Ending Child Poverty: Our shared imperative.

 

Poverty poisons childhood. It claims the lives of children, undermines their health and development, and limits their ability to learn. The consequences are lifelong: Adults who grew up in poverty have weaker job prospects, live shorter lives and are more likely to experience depression and anxiety. Poverty also poisons societies. By limiting children’s ability to realize their full potential, poverty undermines future economic prosperity. By dividing the haves from the have-nots, it frays the bonds that tie us together. And by depriving communities of hope, it creates conditions in which violence and extremism can thrive. At a time in history when global military spending has reached a record US$2.72 trillion, hundreds of millions of children continue to live each day in deprivation, without basics like schooling, clean water and a home. Why? The answer is not one of scarcity or resources; it is one of priorities. When progress is the priority While far too many children still live in poverty, the world has made some progress. In low- and middle-income countries, three out of five children lived in severe deprivation in 2000; by 2023, two out of five children did. As this report shows, the reasons for this progress are not a mystery. Governments, civil society and the international community have taken strategic and decisive action. The gains they have achieved reflect sustained political will, evidence-based policies and a determination to prioritize children’s rights. Countries that achieve progress make ending child poverty a national priority. They embed children’s needs into economic planning, insulating their investment in children’s futures even in the face of economic shocks and setbacks. They provide cash assistance to families. They expand access to public services that promote learning, health and development – rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And they promote decent work for parents and caregivers. The success of these approaches shows that we can make progress – and we can do more starting today. But what about tomorrow?

The future is now 

Regrettably, efforts to reduce poverty are slowing. If we are to reverse this slowdown and accelerate progress, we need to maintain and extend the approaches that have been shown to work in recent decades. But we will also need to respond to the new trends and challenges that will shape the lives and well-being of children in the future. As The State of the World’s Children 2024 (SOWC 2024) demonstrated, megatrends like demographic shifts, climate and environmental crises, and frontier technologies will create a world for children in 2050 that looks very different from today’s. Our response to these trends will partly determine how much we reduce child poverty. That response cannot wait. As SOWC 2024 noted, “The future is now, and our responsibilities are clear. Now is the time to shape a better future for every child.” As this report shows, societies are already grappling with the impacts on poverty of trends like climate change, rising conflict and economic uncertainty. Climate change has the potential to drive ever more families into poverty; already, four out of five children face at least one extreme climate hazard, such as flooding and heatwaves, every year. Conflict meanwhile now touches the lives of growing numbers of children: Almost one in five children lived in a conflict-affected area in 2024, nearly double the rate in the mid-1990s. As well as the heightened risk of extreme monetary poverty in conflict zones, disruptions to education can set back economic growth for generations, limiting long-term poverty reduction. And inequalities in digital access – the gap between the digital haves and the digital have-nots – are increasingly shaping children’s access to economic opportunity. 

Invest in children 

Economic forces will play a role too – especially in determining countries’ abilities to fund anti-poverty programmes and public services. Here, the outlook is particularly concerning. As the World Bank has warned, economic growth is slowing in many developing economies, which risks limiting the ability of these countries to expand their programmes. The situation will be worsened by unprecedented cuts in development aid. It is estimated that these cuts will result in the deaths of at least 4.5 million children under age 5 by 2030. Each of these deaths is a tragedy for a family, and a shocking loss of human potential for our societies. Aid cuts will also limit children’s ability to learn and build brighter futures. International aid for education is projected to fall by almost a quarter by 2026, leaving 6 million more children at risk of being out of school by the end of next year. That number represents the equivalent of emptying every primary school in Germany and Italy. The challenges underscore the need in many countries for social sector reforms and increased domestic investment in children.

National action and ownership are essential – but mounting debt threatens to undermine both. Developing countries across Africa are in the midst of a debt crisis, which is forcing governments to divert funding away from essential services for children. Forty-five of the world’s developing countries now pay more on interest than they spend on health, and spend more on interest than education. Countries’ inability to invest in children’s health and well-being creates a vicious cycle: Failing to invest in children’s human capital undermines economic prosperity, which in turn hinders countries’ ability to repay debt. 

Break the cycle 

Without coordinated global action to address the debt challenges of developing countries, we risk creating an indebted generation – a cohort of children whose futures are compromised as countries struggle to service debt incurred before they were born. It makes no sense. It makes no sense to undermine our societies’ prosperity by depriving children of the resources that would equip them to contribute in the future. It makes no sense to tell our young people that they are the future when we are not investing in those futures. Young people know what is happening. They experience the gap between rhetoric and reality. They said the economy was recovering. We didn’t feel it. They said schools were open. Ours were underwater. They said children were resilient. We were exhausted. They said we were the future. We asked: Whose? Nahjae Nunes, 2023 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Youth Foresight Fellow Whose future? Theirs. Whose responsibility? Our.

The State of the World's Children 2025