The State of the World's Children 2025 Ending child poverty: Our shared imperative

Published since 1980, the State of the World’s Children – UNICEF's flagship report – seeks to deepen knowledge and raise awareness of key issues affecting children, and advocates for solutions that improve children’s lives. The 2025 edition is entitled Ending child poverty: Our shared imperative.

Publisher: UNICEF

Publication Year: 2025

A Disproportionate Burden: Children living in Multidimensional Poverty by the Global MPI 2025

This brief presents findings from the global MPI 2025, with a particular focus on children, offering evidence on the scale and distribution of children living in multidimensional poverty to inform targeted interventions and accelerate progress towards the SDGs.

Publisher: OPHI

Publication Year: 2025

Handbook on Child Poverty and Inequality

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the conceptualisation and the latest developments in research about child poverty and inequality. Adopting a child rights framework, it demonstrates the importance of a multi-dimensional understanding of poverty specific to children for both research and policy-making.

Publisher: Elgar Handbooks on Inequality

Publication Year: 2025

The Empathy Fix - Why Poverty Persists and How to Change it

Poverty is bad for everyone – this is not news. It increases crime, burdens healthcare systems and raises taxpayers’ bills. With increased economic uncertainty making poverty a more probable prospect for many, fixing inequality has never been more urgent.

In this eye-opening and revelatory book, writer and researcher Keetie Roelen proposes a simple solution accessible to us all: empathy.

The Empathy Fix promises a radical rethink of poverty, taking the reader inside its lived experience, the latest efforts to combat it, and arming them with the information needed to enact lasting social change.

Through empathy, we can all contribute to a more equal society.

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Publication Year: 2025

The Climate-Conflict Nexus and its Impact on Children in the SAHEL

Noting that climate change and conflicts interact differently with each other depending on the context and thus have varying impacts on children, the study explores the nuanced relationship between conflict and climate change as it pertains to children in the Sahel region, and provides policy recommendations for action. The intention is to help put the CAAC agenda at the centre of climate discourse and action, and vice versa.

Publisher: African Child Poverty Forum

Publication Year: 2025

Analyzing Individual Disadvantages alongside Household Poverty to Illuminate Gendered and Intrahousehold Disparities

Most poverty measures are generated at the household level and disregard gendered and intrahousehold inequalities even if individual level data exist. This paper provides a methodology for jointly analyzing individual disadvantages alongside household poverty status and composition. The illustration analyses deprivations in child nutrition and school attendance, and achievements of first generation learners, alongside multidimensional poverty status in seven South Asian countries, and monetary poverty status in Pakistan, finding significant gender disparities in school attendance. The general methodology the paper outlines can be used to illuminate gendered and intrahousehold disparities in individual disadvantage alongside any household poverty measures.

Publisher: OPHI

Publication Year: 2025

Breaking the Cycle: Tackling Child Poverty and Inequities

This report was commissioned by the G20 Development Working Group, with the objective to shed light on child poverty and inequities - including how some groups are more affected by poverty and exclusion than others - and to emphasize the policies that are effective in tackling these inequities and supporting the most vulnerable children.

The analysis in this paper on drivers of child poverty and inequities focuses on gender, race, ethnicity/caste, and disability. The child poverty focus goes beyond monetary/income poverty, encompassing a multidimensional approach which measures poverty according to the deprivations children face in terms of their basic right to necessities in health, nutrition, education, and access to clean water and adequate sanitation. The report is based on a comprehensive literature review, examining child poverty and inequities and relevant policies across all regions of the world. 

Publisher: UNICEF

Publication Year: 2024

Shocks and the changing profiles of children living in poverty

In a world increasingly characterized by fragility and shocks, it is essential to evaluate and understand the changing profiles of children living in poverty, to expand UNICEF´s and partners' awareness and understanding of these changing patterns, and to explore the critical implications in terms of policy and programmatic responses, including through social protection.

Using the example of a global shock, the COVID-19 pandemic, and research conducted by UNICEF Innocenti - Global Office of Research and Foresight, this policy brief examines the changing profiles of children living in poverty in two country contexts, Georgia and Uganda, and assesses the broader policy implications. 

Publisher: UNICEF

Publication Year: 2024

Global Child Benefits Tracker

Tracker

Save the Children, UNICEF and ILO have partnered to establish a one-stop-shop to track countries' pathways to expanding child benefits. This online resource includes data on coverage, financing, child poverty, current policies and programmes, country prospects and good practices.

