blue Eyes Have it Easier

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | April 18, 2013

If you are less than 18 yrs old and have blonde hair and blue eyes, you are probably better off than any other kid in the world according to a UN program for children.

A recently released UNICEF report with the serendipitous title “child well-being in rich countries” finds that the top ranked countries for children’s health were all raided by the Vikings in the first millenium:

1. Netherlands

2. Norway

3. Iceland

4. Finland

5. Sweden

6. Germany

US kids, by contrast, are not doing as well as kids in other “rich” countries. The US overall rank is  26 in a list of 29 industrialized countries. According to an op-ed analysis of the report published in the NY times, worth reading in its own right, the US needs better parenting, better policy, and less guns. The analysis included the fact that the US has a high teen pregnancy rate, but failed to note how the statistic reported by UNICEF had nothing to do with teen pregnancies but teen births.

The UN program’s report does not include having a mother and a father among the indicators of child well-being, but it did include interesting subjective indicators of well-being (the result of one of those “are you happy?” surveys). The Netherlands and the Nordic countries perform strongly on both subjective and objective measures.

How do they do it?

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