The Wellbeing of Children in the UK report says children's quality of life increasingly depends on where they live, but the problems are far more serious in isolated pockets of England and Scotland.

Obesity, homelessness, traffic and fewer chances for free play are also identified by the charity as growing problems in some areas.

The report was carried out by the University of York and has been described as the first ever comprehensive study of the state of children in the UK.

What can be done to reduce child poverty in the UK? Where is the best place to bring up children? Tell us what you think.

This Talking Point has now closed. Read a selection of your comments below.

If it's not poverty, it's intense competition

Jon, UK/ Canada

I think the pressures on kids and parents are overwhelming in the UK. If it's not poverty, it's intense competition that causes problems. Children should be allowed to enjoy their childhood as much as possible. I think that's getting tricky in the UK.
Jon, UK/ Canada

With parents who balance spending as much time as possible with them and setting a good example by working hard and bettering society in some way. In a home that does not have a TV. In an area that is not a large population centre. In a country that takes seriously securing its citizens' liberty and freedoms. That place is where I believe growing up is most healthy.
Bill, Colorado, USA

In the UK, problems are the result of many things, but poverty is not one of them

Graham, Warsaw, Poland

I taught in a Nepalese village. Most parents couldn't afford the $1.50 a week the school charged to cover costs. The kids had no shoes, no glasses (where needed), no sports equipment, no books, almost no paper and the head was ultra-protective about chalk consumption. In the UK, problems are the result of many things, but poverty is not one of them.
Graham, Warsaw, Poland

The best place to bring up a child is in a country that has adequate welfare, education and healthcare systems. So anywhere in Europe apart from the UK then.
David Howe, UK

What is our great country coming to? I have gradually seen Britain fall to its knees over the years. Crime is soaring. Traditional family values, as regarded by the ignorant "Blairite" generation, are seen as too old-fashioned. I'll tell you a cure for this degradation, remove the wishy-washy "social apologists" from power and bring back a firm hand!
Elizabeth Hampshire, England

Anywhere that has no TV advertising, no small-minded soaps, no gambling outlets, no credit cards or store credit, but has a decent wage for a day's work, decent affordable housing, clean water, a lack of crime, good education and support from the community, formal or otherwise, and a community spirit.
Randy, UK

The best way to combat poverty in children is to educate their parents and to make parents more responsible for their own action that impact on their children as well as their children's own behaviour. This would not just tackle child poverty but also many of the anti-social behaviour problems we find in young people today.
Glenn Jordan, UK

If kids are made to feel worthy, whatever they have, they have a chance of happiness

Anthony, London, UK

First of all, living in some sort of poverty doesn't necessarily mean you will turn out to be a criminal or be unhappy or uneducated. One major problem is the way those kids are treated by their peers, and the rest of society. There is no miracle because whatever is done, there will always be people living in standards far below that of some others. It is only when these people are made to feel worthless, inadequate, rejects of society, that the problems really start. That's when the violence, delinquency, crime, skipping school, etc comes into play. If kids are made to feel worthy, whatever they have, they have a chance of happiness.
Anthony, London, UK

Education and knowledge have always been key, because without them children and young adults will not be armed with the ability to make positive choices - as opposed to having few or no choices. Unfortunately, with the inverted snobbery that exists among many so-called working class people in particular, uneducated parents will raise uneducated children and the cycle continues. How often have you heard an audience on a TV show, e.g. Blind Date, go "ooooh" in the most sarcastic manner when a contestant says they attend university? Or if someone "admits" to having a better than average job? One reads and hears of "role models" who claim never to have a read a book, as if this is something to be proud of, when the exact opposite is true. Eliminate attitudes like these, and the chances of making progress towards eradicating poverty will improve.
Tony, NL

Lack of money/possessions is not a major problem in the UK, but there are far too many unhappy children (and adults) in this country for other reasons, and this is the real poverty.
Stefan Kilpatrick, UK

In my experience, it doesn't matter so much where as how. Having been the product of a one-parent set-up, I know that if I hadn't been evacuated to a loving caring couple, I could have had a very twisted outlook on life. Luckily they brought me up in my formative years and made me convinced that it is so important to have two people who you believe love you and care about you. I don't think one-parent families can do that as there are two many stresses on that one. Also, a child needs the stability of one constant father they can relate to, learn from and trust implicitly for the best possible start in life.
Juliet, Cornwall

What saddens me is the number of children in the UK condemned to dead-end existences by their parents' anti-education attitudes. We saw some of this in the recent debate about what constitutes working class. At a recent parents' evening about how to help your child's education, only five people out of 80 turned up and they are the same five who always do because they care about their kids' future.
D, UK

