Poland leads in child well-being -- UNICEF

Majority consensus was expressed in October 2015 when voters said they were fed up with the pro-foreign-interest-group party PO and opted for the people-friendly, pro-Polish PiS!

You mean the nearly 10% of voters that saw their votes disqualified, or the other 50% that didn't vote?

When you think that PiS only got 18% of the vote, it really puts the numbers in perspective.

You mean the hostile, anti-Polish PiS presumably. The one that 18% of the electorate voted for. And the one you posted an outdated and superceded Unicef report to try and praise.

And what percent of the vote did the PO losers' party get? Whatever it was, they got voted out of office. The slick, glib and slippery rheotric of the previous 8 years of misrule was finally seen through like the boy that cried "wolf".

As was PiS last time they were in, and we should of course remember that Jaroslaw Kaczynski also lost a presidential election (one that was stacked in his favour!)

Hard to see how that impacts on the well-being of children in Poland except that it has deteriorated somewhat and the 'keep it in the family' approach that PiS seem to favour has obvious sad consequences.

I get what you're saying, but by using that analogy, the entire UNICEF report is pointless then. The point of the report is to determine the levels of child poverty within each country, in comparison to others.

All the participating children from the different countries involved in the studies were asked the same questions.
Based on their answers, and data from other sources, this is how the rankings for each country were attained.
The US for example, was often at the bottom of the tables/graphs,well below Poland, despite it being one of the richest countries in the world. The problem is that there is huge economic disparity within the country.

The UK has a safety net in the form of of it's benefit system, but that doesn't mean that money received by unemployed parents is necessarily being spent wisely or on the children. Or maybe there is only one employed adult on minimum wage within a family. There is poverty in the UK, which might not be as outwardly obvious as in Poland ,and not to the same degree, and this is reflected in the fact that the UK lies above Poland in the rankings of material well being.

I am also sure that the UNICEF reports don't tell the whole story either.


Throwing money at the problem is treating the symptoms of poverty and not the cause.
There is much that could be done, but one has to ask how much of a priority trying to eradicate child poverty is.

Absolutely. And there are certain universal basics that can be measured and compared such as whether a child has adequate nourishment, access to education,health care and so on. I would say that overcrowding is a serious issue in Polish homes, especially in urban areas in flats and apartments. The form in which the questions are put to children doesn't really reveal that. The questions should be 'how many people live in your home?' and 'how many rooms are in your home?' but the question asked is 'do you have your own room?'. Now I've known Polish kids who talk about their 'room' when referring to the place where they sleep but it's not an actual bedroom. On one occasion a fourteen year old girl enthusiastically invited me to see 'her room'. It was a loft bed in the kitchen ; it was very nicely built with an area underneath for her desk and computer and she was so proud and pleased with it. It's quite possible that she would answer that question with a 'yes' but it's not a bedroom in the accepted sense of the word.


Yes and it's the same in Ireland. Having worked for years in disadvantaged areas I can confirm that this is definitely the case. Parents are not always selfish or intentionally neglectful of their children but a good many of them waste money on silly things and ignore the basic essentials, so the child gets taken to the toy shop every Friday for a new toy but comes to school without breakfast, has a takeaway or MacDonalds two evenings a week for dinner and then when the money runs out, a bowl of cereal for the other five.

And we should also remember that PiS was the first party since 1989 to ever win a democratic election outright with no need for a coalition. That tells us a lot.

On the basis of the PiS govt's pro-Polish, people-friednly achievements so far,
a plausible prediction for the next general election would be: PiS 47%, Kukiz 12 Petru 9, PO 6, Razem 5, SLD 5.

Lis was saying in Newsweek that we have to be prepared for PIS maybe being in power for longer than the one term. If he is right I'll get my coat.

I stayed with friends about 6 years ago in Poland, and the only actual bedroom was given to me, while the parents and 4 kids slept in the lounge. I took the eldest daughter's bedroom, so ordinarily, the parents and 3 of the kids would sleep in the lounge.

I felt awful about it as I didn't know the full circumstances.

I stayed with another couple of friends two months ago out in the sticks in Poland, and as is very common, they were living with one set of parents. Their children were sleeping in the same room as them, and only one bathroom for 6 people ( grandmother was also living with them ). This time I was aware of the problem, but they were so keen for me to actually stay with them, and were genuinely horrified at my suggestion that maybe it would be easier if I found a hotel or apartment, that I ended up agreeing to stay. I'm sure it is more of a problem in urban areas with not so much space, but it goes on in the country too.

[quote=Atch]The form in which the questions are put to children doesn't really reveal that.

I agree and that was across the board for all questions. This is where I think those reports have some flaws.
Do you have your own room is really misleading. I had to share a room when I was a child, but I didn't grow up in poverty!


Exactly, and I suspect much of the child poverty in the UK results from poor choices, whether intentional or not.

well people have always made poor choices but that didnt result in poverty and using food banks did it?
So something else must be different.

Well if you look back a hundred years ago in the British Isles there was a great deal of material deprivation but it wasn't so much through poor choices, but rather through the structure of society at the time. The poverty we have today is different in that materially the state provides better for people than it ever did in the past and yet still we have children who are literally going hungry.

i believe that might be true in Ireland but not in Britain.
You cannot feed a family properly on state benefits.

A lot about low turnout and voter apathy. Nothing else.


This so true and the welfare system has changed thousands if not millions of lives for the better. Unfortunately the benefits system is chiselled away every few years depending on who is in government at the time and as Roz says, currently the amounts paid are so low it's nigh impossible to feed a family - which is after all what the payments are supposed to do.

A lot of moralising where benefits are concerned, including some places paying food stamps - a Calvinistic thing based on the old-fashioned idea that the poor are somehow automatically feckless and partly responsible for their own situation. We see this attitude in Poland too.

Poles are no fools, although for a time anyone can get duped by slick PR and glib rhetoric of the kind PO were experts in. But Poles know which party is serving the nation, not an elitist clique of oligarchs and foreign-interest groups.

The latest TNS Polska poll has shown support for PiS at 40%, PO 17. Nowocezsna 9 and Kukiz 9.
Petru meanwhile was off to Brussels on yet another sntiching mission. No wonder he's dropped to single-digit support.


The 47% figure was just a mad stab, but reality has made it quite plausible, since PiS are already garnering 40% support.
I therefore need to upgrade my prediction for the next election: PiS 52%, PO 9, Kukiz 8, Petru 5.