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The Roll of the Dice: The material gap

These gaps do not just exist among nations, but also within them: The disparities cleave countries, even cities. A child born in an urban shanty town in Bangladesh is twice as likely to die before his first birthday as is an infant born elsewhere in the city. In many developing countries, the children of the relatively well-off benefit from publicly supported secondary and university education, while the poor lack even primary schools.

And huge disparities exist within industrialized countries as well. In Australia and the United Kingdom, for example, the richest one fifth have 10 times the wealth of the poorest.

Despite such inequities, if this child were assured of attaining her rights, she might be ready to take her chances regardless of where she was born. Unfortunately, there is no such guarantee, especially for most poor children. The vital statistics of the destitution they face are no less appalling for all their familiarity. Every year, nearly 12 million children under the age of five die needlessly, mainly from a handful of easily preventable childhood diseases.

Only about 10 per cent of today's children — those among the majority of industrialized countries or wealthy minorities in developing countries — have a chance to grow up with computers at their fingertips. Two boys view a computer at the World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen.

More than half of all South Asian children of this age are severely or moderately under-weight, while nearly half of all under-ones in sub-Saharan Africa are not immunized against common killer diseases.

Worldwide, 130 million children of primary school age — mostly girls — are not in the classroom, and thus denied the chance of a better future, while millions attend schools where little learning actually takes place.

One quarter of children in developing countries who start school cannot stay long enough to ensure lasting literacy. And 250 million are being robbed of their childhood because they are trapped in child labour.

The 6 billionth child will be particularly disadvantaged if she is born into a minority ethnic group — a category that includes two thirds of the poorest children in the United States, for example. In Peru, indigenous people are one-and-a-half times more likely to be poor and almost three times more likely to be extremely poor than non-indigenous people.