New UNICEF IRC report “Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005” and children at risk
 

The new Innocenti Report on “Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005” was presented in Brussels on 2 March 2005 by Marta Santos Pais, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre’s Director. EFSC also participated in this event.

According to the report, the proportion of children living in poverty has risen in 17 out of 24 OECD member states since the early 1990s. Ms Pais affirmed that children face challenges everywhere, even in industrialised and wealthy countries which have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is wide diversity across OECD countries and only four countries decreased the child poverty rate in the 90s, Norway being the best example. The factors governing this situation vary in each country, but the report stresses that higher government spending on family and social benefits is clearly associated with lower child poverty rates. Three forces – social trends, labour market conditions and governments policies – are the key determinants of child poverty rates.

One of the problems is that countries which have a high child poverty rate, such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, concentrated government resources on older generations (people aged 50 years and over) and too little on younger generations. This can occur quite distinctly from an economic growth. According to Ms Pais, child poverty really could be considered as an indicator of how governments support the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In conclusion, more research and analysis are needed, and each country should monitor trends and elaborate national strategies to reduce child poverty. Political reshaping, time challenge identified by Governments as well as raising of public attention awareness on child poverty are also needed (clear indication of where they want to be in 10 years and how the different sectors can help to achieve results) together with a strong commitment to make things better and bring child poverty rates below 10 per cent. During the panel discussion that followed the presentation, Dr Frazer (Social Protection and Social Inclusion Policy Co-ordination, DG Employment and Social Affairs, European Commission) commented upon the report, defining it as both pessimistic and optimistic, as it shows that national social policies can make a difference. He very much appreciated that, at the beginning, the report quotes the rights of the child contained in the UN Convention and in his view the focus should be more on children than on the income of society. There is a broad consensus among the Member States that the need to strengthen policies to tackle child and family poverty as well as the need to protect the rights of the children is considered to be one of the six key challenges over the next two years to eradicate poverty and social exclusion. But a co-ordinated and systematic action with specific targets on child poverty is still lacking. We now are in the mid-term review but at the end of 2005 we have to come up with a new orientation. The question he would ask the Member States is: How can we strengthen the focus on children and on child poverty? In the new social policy agenda there is a need for a new intergenerational approach including children and young people. In the review of the Lisbon process the need to reduce child poverty for a better future has to be highlighted. New indicators of specific relevance to the young should be introduced, as there are as yet very few widely-deployed indicators designed to monitor trends in poverty and social exclusion among children. Setting targets is politically important to raise attention, and hopefully in future NAPs/incl. there will be more targets on child poverty.

The new Constitutional Treaty, if ratified, will permit the development of EU legislation in the field of children’s rights.

According to Dr Petra Hoelscher (Centre for Comparative Research on Social Welfare, Department for Applied Social Sciences, University of Stirling, UK), the message transmitted by this report is very important: child poverty is real and can be reduced if governments are committed to it. She also stressed the following points:

• social workers and teachers must approach children with problems because they will not do it themselves;
• groups of poor children must not be stigmatised but integrated;
• children must be listened to and their needs must be integrated into the social policies;
• need for political will and political agenda that supports the young and children as well as low income families.

During the debate, Ms Pais recognised that children at risk are not mentioned in the report and we should find a way of considering them as well. The report also admitted that there is a general agreement that social exclusion is a broader concept than poverty, and that direct measures of deprivation and exclusion are required in addition to income data. According to Petra Hoelscher, two countries have already been carrying out social policies in favour of children at risk by applying the Community-based approach. EFSC emphasised once again the need for more attention being paid to the most excluded among poor children: street children.



Read the UNICEF Summary Report on Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005: click to read in English

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