From the Australian branch of UNICEF comes a cautionary report about the value of international statistical comparisons and the league tables they generate.

The country has been in some trouble lately for its halting progress toward multiculturalism and its tough line with asylum seekers.

Yet a UNICEF comparison of the condition of immigrant children in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Britain and the US suggested that children settling in Australia from overseas fare on the whole much better than their counterparts elsewhere.

It emerged that there were 1.5 million children under the age of 17 living in immigrant families, representing almost 33% of all Australians. Most of them experienced living standards and education outcomes similar to others born and raised in the country.

But the underlying reason for this relatively good showing prompted UNICEF's chief executive in Australia, Carolyn Hardy, to hit out against her government's immigration policy in the newspaper The Age.

"When you dig deeper into the research, rather than highlighting Australia as an international leader, it reveals the opposite," she wrote, "including the stark reality that at a time when war and turmoil are creating a flood of new refugees, Australia's humanitarian credentials compare poorly – and they are getting worse."

In 2007-08, 90,308 permanent additions were made under Australia's migration program. Just 7.3 per cent - or 6,587 - were included under the humanitarian program, she argued.

The research went further, showing that in the decade since 1996-97 the humanitarian intake had consistently represented a tiny fraction of Australia's overall allowance.

When there were increases in immigration, the trend was dominated by those accepted under the skilled migration program.

"The fact that the living standards of Australia's immigrant children was relatively high was found to be almost entirely due to the fact that their parents - who for the most part were settled in Australia under skilled migration or family reunion programs - were well-educated, earned good incomes and therefore settled easily.

"It was also helped by the fact that a good many of these migrants still hail from Britain. But there were pockets of disadvantage, and Australian migrants are not immune to the racism, discrimination and cultural isolation that migrants in Europe and the US also suffer."

The UNICEF research was not intended to be the vehicle for controversial debate about asylum seekers, but to improve understanding of the situation of immigrant children in industrialized countries.

But Australia's poor record as a humanitarian refuge was too glaring to be ignored, Carolyn Hardy wrote.

There was some compensation in Australia's generous development funding in the Pacific and the Asia region where poverty caused untold misery for children and it had re-affirmed its commitment despite the global financial crisis.

The country now had an opportunity to make a greater contribution in terms of its humanitarian intake, she said.

The general condition of Australia’s children, based on data from the long-term Growing Up in Australia study was reported, last week, to the longitudinal study’s second research conference.

Growing Up in Australia was launched in 2004 among families with 4-5 year old children or infants under a year old to investigate the contribution of children’s social, economic and cultural environments to their adjustment and well-being. A major aim is to identify policy opportunities for early intervention and prevention strategies.

Newsbites published ahead of the conference indicated that Australian children were less physically active and more likely to be overweight than children born 20 years ago; and they were more likely than children born in the 1980s to have a mother who worked and to attend childcare. More against the global grain, they tended to be less anxious and to have better social skills.