In a place where people have healthy mentalities, where the air is clean, food is non-contaminated and where they can run around free from intrusive advertising and perverts. New Zealand it is then.
Elizabeth Coldwell-Hall, England

In a good Christian home following sound Christian principles!!
Lee, UK

Couples should have to prove their ability to support a child

Faith, UK

Some degree of child poverty is always going to exist while we are supporting lazy people who don't want to work in their 'right to have children'. I believe couples should have to prove their ability to support and nurture a child in all ways, not just financially, before they can have children.
Faith, UK

The idea that a third of British children are living in poverty is, frankly, an insult to the millions of really poverty stricken families the world over. This sort of definition of poverty merely makes the word "poverty" have less meaning, and there is a great danger therefore that we underestimate the suffering of real poverty.
Giles, UK

Child poverty in the UK is about not having three meals a day

Sam, UK

Has anyone read the report? Child poverty in the UK is about not having three meals a day or a proper coat in the winter or shoes that fit - surely these are basic fundamental needs. The report isn't talking about those children who don't have satellite TV or flash trainers. People and the government need to take their heads out of the sand and recognise that the UK has a problem, with a third of children living in poverty.
Sam, UK

I simply wish parents and adults could for a short moment be made to see through the eyes of a child who is mistreated, underprivileged, unloved, not wanted. We can blame governments, "wrong areas to live" until forever, but the reality is that we, you and the adults, the parents, I are more to blame than anyone or anything else. Until we change as a people, I am afraid it will simply get worse.
Gary, UK

It saddens me to hear the extent of child poverty in the UK. There can never enough solutions to poverty. However meaningful education and strong family values can seriously dent the poverty line.
Augustus Amedee, St Lucia

More resources need to be put into educating people in controlling what they have

Rob O'Donnell, England

Many of the problems of poverty are not due to lack of money, but the lack of ability to control it. It's too easy to find cash in your pocket and spend it, then get in trouble when the next bill comes in. More resources need to be put into educating people in controlling what they have. I fear however this will take some considerable time to work; the present spend-spend-spend culture is not easily overturned.
Rob O'Donnell, England

A main long-term problems is that many of their parents would have suffered during the 1980s/early 1990s and may well have been in areas where it was quite simply impossible to get a job. T hese parents are "damaged" now, quite often having low self-esteem due to experiences from when they were much younger. Whether they know it or not they pass some of this on to their children. I speak as someone who went through this period but was lucky enough to realise that life didn't have to be what I saw around me.
John, UK

Nothing changes, the rich get rich, and the poor get nothing. It's the system.
Glyn Roughsedge, Frodsham, UK

Talk, talk, talk. I'm as guilty as the next person for talk. To quote Eliza Doolittle: "Show me." We'll each have to give more money and time. If we can help at least one child, that's one step up for humanity. Let's get busy.
S. Small, USA

We should contribute more towards general taxation

Margaret, Scotland

If poverty is defined as a state of being inferior, we can go on to consider how to cope with improving the lot of British children who are locked in a cycle of inferior housing, education, diet and exercise. Many lack the support of a good role model. A more egalitarian tax system (VAT is disadvantageous to the poor, but easily affordable for the rich), free and healthy school meals for all, after-school sports clubs and tutorial classes would improve the cycle of inferiority that so many British children experience. If we are serious about improving their situation, we should contribute more towards general taxation.
Margaret, Scotland

Why do we constantly talk about reducing 'child poverty' when the thing the government is obsessed with measuring and tackling is 'child inequality'? Another wonderful left-wing dream which I thought had been reduced to the dustbin of UK political history after the disaster that was the 1970s and early 1980s.
Nigel, UK

The most important thing we can give our children is our time

Pat Welch, USA

I think that children in the UK would be a lot better off if more mothers stayed at home to look after them. The most important thing we can give our children is our time, not the material things money can buy. If we give them our love and time they will feel really valued.
Pat Welch, USA

As one of a married couple with four well-balanced grown children, I wholly agree with many of the comments regarding the benefits of a stable family background. For one thing, the state should reward (via tax breaks) parents who stay together to raise their children.
Louise, UK

Louise, UK - get real! There are many reasons why families split up, to give tax relief to those LUCKY enough to stay together is absurd! The children usually get left with the parent that cares and to tax this parent because they just happened to marry someone without the same morals as them is just stupid.
Leon, Wales

In many cases there is simply not enough money to go round

Danni, England

It is pretty obvious that poverty is relative. In a country as wealthy and sophisticated as ours it is simply unacceptable that children suffer poverty. Although it is important to remember that a loving family can provide support, it is also important to remember that children do not have control over money, how it is spent, or how much comes in. In many cases there is simply not enough money to go round, especially in areas where the cost of living is high.
Danni, England

