“Children bear a disproportionate weight of poverty”, said Dr Martin Evans, UNICEF, at a seminar organised by the University of Luxembourg, the EIB Institute and other partners as part of the “Inequality and…” lecture series .

Reducing poverty and particularly extreme poverty (USD 1.90 per day in purchasing power parity terms, according to the World Bank) is the first of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). “Children (between 0 and 17) are more likely to be extremely poor than adults (between 18 and 59) or older people (over 60)”, said Dr Evans. In fact, children represent 32.9% of the world’s population and 47.9% of global poverty and the situation is even worse in sub-Saharan Africa and in fragile states. “It is time to ’get real’ and reduce child poverty”, he added.

“One of the difficulties in tackling children’s poverty is the lack of reliable data”, said Dr Evans. Many countries do not have clear poverty measures or do not see poverty as a direct policy priority. A big effort is needed to make national poverty line reporting more consistent in coverage and in regularity across countries, and disaggregation by age and child poverty profiles should be part of that process.

Click here for the presentation.