In May 2022, Save the Children, UNICEF and ILO agreed to co-create a Global Child Benefits Tracker- an online platform to monitor the access of children to the right of social protection, more specifically child benefits, identify gaps and effectively advocate with governments and donors to close these protection gaps. The aim is to provide a dedicated knowledge management platform to foster progressive and evidence-based dialogue on the need for and feasibility of greater investment in child-sensitive social protection.

By focusing on the rights of children, the Global Child Benefits Tracker is an important complement to the knowledge management tools available to advocates of child-sensitive social protection including policy makers in government and international development agencies, social protection practitioners, academia / researchers, civil society and child campaigners.

Publisher: Save the Children, UNICEF and ILO

Publication Year: 2023

Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth Innocenti Report Card 18

Report

In a time of general prosperity, more than 69 million children live in poverty in some of the world’s richest countries. Poverty is often defined by income. But for most children, poverty is about more than just money. It is about growing up in a home without enough heat or nutritious food. Poverty means no new clothes, no telephone and no money for a birthday celebration. For the eighteenth edition of the Innocenti Report Card, UNICEF Innocenti examined child poverty in the high-income and upper middle-income countries in the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This Report Card provides an assessment of the current state of child poverty and the progress – or lack of progress – that these countries made towards eliminating it.

Publisher: UNICEF

Publication Year: 2023

Mapping child poverty: using machine learning to provide a more granular picture of child poverty in sub-saharan africa

Mapping poverty locally with machine learning models

Poverty maps and small area estimates are one way of addressing this challenge. The idea is to combine household survey data with satellite imagery (e.g. night lights), information on public and private infrastructure (road density, location of critical infrastructure, travel time to hospitals, mobile phone towers and connection speed, etc.) and other possibly relevant variables (altitude, vegetation, pollution, etc.). A machine learning model then takes much of the original household survey information (from those surveys where GPS information gives us the approximate location of the household) and tries to identify a relationship between these households and a wide range of possible influencing factors. For example, do poorer children tend to live in areas with less light, have longer journeys to health facilities, or live in areas with less road density? The algorithm then uses these insights to predict poverty at a very granular level. These predictions are then tested against 'ground truth' (often another dataset or an unused part of the original household survey data) to understand how well it predicts actual poverty levels.

Such poverty maps are not new, and small area estimates of monetary poverty or wealth exist in many countries. However, this has not been done for multidimensional child poverty for a large number of countries. This leaves us guessing where the poorest children live.

Limitations and potential of poverty maps

Save the Children has been working with fellows from the University of Warwick's Data Science for Social Good initiative and UNICEF to fill this data gap. A newly developed and innovative machine learning model estimates child poverty across sub-Saharan Africa, following the idea outlined above. The end result is a granular map (in our case hexagons with an average area of 5.16 km²) of the prevalence and depth of child poverty across the region.

Publisher: Save the Children

Publication Year: 2023

Children and the Cost-of-living Crisis

Brief

Children and families throughout the European Union are facing a cost-of-living crisis that has eroded living standards to such an extent that up to an additional 3 million children in 26 EU countries are now living in conditions equivalent to relative income poverty.

For families and children in the EU, the cost-of-living crisis is being experienced primarily through higher prices for food and energy. In addition, increasing interest rates make borrowing less affordable, placing a growing strain on the sustainability of businesses, mortgages, loans and government debt.

This research brief presents the first results of an analysis of how the cost-of-living crisis has affected the poverty experienced by households with children in the European Union (EU). It takes account of sharply increasing food and energy prices to calculate the additional number of children living in poverty, in real terms, due to the crisis. The brief also recommends that policymakers and governments protect children and families with steps that include expanding and index-linking child cash benefits to cover the needs of families, implementing guarantees to provide free meals for children in schools and providing services that prevent ‘holiday hunger’ when schools are closed in the summer months.

Publisher: UNICEF

Publication Year: 2023

Unlocking Potential: How Social Protection Can Improve Disadvantaged Children’s Foundational Cognitive Skills Ground-breaking New Evidence from Young Lives in Ethiopia and Peru

Policy Brief

In this Policy Brief the authors present ground-breaking new evidence from Young Lives' longitudinal data showing how social protection can have a positive impact on children’s foundational cognitive skills, which are a strong predictor of educational outcomes. 

