Children are more than twice as likely as adults to live in extreme poverty, according to a new analysis from the World Bank Group and UNICEF.

Ending Extreme Poverty: A Focus on Children finds that in 2013, 19.5% of children in developing countries were living in households that survived on an average of US$1.90 a day or less per person, compared to just 9.2% of adults. Globally, almost 385 million children were living in extreme poverty, said the report.

Children are disproportionately affected, as they make up around a third of the population studied, but half of the extreme poor. The youngest children are the most at risk, with more than one-fifth of children under the age of five in the developing world living in extremely poor households.

The new analysis comes on the heels of the release of the World Bank Group’s new flagship study, Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016: Taking on Inequality, which found that some 767 million people globally were living on less than $1.90 per day in 2013, half of them under the age of 18.

The global estimate of extreme child poverty is based on data from 89 countries, representing 83% of the developing world’s population.

Sub-Saharan Africa has both the highest rates of children living in extreme poverty at just under 50%, and the largest share of the world’s extremely poor children, at just over 50%. South Asia has the second highest share at nearly 36% with over 30% of extremely poor children living in India alone. More than four out of five children in extreme poverty live in rural areas. 

In addition, the report reveals that even at higher thresholds, poverty also affects children disproportionately. About 45% of children are living in households subsisting on less than $3.10 a day per person, compared with nearly 27% of adults.

UNICEF and the World Bank Group are calling on governments to routinely measure child poverty at the national and subnational level and focus on children in national poverty reduction plans as part of efforts to end extreme poverty by 2030. 

Source : QNA