[PDFlist] More Than l/2 of the World's Poor Are Children

[Soloveni Vitoso]

MORE THAN l/2 OF THE WORLD'S POOR ARE CHILDREN

More than half of the world's poorest people are children, even though they (children) represent only 30 percent of the world's total population and the results only consider children living in established households.
Building on new modeling methods developed by World Data Lab, it is now possible to provide preliminary estimates of poverty trends in every country of the world disaggregated by age. Of the world's 2.3 billion children (those less than 18 years of age), 301 million live on less than $1.90/day in 2011 PPP. This means that 13 percent of the world's children are very poor-compared to 6 percent of adults (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Child poverty is the world's biggest challenge
[Child poverty is the world's biggest challenge]<https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/global_20190620_figure1.png>
Source: World Data Lab projections, 2019
More than half of the world's poorest people are children, even though they (children) represent only 30 percent of the world's total population and the results only consider children living in established households. These findings belie an even harder truth: Children remain both a cause of poverty and its consequence. Families with modest incomes risk falling into poverty as their families grow. They need to feed more people often with less income when their mothers stay at home. At the same time, it is poor families who have more children, especially if the mothers did not attend secondary school<http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/20131204-DemographyLutz.en.html>.
However, the good news is that child poverty is declining across the world and it is declining faster than the poverty rate of adults. Under a base-case scenario, World Data Lab projects that by 2030, child poverty will decline from 301 million today to some 233 million.
Figure 2: More than half of the world's poor are children
[More than half of the world's poor are children]<https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/global_20190620_figure2.png>
Source: World Data Lab projections
Amid this context, Africa is at the center of the fight against child poverty due to its rapid population growth, young(er) population, and larger families than those of other continents. Families with more children tend to be poorer, and today, almost every second baby worldwide is being born into an African family.
As a result, there are some 228 million children in Africa who live in extreme poverty. They represent over three-quarters of all the poor children in the world (Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo alone account for over 84 million of these extremely poor children, as compared to 74 million of all poor children living outside of Africa (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Over three-quarters of the world's poor children live in Africa
[Over three-quarters of the world's poor children live in Africa]<https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/global_20190620_figure3.png>
Source: World Data Lab projections, 2019
Too often a familiar refrain is repeated in both traditional and social media: Why can't we end the world's most challenging and persistent problems? Today, with reasonable and credible estimates like those presented above, however, we are now in a position to know exactly what needs to happen to solve the problem of extreme poverty: Focus on the five poorest countries in Africa. Focus on policies and interventions aimed at improving poor children's quality of life, well-being, and economic prospects. By following either one (or better yet both) of these paths, anyone from the public sector, private sector, academia, or civil society can lay claim to making a direct contribution towards alleviating the plight of the majority of the world's poorest people.
Note: For any questions on the methodology and underlying data models, please direct your requests to katharina.fenz at worlddata.io<mailto:katharina.fenz at worlddata.io>. We also thank Wolfgang Fengler for his feedback and Martin Hofer for contributing to the data modeling and forecasting.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2019/06/20/more-than-half-of-the-worlds-poor-are-children/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=73930150

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