British children's prospects trail behind many of their European neighbours and current Government policies are making it worse, a UN organisation has warned.
Unicef's report on child well-being placed the UK 16th out of 29 developed countries, but it ranked much lower on key indicators including involvement in further education (29th), teenage pregnancy (27th) and youth unemployment (24th).
The children's rights organisation warned that a generation of British teenagers is being "sidelined" by the Government's austerity agenda and called for more state investment in young people.
Anita Tiessen, deputy executive director of Unicef UK, said: "There is no doubt that the situation for children and young people has deteriorated in the last three years, with the Government making policy choices that risk setting children back in their most crucial stages of development.
"With the UK ranking at the bottom, or near the bottom, of the league table on teenage pregnancy and young people not in education, employment or training, we know that many are facing a bleaker future.
"While children and young people will be the first to bear the brunt if we fail to safeguard their well-being, over time society as a whole will pay the price."
The UK has actually crept up the child well-being tables since Unicef's last report in 2007, which branded Britain the worst place in the developed world to be a child.
But the organisation warned that the improvement seen under the previous Labour administration risks being reversed by the Coalition cuts programme.
It cited research by the Family and Parenting Institute and Institute for Fiscal Studies predicting that 400,000 more children will be in poverty by 2015/16 due to austerity measures.
The new report draws on statistics from 2010 and shows a general improvement in children's experiences over the first decade of this century, compared with the previous scorecard, which looked at data from 2001/2.
But the brighter picture for younger children is not matched among teenagers, who remain more likely than their peers in other developed countries to drop out of education and get involved in underage drinking and teenage pregnancy.
The table was topped by the Netherlands, then Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Romania was ranked last.
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