Plenty of people are poor, I was. Had I been subjected as a child to the terrible battering of advertisements that amount these days to little more than child exploitation, I probably too would have put pressure on my parents who had no money. Children can be poor and happy, but not when they see their rich friends having things they see on TV. Unfortunately this means slightly less world trade, and so will not happen.
Ian, UK

The best way to reduce child poverty is to give parents tax incentives to stay (or get) married and to enable a parent to choose to stay at home with the child during its formative years.
Hugh, UK

I have read all the comments from the middle class readers who have access to the internet. Maybe they should try living a week on a council estate in Bradford.
Julie Garvey, Canada

The number of comments belittling this report amazes me! This country has a major problem, with some areas exceptionally deprived, not just of money but of hope and purpose. We need to get rid of the attitude that the Third World are always worse off. Where else is the suicide rate so high? Our society is disintegrating, we need more encouragement for marriage and the traditional family unit.
Rog C, UK

Can't we look at humanity as a whole?

Jane, UK

Why is it some contributors feel "compassion" about the Third World and yet feel nothing for contempt for our own British children who often, through no fault of their own, are disadvantaged from before they are born? I feel desperate for Third World children and families too but can't we look at humanity as a whole and not be so quick to talk about British/Western kids as mere brats who sit behind a computer.
Jane, UK

Does this study tell us how many poverty-stricken children live in families where one or both parents can still "afford" to drink and smoke themselves to oblivion? In short, how much difference would a change in parental perspectives make?
Alan Green, Germany

Channelling money through the education system will ensure that children enjoy the best of it - better teaching facilities, sports facilities, books and computers in the schools' libraries, after school activities - and this will have a direct result on the long term development of the children.
Alex Liang, London UK

Real child poverty hardly exists at all in the UK. But what is evident is the kind of mental poverty provided by broken homes and simply bad parents.
James, UK

The real issue here is the decay of the fabric of society and parenting in the UK

Peter, Singapore

Like others I found this report ludicrous to the point of being obnoxious considering the desperate plight of many children here in Asia. The real issue here is the decay of the fabric of society and parenting in the UK. Even the poorest family in the developing world will grasp opportunities and remain optimistic. Many in the UK seem pre-occupied with grumbling about state handouts and where the next packet of cigarettes are coming from.
Peter, Singapore

How are we encouraging the less privileged in our society - by asking them to gamble what little they have on a weekly lottery. Children are all born with innocence and a vulnerability that is often lost too soon because of dreadful parenting. Often the children are unwanted from birth and unloved. Let's seriously address birth control and parenting skills and in time we may not need to have further debates on child poverty.
R.C. Robjohn, UK

Benefits have been rising steadily for fifty years, apparently without any dent in "poverty" (at least in the purely relative terms described here). The effect, perhaps by encouraging young, single parents, may even have been perverse. Single parenthood is the clearest correlate of child poverty.
Ben, England

Child poverty that would break your heart

John, UK

Child poverty, what is that then? Not being able to afford the latest high tech pair of trainers or the latest mobile phone for a seven year old? I recently travelled around Cambodia and believe me that was child poverty that would break your heart.
John, UK

As a Scot married to a Turk, living in Turkey with our daughter, I have to agree with John, UK. What child poverty? I don't think kids have ever been so lucky! Perhaps the government should provide each child in the UK with a trip to a developing country. Maybe then the nation as a whole would stop taking free education, the NHS, a social benefits system and food and water for granted and realize just how fortunate they are.
Barbara, Turkey

I am shocked and saddened by the lack of awareness and compassion other contributors have exhibited towards the scale of child poverty in the UK and throughout the West. The reality is not one of satellite TV and expensive trainers - although parents do face unrealistic social pressures to conform and purchase such items. Sadly it is that thousands of children in the UK, as in many other 'developed countries' live in extreme poverty and on a daily basis face tremendous institutional and physical abuse.
Matthew M, USA/UK

Educate the parents - I live in a "deprived" area of north Manchester and without doubt, education is the answer.
Mia, UK

"Leon, Wales" is the one who needs to get real. It's not luck that keeps a family together but hard work and patience. If the government would try rewarding that hard work rather than the lazy irresponsible "rights"-based parasites then there would be more reason to make the effort.
Frank, England

It was the close family bond we shared that meant we had a happy childhood

Jennifer, UK

As a child I lived in various places (cities and villages) as we moved around a lot because of my father's job. It didn't make a blind bit of difference where we lived - it was the close family bond we shared that meant we had a happy childhood. We weren't rich - a family of seven in a three-bedroom rented house, no TV, no car. How can people talk of poverty in this country? Nobody starves here like in the Third World. I have come to realise that poverty in the Western World means not having the "right" designer trainers or taking a holiday in a caravan instead of Florida. However, children do not need to be surrounded by material things as much as they need a stable, loving environment.
Jennifer, UK

