More than one in five children live in poverty in rich countries, says Unicef

Dramatic figures. According to a Unicef ​​report published on Tuesday 5 December, in 2021, more than 69 million children, or more than one in five children, lived in poverty in the 40 rich countries of the European Union and the OECD.

A poverty level assessed according to “They may grow up without nutritious food, clothing, school supplies or a warm place to live », commented the director of Unicef’s research sector. But the organization is also based on “relative poverty”that is, families who earn less than 60% of the national average income.

Numbers on the rise in France

However, these numbers are decreasing globally. In the periods 2012-2014 and 2019-2021, “about 6 million children » 291 million people in the 40 countries studied have emerged from poverty, a decrease of 8%.

But in some countries this figure is getting worse in France, where the child poverty rate increased by 10.4% between the two periods, according to the report. We remember him, last October, by Unicef ​​​​and the Abbé Pierre Foundation nearly 3,000 children slept on the streets.

Even in the UK, child poverty has increased by almost 20%, with around 500,000 more children living in poverty.

Racialized children are more likely to live in poverty

Other alarming data: the situation of children from single-parent families and/or belonging to minorities. Because according to the study, in the United States, 30% of African American children and 29% of Native American children live below the national poverty line, compared to 10% of non-Hispanic white children.

In the European Union, a child with parents of non-EU nationality has 2.4 times more likely to be poor than a child with European parents.

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