Although there has been some improvement in recent years, according to UNICEF, more than 69 million children live in poverty in the world’s 40 richest countries, meaning poverty affects more than one in five children. The organization points to gaps in particular in the UK and France.

Between 2012-2014 and 2019-2021, the number of children living in poverty fell by around 8% in the roughly 40 European Union and OECD countries examined. A percentage that represents “about 6 million children” at least out of the 291 million children in total, explained in a report published last Tuesday night by UNICEF Innocenti, the research department of the United Nations Children’s Fund.

But “over 69 million children still remained in poverty” at the end of 2021.

“For most children, this means they face the risk of growing up without nutritious food, clothing, school supplies and a warm home,” commented Bo Victor Nylund of UNICEF Innocenti, highlighting the potential impact on “their physical and mental health.”

UNICEF bases its calculations on “relative” poverty, an income level that corresponds to 60% of the national average — an indicator often used in developed countries to determine the poverty line.

The report insists on the need to create concrete social protection tools to ensure children’s well-being and on “political will” in the countries under review, stressing that lifting children out of poverty is not something that happens automatically when a country’s wealth increases country.

Despite the general improvement, the trajectory differences between some countries are striking.

Since 2012, the biggest worsening of the situation has been recorded in some of the world’s richest countries: the United Kingdom (+19.6% poor children, or half a million, in a country where the child poverty rate already exceeded 20% in 2021), in Iceland (+11%) as well as in France (+10.4%).

In the US, the number of poor children fell by 6.7%, but more than one in four children still lived in “relative” poverty. And the child poverty rate was twice that of Denmark, a country with a comparable per capita income.

The situation regarding child poverty improved the most in Poland (–37.6%), Slovenia (–31.4%), Latvia (–31%) and Lithuania (–30.6%).

Underscoring the link between child poverty and economic disparities, the report also points out that children in single-parent or minority families are at greatest risk of growing up in poverty.

In the US, for example, 30% of African-American children and 29% of Native American children live below the national poverty line, while this figure does not exceed 10% for white and Hispanic children.

At the same time in the EU, a child with non-EU parents is 2.4 times more likely to live in poverty than one with European parents.