Disadvantaged children?

Our state newspaper has one of those lengthy articles beloved of newspapers this morning in which we are being told that half the children in the state are "disadvantaged".

Really? Even allowing for the way in which newspapers love to exaggerate should we be concerned by this? What constitutes "disadvantage"?  

It is apparently based on some sort of complicated way of scoring things like the household income, education levels reached, employment and type of employment, housing, internet access, car ownership and more. I suppose all this is one way of doing it and it must provide some sort of valuable information but is it really a score of "disadvantage"?

There are two families I can think of who would probably not be considered disadvantaged.  The parents in one are a doctor and a civil engineer. They have two cars and internet access. They are paying off their own home. They took the two children to New Zealand over Christmas and New Year - to visit family there. The main cost would have been the airfares. The parents make every effort to be around for their children. They read together at night. They cook together. They garden together. At weekends they can be found at all sorts activities from competing in triathlons to strawberry picking in the hills behind us.

The parents in the other family are a tax office fraud specialist and an occupational therapist. They have two cars and internet access and, I assume, are also paying off their home. They have not been away on holiday. Both children are about the same age as the other two, ten and seven. They have new bikes, they have mobile phones and name brand clothing. Unlike the other family the two children are rarely seen outside the house. Talking to them indicates that they spend a lot of time on the internet and, although the ten year can make a sandwich, they don't cook as a family. The "garden" is tidy but it is simply grass cut by someone else. So far their holiday fun has been a day out to a tourist town where they walked the main street and went into one of the "lolly shops". The children told me it was "fun" but they were looking forward to their grandparents caring for them in the coming week because "we can ride our bikes to the park". 

The way the report for disadvantage is handled both these families would be considered in the upper levels of "advantage" but are they really? I may be wrong but I would consider the two children in the first family to be the two who are at real advantage. Their parents are taking the time, however difficult it might sometimes be, to be involved with their children. The other parents, who are obviously very fond of their children too, don't appear to have the same level of involvement. Their children do have all the advantages of a good income but somehow it doesn't seem the same.

I am wondering if there is more to advantage than can be measured by housing, car ownership and other tangible things?