ROME -- A new UNICEF report has shown Italy to be amongst the worst countries in the Europian Union for childhood inequality, at 32^nd out of 35, whilst Denmark has come out on top, and Israel takes last place.

 This new report by the charity UNICEF is dealing with the questions of inequality between families, in high-income countries, in how they raise their children and in which countries is this gap more pronounced.  Countries are ranked according to how far children at the bottom end of the distribution of wealth fall below their peers in the middle.

 They have ranked 41 EU and OECD countries by analysing the inequality in terms of income, educational acheivement, self-reported health and satisfaction with life.  Through this it has emerged that Denmark is the country where the gap between the children who are at the lower end of the distribution of wealth and those who are in the middle range is much smaller, whilst Israel is in last place with a significant gap between children from each economic background.

 Italy meanwhile has also not fared well in the UNICEF rankings, being placed 35^th out of 41 countries for the relative income gap, 22^nd out of 37 in terms of the gap in educational outcomes, 28^th out of 35 for imbalance in health, and 22^nd out of 35 for the inequality in terms of life satisfaction.  This averages out to put Italy in 32^nd place out of 35 countries.

 Another significant finding was the whilst Japan and the United States are two of the world’s wealthiest countries, they were positioned in the bottom third of the league table for income inequality, showing the income of a child in the 10^th percentile to be around 40 percent of that of a child in the middle of the income distribution.

 ch