1 in 5 children in rich countries lives in poverty: Unicef

NEW YORK – Sixty-nine million children – or more than one in five – live in poverty in the world’s 40 richest countries, Unicef said in a new report, blasting Britain and France for their particularly bad standings.

The finding comes despite a drop in child poverty rates from 2012 to 2014 and from 2019 to 2021, by around 8 per cent in the 40 European Union and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development wealthy countries assessed.

“This is equivalent to around six million children out of a total child population of 291 million,” said Unicef Innocenti, the research arm of the United Nations children’s agency.

But at the end of 2021, there were still more than 69 million kids in poverty in those countries, according to the report released on Dec 6.

“For most children this means that they may grow up without enough nutritious food, clothes, school supplies or a warm place to call home,” said Dr Bo Viktor Nylund, director of Unicef Innocenti - Global Office of Research and Foresight, highlighting the impact of such struggles on young people’s physical and mental health.

The Unicef figure is based on relative poverty, which is around 60 per cent of the national median income, often used in developed countries to establish their own poverty levels.

The report called for action to ensure children’s well-being and for political will among the countries surveyed, stressing that a country’s wealth did not automatically lift its children out of poverty.

Since 2012, the biggest setbacks have been seen in some of the richest countries.

Britain saw a 19.6 per cent jump in child poverty – or half a million extra children, and France’s rate went up 10.4 per cent.

In the United States, the number of poor children has fallen by 6.7 per cent, but more than one child in four still lives in relative poverty.

And the poverty rate in 2019-2021 was twice as high as in Denmark, a country with a similar per-capita income.

Underlining the link between child poverty and economic inequality, the report also highlights the greater risk of poverty for children from single-parent families and minority backgrounds.

In the United States, 30 per cent of African American children and 29 per cent of Native American children live below the national poverty line, compared with only one-in-10 non-Hispanic white children.

In the EU, a child with parents of non-EU nationality is 2.4 times more likely to live in poverty. AFP