Children twice as likely to live in poverty than adults

Children are more than twice as likely to live in extreme poverty than adults, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday.

“On this International #EndPoverty Day, let us recommit to a fair globalization that Works for all children, their families and communities,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a Twitter post, marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

On Oct. 17, 1987, over 100,000 people had gathered at the Trocadero in Paris to honor the victims of extreme poverty, violence and hunger.

“17 October presents an opportunity to acknowledge the effort and struggle of people living in poverty, a chance for them to make their concerns heard, and a moment to recognize that poor people are the first ones to fight against poverty,” the UN said.

The poverty rate for children is twice as high as for adults which emphasized that one in three children is multidimensionally poor, while for adults it is one in six, according to a UN report.

According to the UN’s 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) released in July, more than 1.3 billion people around the world live in extreme poverty -- nearly half of them (a total of 663 million) are children, and 32 percent (428 million) are younger than 10.

The global MPI covers 101 countries comprising 5.7 billion people -- which is about 76% of the global population -- and looks at how people experience poverty every day.

MPI considers whether people are healthy, have access to clean water or have been to school.

The UN estimated that more than 886 million people, who are living in multidimensional poverty, live in middle-income countries.

“Disaggregating the global MPI reveals striking inequalities within regions and countries; and yields a new understanding of where multidimensionally poor people live,” it stressed.

It added that Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are home to the largest proportion of multidimensionally poor people.

Countries like Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and Haiti showed high levels of inequality among the poor, meaning that there is greater heterogeneity among those living in multidimensional poverty, it added.