Child poverty is neither inevitable nor immune to efforts to address it. As many countries have already shown, it can be reduced and even eradicated through continued attention and action. With the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), nations agreed for the first time in history to end extreme child poverty. The SDGs call for multidimensional child poverty – that goes beyond income- to be halved by 2030, building a world in which all children have what they need to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential.
Source: For every child answers: 30 years of research for children at UNICEF Innocenti, Miscellanea, UNICEF office of research. 2019.
Fact on child poverty. The Global Coalition to end child poverty. https://www.endchildhoodpoverty.org/
HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN POVERTY?
355.5 million children are living in extreme poverty (as of 2017), struggling to survive on less than PPP $1.90 per day. Children are disproportionately impacted – they make up more than half of the global poor, despite constituting only 30% of the total global population.
841 million children are living below the higher threshold of PPP $3.20, and 1.35 billion under the PPP $5.50 line.
Child poverty is not only a phenomenon in lower- and middle-income countries. In the EU, 22.5 % of children are living at risk of poverty and social exclusion (as of 2020).
Across OECD countries, nearly 1 in 7 children are income poor (as of 2018).
WHAT IS THE PROGRESS ON CHILD POVERTY?
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The joint analysis conducted by the World Bank Group and UNICEF suggest that 17.5% of children still live in extreme poverty, a moderate reduction from the 19.5% found in 2013.
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In the 20-year period between 2000 and early 2020, multidimensional child poverty (experiencing at least one severe deprivation) fell in developing countries from around 70% to 45%. However, from the onset of the crisis in 2020 it is projected that multidimensional child poverty can increase by around 15%, and it could take up to 6–7 years to reach pre-COVID multidimensional child poverty levels.
WHICH PLACES HAVE HIGH CHILD POVERTY PREVALENCE?
Sub-Saharan Africa has both the highest rates of children living in extreme poverty at 45.8 percent and the largest share of the world’s extreme poor children, at 65.8 percent.
South Asia has the second-highest share of children living in extreme poverty.
Child poverty is more prevalent in countries prone to conflict. About 41.6 percent of children who live in fragile and conflict-affected countries live in extremely poor households, compared to 14.8 percent of children in other countries.