One in six children living in extreme poverty, figure set to rise during pandemic: UN
Context: According to a new World Bank Group and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) analysis, one in six children were living in extreme poverty before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
‘Global Estimate of Children in Monetary Poverty: An Update’,
- It notes that sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for two-thirds of children living in households that struggle to survive on an average of $1.90 a day or less per person, the international measure for extreme poverty, while South Asia accounts for nearly a fifth of these children.
- The number of children living in extreme poverty decreased moderately, by 29 million, between 2013 and 2017.
- However, UNICEF and the World Bank Group warn that any progress made in recent years, has been “slow-paced, unequally distributed, and at risk” due to the economic impact of the pandemic.
- Governments urgently need a children’s recovery plan to prevent countless more children and their families from reaching levels of poverty unseen for many years.
- Although children make up around a third of the global population, around half of the extreme poor are children.
- Furthermore, they are more than twice as likely to be extremely poor as adults.
- The youngest children are the worst off — nearly 20% of all of them below the age of 5 in the developing world live in extremely poor households.
- “Extreme poverty deprives hundreds of millions of children of the opportunity to reach their potential, in terms of physical and cognitive development, and threatens their ability to get good jobs in adulthood.
- “In the wake of the massive economic disruption caused by the pandemic, it is more crucial than ever that governments support poor households with children now and rebuild their human capital during the recovery.
- Extreme poverty among children has not fallen as much as it has for adults, and a larger share of the global poor were children in 2017, compared with the 2013 figure.
Child poverty
- It is more prevalent in fragile and conflict-affected countries, where more than 40% of children live in extremely poor households, compared to nearly 15% of children in other countries.
- More than 70% of children in extreme poverty live in a household where the head of the house works in the fields or pastures.
- The ongoing COVID-19 crisis will continue to disproportionately impact children, women and girls, threatening to reverse hard-won gains towards gender equality.
- Great social protection has a crucial role to play to improve coping mechanisms for the poor and vulnerable in both the immediate COVID-19 response as well as the longer-term recovery.
- World Bank and UNICEF data suggest that most countries have responded to the crisis by expanding social protection programmes, particularly cash transfers, which provide a platform for longer-term investments in human capital.
Conclusion:
- It is more important than ever for governments to scale up and adjust their social protection systems and programmes to prepare for future shocks, including
- innovations for financial sustainability;
- strengthening legal and institutional frameworks;
- protecting human capital;
- expanding child and family benefits for the long term; as well as
- investing in family-friendly policies, such as paid parental leave and quality child care for all.
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