The evidence shows that children’s foundational cognitive skills are malleable throughout childhood and
adolescence. Social protection programmes are not directly designed to improve children's skills, but the evidence shows they can have this effect and as such they offer huge potential to help address inequalities in educational outcomes. The Brief examines how two different social protection programmes, in two very different country contexts – the PSNP in Ethiopia and JUNTOS programme in Peru – can mitigate the negative effects of early poverty and climate shocks to improve disadvantaged children’s foundational cognitive skills.

The authors argue that a broad approach is required to improve children’s basic skills and address inequalities in educational outcomes, including a better understanding of how poverty and climate shocks have an impact on foundational cognitive skills and offer a series of specific recommendations for policy makers.  

Publisher: Young Lives

Publication Year: 2023

Weathering the Storm: Climate Shocks Threaten Children’s Skills and Learning But Social Protection Can Mitigate Impact

Policy Brief

Children living in poverty in low- and middle income countries are bearing the brunt of worsening climate change and its impacts, affecting many areas of their lives such as health and nutrition, education, water and sanitation, and housing. 

This Policy Brief draws together Young Lives evidence on the impact of early climate shocks in particular on children’s basic skills and learning, finding that early exposure to droughts and floods has a profound impact on children's nutrition and physical growth, with long term consequences for their skills development, ability to learn and progress in school. 

Importantly, Young Lives evidence shows that these impacts are not irreversible or inevitable, and even more significantly, our new research finds that social protection, for example food aid, can mitigate these negative effects, reducing climate induced inequalities in skills development, learning and education, particularly for those living in the poorest households. 

The authors emphasise this is the first evidence showing the potential impact of social protection on improving children's foundational cognitive skills in low - and middle - income countries and stress the need to adapt and expand social protection programmes to better protect children from the negative effects of climate change and poverty and ultimately, improve children's skills development.  

Publisher: Young Lives

Publication Year: 2023

Political will or won´t

Report

This report is based on assessments provided by 38 Eurochild members in 26 countries and provides recommendations for each country on how to address among others, child poverty and social exclusion, discrimination, health, online safety and early childhood services.

It also assesses whether the Child Guarantee National Action Plans align with the countries’ needs, the extent to which the European Semester 2023 Country Report and Recommendations are aligned to the lived experiences of children from a civil society perspective and provides an overview of the Countries in Accession’s priorities regarding the most pressing issues for children and their involvement in EU-funded projects.

The coming year offers another important window of opportunity to tackle inequalities in childhood. Our report highlights the future priorities that EU decision-makers and national governments can pursue to address the needs of the most vulnerable children.

“Looking at the most recent data on child poverty, it is positive that some countries across Europe are reducing the numbers of children living in poverty and social exclusion. However, for some others, numbers are still increasing. There is a clear need for policies and programmes to do much more to ensure children develop to their full potential. Eurochild members can be a key partner to ensure children’s rights are protected, respected and fulfilled across Europe” – H.E. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, Eurochild President

Our policy recommendations:

• Put children’s rights at the heart of the political agenda

• Invest in efficient data collection

• Protect and support vulnerable children

• Invest in prevention

• Promote children’s well-being online and offline

• Put children’s rights at the core of the European Semester Cycle

• Recognise children as agents of change in their own right

Publisher: Eurochild

Publication Year: 2023

Poverty takes away the right to childhood

Report

Eurochild published its first report on Child Poverty, which provides an overview of the situation on the ground in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, and Malta bringing children’s voices into the conversation. The report is the final product of a series of consultations and surveys with children carried out by four National Eurochild Forums: the National Network for Children in Bulgaria, the Society ‘Our Children’ Opatija in Croatia, the Estonian Union for Child Welfare, and the Malta Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society.

According to the latest data from Eurostat for 2022, 24.7% of children in Europe are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, which could have a devastating impact on their lives. Eurochild is committed to working towards a society where children grow up happy, healthy, confident, and respected as individuals in their own right. Bringing children’s voices to such conversations is crucial to this objective.

‘The underrepresentation of children’s voices in decision-making is still pervasive, especially in discussions related to child poverty. With our report, we put children’s perspectives under the spotlight because no one understands the lived experiences of children better than children themselves.’ - H.E. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, Eurochild President.

