The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is the latest international grouping to acknowledge the value of long term financial strategies to support prevention research and children’s services planning.

Public spending alarms notwithstanding, governments should invest more in children in the early years to reduce social inequality and help all children, especially the most vulnerable, says a new report.

Average outlay by member states on children up to the age of six accounts for only a quarter of all spending on children. A better balance between what OECD terms the “Dora the Explorer” years of early childhood and the teenage “Facebook years” would help improve long-term health, education and well-being across the board.

OECD campaigns for a “stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy”. Member states include the UK and US, much of Europe, Japan, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand.

The authors of Doing Better for Children urge governments not to cut corners irrespective of the impact of the credit crunch. “Any savings on spending on children’s education and health would have major long-term costs for society,” says OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. 

“Governments should instead seize this opportunity to get better value from their investment in children. And spending early, when the foundations for a child’s future are laid, is key, especially for disadvantaged children and can help them break out of a family cycle of poverty and social exclusion.”

The report also urges governments to put more effort into research. “Governments should continuously experiment with policies and programs for children, rigorously evaluate them to see whether they enhance child well-being, and reallocate money from programs that don’t work to those that do”.

The importance of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with long-term follow-ups is also highlighted alongside that of longitudinal and cross-national data sets for understanding the causal pathways behind social outcomes and informing policy debates.  

Echoing the findings of the 2007 UNICEF’ report on child well-being in developed countries (see: Inequality says more than wealth about children's well-being, the US did particularly poorly across most areas of children’s well-being, particularly on key outcomes such as health, education and poverty. This is in spite of the fact that average income in the US is the second highest among the OECD countries and public spending is also comparatively high. 

Despite the strong US research and policy tradition in the area of child well-being, too many American children are still being left behind, report co-author Simon Chapple argues. 

The UK fared slightly better – below average on most indicators, but rescued by reporting some of the most enjoyable school lives and very low bullying rates. 

British children topped the table for drunkenness and UK teenage pregnancies were the fourth highest. The UK also had a high proportion of 15-19-year-olds not in school, training or jobs. 

The UK is failing to produce results in key areas, OECD says, but it applauds recent policy changes that have secured heavier investment in the early years and more selective targeting of provisions for older children.

Among high achievers were the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The worst, Mexico and Turkey, were also the two countries with the lowest per capita incomes. Unexpectedly, the Slovak Republic came top for health and safety.  

[For more on the UK context, see also: UK treasury sold prevention with a money-back guarantee]