[Europe] 'Vast imbalance' in child poverty

from the BBC

By Jill McGivering
BBC News

One in four children under 15 in Central and South-East Europe are still living in extreme poverty, the UN's children's agency, Unicef, says.

The agency says economic growth has benefited many but has not filtered down to the region's poorest.

In some countries of the former Soviet Union, in Central Asia, the proportion of children living in extreme poverty is as high as 80%, the agency says.

The report calls on governments to do more to address the needs of the poor.

Disparities

Unicef paints a picture of extreme contrasts.

Life for many children has improved in the last decade. But growth has been uneven, with little progress for children in the poorest families.

That is especially true for those in rural areas where there is higher unemployment and much less opportunity.

The report calls on governments to focus much more on the needs of children in drawing up policy and social support programmes.

"Children are invisible really in the development agenda. So there needs to be a specific targeting of the poorest," says Unicef spokesman Lynn Geldof.

"They are the larger families, families with more than two children; they are those who have been historically alienated - the Roma communities; they are those in non-nuclear families, and they are those who tend to live in rural areas."

Birth crisis

The report also highlights what it calls a "demographic crisis" - the dramatic decline in birth rates, especially in South-Eastern Europe.

Young families need much more social support, it says, to encourage them to have more children and off-set rapidly ageing populations.

There are concerns, too, about the number of children living in institutions.

That has not decreased, says the report, despite the overall drop in the number of children being born - and it highlights in particular Bulgaria and Romania.

One of the main reasons for children being put in institutions is household poverty, it says.

That, too, could be addressed by giving more support to families with young children and also by changing official policy, away from institutions and more towards other solutions for abandoned or displaced children, like foster care.