For this report, children were consulted with a mixed-methods approach to adapt and respond to national and local circumstances. The consultation process and this report aimed to grasp how children understand the causes, manifestations, and effects of poverty on their peers, and to provide a space for children to voice their opinions, concerns, and finally, their ideas on what needs to change.

Publisher: Eurochild

Publication Year: 2023

The State of Child Poverty in Africa 2023

Report

This Report is the seventh in the African Report on Child Wellbeing series, a flagship biennial publication of the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF). It is a revealing account of yet another threat to African children – child poverty. The Report provides extensive evidence on the state of child poverty in Africa and tells a sad tale of the plight of millions of Africa’s children. It uses statistical analysis, the Provision Index, to assess and rank the performance of African governments in addressing child poverty. It also exposes the inter-play between social, economic and political factors driving more children into poverty. The Report makes a strong case that eradicating child poverty is first a legal obligation but is also a strategic social, political and development undertaking. It identifies areas where progress has been made, highlights gap, showcases good practices that have proven effective in addressing child poverty and sets out six priority areas for action. It also underscores the urgency with which governments must end the injustice of child poverty and warns that failure to do so will have grave consequences for Africa and its children.

Publisher: ACPF

Publication Year: 2023

Global Trends in Child Monetary Poverty According to International Poverty Lines

Working Paper

This paper, prepared by the World Bank Group and UNICEF, presents estimated trends in child poverty from 2013 to 2022, based on three international poverty lines: $2.15 (extreme poverty), $3.65 (lower middle income), and $6.85 (upper middle income). 

• The estimates show a reduction in the extreme child poverty rate from 20.7 per cent to 15.9 per cent between 2013 and 2022.

• While 49.2 million children were lifted out of extreme poverty, this was about 30 million less than projected in the absence of COVID-19-related disruptions.

• The extreme child poverty nowcasted estimate in 2022 (15.9 per cent) is on par with the child poverty rate in 2019, indicating approximately three years of lost progress.

• In 2022, nowcasted estimates show:

  • 333 million children living in extreme poverty ($2.15)

  • 829 million children living below $3.65

  • 1.43 billion children living below $6.85

• Children are more than twice as likely as adults to live in extreme poverty. They comprise more than half of those living in extreme poverty, while their share of the population is 31 per cent.

Publisher: UNICEF and World Bank

Publication Year: 2023

2023 GLOBAL MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY INDEX (MPI)

Report

This report presents a compact update on the state of multidimensional poverty (henceforth referred to as “poverty”) in the world. It compiles data from 110 developing countries covering 6.1 billion people, accounting for 92 percent of the population in developing countries. It tells an important and persistent story about how prevalent poverty is in the world and provides insights into the lives of poor people, their deprivations and how intense their poverty is—to inform and accelerate efforts to end poverty in all its forms. As still only a few countries have data from after the COVID-19 pandemic, the report urgently calls for updated multidimensional poverty data. And while providing a sobering annual stock take of global poverty, the report also highlights examples of success in every region.

Publisher: UNDP and OPHI

Publication Year: 2023

ATD Fourth World Regional Gatherings on the Impact of Covid-19 on African Children

In many African nations, the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing difficulties, such as other diseases, natural disasters, and hunger, which the poorest families and their children face every day. It is much more difficult for families who live in remote areas or those with limited access to technology to educate themselves about the disease and learn about protective measures. Children without access to technology or a quiet space to study are unable to focus on their academics during this time. Adolescents are particularly at risk of dropping out of school to earn money to help their parents. Children who live in orphanages or on the streets are especially affected by the pandemic, as many protective measures (such as social distancing and restrictive movement) cannot apply to those who are homeless.

Listening to the lived experiences of these families has prompted ATD Fourth World to develop short- and long-term recommendations in Africa. One short-term measure will be to provide continuous support to the most vulnerable children and adolescents with their education by all means possible so that no child will fall behind in their studies during this pandemic. A long-term measure is to make sure that local African communities are involved in the establishment and implementation of protective social measures instead of simply copy and pasting measures from different realities and contexts. With these recommendations, ATD Fourth World is dedicated to making sure that these families will be included in the conversation to realize sustainable solutions for a healthier future.

Publisher: ATD Fourth World

Publication Year: 2020