Agence France Presse

Paris, March 3:

The number of children living in poverty has risen in 17 out of 24 OECD industrialised member states since the early 1990s according to a study released today by the UN children’s agency UNICEF. Its finding “suggests that between 40 to 50 million children may be growing up in poverty in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” the agency said in a statement. Children have a much better chance of escaping poverty if they live in Denmark or Norway, where the rate is less than three per cent.

“In contrast, the United States and Mexico have child poverty rates of more than 20 per cent,” the study found, The United States is nonetheless one of four countries, along with Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom, where “there has been a significant decrease since the early 1990s.” “Among these, the UK has significantly reduced its exceptionally high child poverty rate but Norway is the only country where child poverty can be described as ‘very low and continuing to fall’,” UNICEF said. It added that “three forces — social trends, labour market conditions and government policies — are the key determinants of child poverty rates.” Comparing typical trade-offs that governments must make, they study noted that France’s broad-based tax and benefit system did not favour a particular age group, whereas the British system focused on young children, particularly those from low-income families.