Some 69 million children — or more than 1 in 5 — live in poverty in the world's 40 richest countries, UNICEF said in a report released on Wednesday, blasting Britain and France for their particularly bad standings.
That is despite a drop in child poverty rates in the periods from 2012 to 2014 and 2019 to 2021, by around 8% in the 40 wealthy countries in the European Union and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) assessed. "This is equivalent to around 6 million children out of a total child population of 291 million," said UNICEF Innocenti, the United Nations agency's research arm.
But at the end of 2021, there were still more than 69 million kids in poverty in those countries.