Half the world’s poor are children
New Oxford University research on global poverty reveals the extent of the challenges facing the UN's new Sustainable Development Goals for the eradication of child poverty. Across the 103 low and middle income countries surveyed, children were found to constitute 34% of the total population, but 48% of the poor, based on a measure that assesses a range of deprivations in health, education and living standards. According to the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), nearly two out of every five children (37%), a total of 689 million children, are classed as multidimensionally poor. Some 87% of these 689 million poor children are growing up in South Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa - 300 million in each region. Half of South Asia's children and two thirds of Sub-Saharan children are multidimensionally poor. The child poverty report finds that half of multidimensionally poor children live in 'alert' level fragile states, and child poverty levels are highest in the fragile states. The report disaggregates the latest figures for the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by age group to analyse the particular situation of 1.8 billion children who live in 103 countries.
