1 in 6 children lives in extreme poverty: Analysis

An estimated 1 in 6 children – or 356 million globally – lived in extreme poverty before the pandemic, and this is set to worsen significantly, according to a new World Bank Group-Unicef analysis released on Tuesday.

Global Estimate of Children in Monetary Poverty: An Update notes that sub-Saharan Africa – with limited social safety nets – 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. South Asia accounts for nearly a fifth of these children.

The analysis shows that 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 is worryingly slow-paced, unequally distributed, and at risk due to the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“One in 6 children living in extreme poverty is 1 in 6 children struggling to survive,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, Unicef Director of Programmes.

“These numbers alone should shock anyone. And the scale and depth of what we know about the financial hardships brought on by the pandemic are only set to make matters far worse. Governments urgently need a children’s recovery plan to prevent countless more children and their families from reaching levels of poverty unseen for many, many years.”

Although children make up a third of the global population, around half of the extreme poor are children. Children are more than twice as likely to be extremely poor as adults (17.5 percent of children vs. 7.9 percent of adults).

The youngest children are the worst off — nearly 20 percent of all children below the age of 5 in the developing world live in extremely poor households.