An estimated one in six children, around 356 million worldwide, lived in extreme poverty before the coronavirus pandemic. According to a new analysis by the World Bank Group and UNICEF published on Tuesday, this will get even worse. The ongoing crisis will continue to have a disproportionate impact on children, especially girls, and women, it said in a broadcast.
Data from the World Bank and UNICEF suggest that most countries responded to the crisis by expanding social protection programs, particularly cash transfers. Cash transfers provide a platform for longer-term investment in human capital.
Cash transfers have been shown to address both monetary and multidimensional poverty and improve children’s health, nutrition and cognitive and non-cognitive performance, particularly when combined with other measures to promote child development and in conjunction with quality social services.
Children in southern Africa are particularly affected
However, many of the responses are short-term and insufficient to respond to the extent and expected length of a recovery, stressed UNICEF and the World Bank. It is more important than ever that governments expand and adapt their social protection systems and programs to prepare for future economic shocks.
This includes innovations for financial sustainability, the strengthening of the legal and institutional framework, the protection of human capital, the long-term expansion of child and family benefits as well as investments in family-friendly policies such as paid parental leave and high-quality childcare for all.
Children in sub-Saharan Africa are particularly affected by poverty. Two thirds of all children there live in households struggling to survive on an average of $ 1.90 per day or less per person. This represents the international measure of extreme poverty. Almost a fifth of children affected by poverty live in South Asia.
The analysis also shows that the number of children living in extreme poverty decreased moderately by 29 million between 2013 and 2017. However, UNICEF and the World Bank Group warn that any progress made in recent years has been worryingly slow, unevenly distributed and at risk due to the economic impact of the pandemic.