We need to get rid of the attitude that the Third World are always worse off. Where else is the suicide rate so high? This country has got a major problem, with some areas exceptionally deprived, not just of money but of hope and purpose. Our society is disintegrating, we need more encouragement for marriage and the traditional family unit.
Rog C, UK

If people are going to be given more money (increases in benefits) then a minority will abuse the system and use the money not to buy clothes and food for their children, but use it for their own enjoyment - more money means newer cars, DVD players, etc. Children will still be poorer. I think we should make sure that every child who is found to be eligible should be given tokens to be exchanged for food and clothing and not give this in a form of cash.
Sharon, UK

The best place to bring up a child - I would put aside any geographical location and say a child is best placed to be brought up well in a home where there are preferably two parents of both genders who are prepared to put their time, efforts, and money into that child and then they can think about themselves. Sorry to sound hard, and of course, life is not composed of perfect scenarios, but so many do rush into pregnancy without thinking about what is best for the child.
Marie Cameron, UK

Why rely on the government to protect the children? It's the parent's job. And the best way to reduce child poverty is not to have a child until you have the resources to provide it with food, warmth, a home and a stable environment. The only answer to this is for all the adults in the UK to stop being so selfish and irresponsible, and stop having children until they can provide for them. Without this, anything else will fail.
Kathy, UK

Even as someone who has no kids at the moment, I have thought about this in the past. I have decided due to the state of this country at the moment, and with no real hope of any miraculous turn-arounds in British society, that should I have kids, it won't be in Britain. I have already applied to emigrate and have every intention of being elsewhere by the time I start a family!
David White, Scotland

I believe that the UK is one of the most violent, dirty, unwelcoming countries in the western world.
Iain, UK

Child "poverty" in Britain is miniscule when compared to global problems

Dan M, Canada

What should be done? Nothing, in the UK, that is. Are these "poor" British children starving? Then there is nothing to worry about. Child "poverty" in Britain and other Western countries is miniscule when compared to the global problems this world faces.
Dan M, Canada

Poverty is relative. Compared to many places in world I agree that we do not have 'poverty'. But you have to look at this in the context of the general living standards of this country. There are many children out there who have only have one set of clothes, their houses do not have telephones or carpets and if they have a television and (it is not likely to be satellite in the poorest homes) to watch who can blame them for wanting some escapism? It's fine to say, well you shouldn't have children if you can't afford them but that doesn't actually help the children living out there.
Sam, UK

I grew up next to fields and woods and can't imagine a childhood without that. It's not all about fresh air and running around, it's also about entertaining yourself with whatever is there. And it was this, rather than growing up glued to a computer console that was the defining part of my childhood.
Wendy, UK

The best place to bring up children is in a community that values people and learning. This can be anywhere in the world if we want it to be so.
Mark, UK

The best indicator of future success is whether there is a stable family behind them

Ian T, UK

As Ian Duncan Smith said on Friday, considering child poverty in financial terms alone is 'one-dimensional'. Far more important is the love, respect, support, encouragement and consistent and fair treatment from BOTH parents. The best indicator of future success is whether there is a stable family behind them.
Ian T, UK

Without a doubt northern Scotland, or even better on one of the islands. Children there do not get sick, or suffer from obesity as they eat fresh food, and due to the culture of 'it takes a whole village to bring up a child', the children are cared for by every one.
Eileen, UK

A stable home environment is more important than anything else. We need to promote families growing together and staying together. Don't have kids to try to make a relationship work, it doesn't! City life is not a good place to start but its never going to be possible to give all children a home in Shetland! Sorry Eileen!!! As adults and parents, we have the power to help our offspring make the best of their lives, whatever the financial or local circumstances.
Dave, Kent UK

Keep them away from cities, air pollution and people pollution!!!

Peter Finch, England

Children need clean air, and safe open spaces to play if they are to grow up healthy. So the worst place to bring them up is a city with air pollution and too many dodgy characters. The south coast or open countryside is the best place to grow up, because children will learn more good than bad from the clean and wholesome lifestyle. Keep them away from cities, air pollution and people pollution!!!
Peter Finch, England

If the government are serious about reducing child poverty, then let us see reductions in tax, VAT, interest rates and inflation. Let us also see regular, structured pay increases in all jobs across the board. The government cause poverty with all their money grabbing techniques and businesses help by paying low wages.
Rich, UK