The World Bank has revealed that there are 40 million children currently residing in extremely impoverished households.
It’s important to note that the majority of these children experiencing extreme poverty are situated in middle-income nations. In total, there are 179.4 million children living in such conditions globally.
The report also highlights specific countries with significant numbers of impoverished children, including India with 52.2 million children (11.5 percent) and Nigeria with 40 million children (37.9 percent) in extremely poor households.
This information was disclosed in the ‘Global Trends in Child Monetary Poverty According to International Poverty Lines’ report, a collaborative effort between the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund, released in September.
The report further underscores that extreme child poverty is more prevalent in regions marked by fragility and conflict, with 38.6 percent of children (164.7 million) in conflict-affected nations living in extreme poverty, compared to 10.1 percent (168.7 million) in non-fragile states.
However, there has been a reduction in the number of children living in extreme poverty, estimated at 63.3 million between 2013 and 2019, decreasing from 383 million to 319 million.
This decline was influenced by various factors, including slow progress in poverty reduction between 2013 and 2016, driven partly by rapid population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The report also explains that the poverty estimates for 2020, 2021, and 2022 were ‘nowcasted,’ meaning they used gross domestic product growth rates to forecast household incomes, assuming equal growth in per capita consumption or income for all households.
