Child poverty has increased in the rich world since the onset of the global recession in 2008, according to a new report from Unicef.
Child poverty has increased in the rich world since the onset of the global recession in 2008, according to a new report from Unicef.
The report says that the proportion of children living in poverty in the UK has increased from 24 per cent to 25.6 per cent. Meanwhile Greece and Iceland have seen the biggest percentage increases in child poverty, followed by Latvia, Croatia and Ireland.
Overall 18 of the 41 countries in the study have seen falls in child poverty, with Chile achieving the biggest reduction from 31.4 per cent to 22.8 per cent.
Norway has the lowest child poverty rate, at 5.3 per cent, whereas Greece has the highest, at 40.5 per cent. The rate in the US is 32 per cent.
The report said:
“In the past five years, rising numbers of children and their families have experienced difficulty in satisfying their most basic material and educational needs.
“Unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s have left many families unable to provide the care, protection and opportunities to which children are entitled. Most importantly, the Great Recession is about to trap a generation of educated and capable youth in a limbo of unmet expectations and lasting vulnerability.”
The percentage of households with children unable to afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or a vegetable equivalent every second day has doubled in four European countries since 2008 – Estonia, Greece, Iceland and Italy.
The country with the highest rate of Neets was Israel, with 30.7 per cent. The largest absolute increases in the percentage of Neets were in Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Romania.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) recently forecast that coalition cuts and employment trends would mean that, by 2020, a quarter of all children (3.4 million) would be living in poverty, reversing reductions in child poverty that took place under Labour between 2000 and 2010.
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7 Responses to “Child poverty up in rich world since start of recession”
Just Visiting
We should not be surprised that measures of ‘relative poverty’ like this will rise.
Because:
(a) the west is going to become slowly poorer over the next 20 years: when compared to the rest of the world that will become less poor quite fast, as they rise from a low point and start to get in sight of Western levels of wealth: the reason: globalisation : many jobs once done in the west are now done elsewhere: creating employment elsewhere.
We should celebrate the increasing wealth of the non-West world: the world is becoming a more equal place.
(b) the gap between rich and poor in the West will become wider: because:
i) there will be fewer and fewer jobs for the unskilled (jobs gradually moving away from the West: so the unskilled in the West will be mostly find no work
ii) the same for the semi-skilled jobs too
iii) some pundits that the next wave of IT revolution: will be the destruction of white-collar office jobs: moving info between IT systems and interfacing between people and IT information: developments in usability, increased computer-to-computer joined-up-ness, and the advent of simple AI that can be given tasks via a text command: and will be able to process simple spreadsheets and data etc.
c) the highly-skilled, demanding jobs will continue: and the salary for these will get further away from the unskilled/semi-skilled jobs: and from the skilled but ‘humdrum’ jobs.
Now, this all will happen over 20 years: but in that period there will be ups and downs, when in the West we will feel a bit better off than last year, and sometimes a bit worse off.
It’s not stoppable now…. even if we froze globalisation (which would not help the non-West poor anyway).
To bring the general argument down to the detail level:
Taxi-driving in the UK: 30 years ago the British drivers could make a living from it: now many towns allow anyone to be a taxi driver if they pass the tests: so in my small market town, the taxi drivers all well over 50% non British: Albanian, Afghani and etc.
But come 5-10 years: when the Google car technology matures: there will be no jobs for taxi-drivers anymore… all gone.
Guest
Thanks for your plan.
Meanwhile, absolute poverty in the West soars. And you defend Capitalism, refusing to see alternates. Then you make up nonsense about Taxis…
Ettore Greco
Like in a screenplay of a movie we are now passing through one of the many stages of this Plot. Notice how the job ads will be formulated more and more with the verb “to serve” in place of “to work”. Not a coincidence. At first the propaganda will make it sound like a virtue but soon to serve will be taken for granted and it will be a requirement to continue to live. Forget Unions and Human rights. Those belong to the last millennium.
http://www.wavevolution.org
Just Visiting
> Meanwhile, absolute poverty in the West soars.
Any stats on that?
> And you defend
Capitalism, refusing to see alternates.
I don’t know about Capitalism: but I did write about globalisation: which parts did you not like?
> Then you make up nonsense about
Taxis…
Which bit are you saying was made up?
JV
PS – would be more helpful to the debate if you gave, as a matter of course, the specifics of your response: rather than force others to ask you.
Guest
Debate? You’d need to know the basics of economics and understand what’s going on before there can be a debate.
Denying any knowledge about the economic state of the West, or Capitalism…or your own posts…
I’m not attempting to force anyone to give me basic data, that’s you.