Global Trends in Child Monetary Poverty According to International Poverty Lines

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Introduction
The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is central to the work of the World Bank Group and UNICEF, recognizing that reducing extreme poverty among children is a crucial element of this goal.This effort requires routine reporting of extreme child poverty to measure progress towards that goal.
In 2016, the World Bank and UNICEF released the first ever global estimates of children living in extreme poverty defined by the international poverty line of $1.90 (2011 PPP) per day (UNICEF and World Bank,  2016).Updated child poverty estimates were published in 2020.
With only seven years remaining until 2030, this paper provides the third round of global, regional and national estimates of child poverty according to the recently updated international poverty lines of $2.15 (extreme poverty), $3.65 and $6.85 PPP. 3 These updated estimates provide critical information for the tracking of progress for SDG indicator 1.1.1,namely the proportion of population below the international poverty line, by sex, age, employment status and geographical location, expanding upon the analysis provided in the World Bank´s biennial flagship report on Poverty and Shared Prosperity.This paper documents these trends using new poverty lines based on the 2017 round of International Comparison Program (ICP) price data collected to generate estimates of purchasing power parity (PPP).All poverty estimates in this paper use the 2017 PPP-based poverty lines.Specifically, this updated approach changes the specification of the extreme-poverty line from US$1.90 (2011 PPP) to US$2.15 (2017 PPP), as well as the specification of other international poverty lines.The characteristics of children living in monetary poor households and disaggregates by geographic region, income group, and residence in a fragile or conflict-affected country are described.The profile of extreme poor children is also presented by age group, gender, location and household characteristics, providing useful information for governments and all partners working to improve the lives of the poorest children and their families.

Extreme child poverty trends
The number of children living in extreme poverty decreased by an estimated 63.3 million between 2013 and 2019, from 383 million to 319 million. 4A slow decrease between 2013 and 2016 in the absolute numbers of children in poverty is largely explained by rapid population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Poverty estimates for 2020, 2021 and 2022 are "nowcasted"-that is, gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates have been used to forecast household incomes, assuming all households experience equal growth in percentage terms in per capita consumption or income. 5Nowcast estimates show an increase in extreme child poverty in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, whereas poverty reduction resumed in 2021, but only at the slow rate of progress seen prior to the crisis (figure 1).
In the absence of COVID-19 we would have expected a reduction of 68.4 million children in extreme poverty between 2013 and 2020, but only actually witnessed an estimated reduction of 29.2 million children, due to pandemic disruptions. 6In short, 39 million more children were in extreme poverty in 2020 compared to the historic trend trajectory prior to the crisis, 39 million additional children in extreme poverty are approximately equivalent to the total population of Canada.The extreme child poverty rate in 2022 (15.9 percent) is on par with the child poverty rate in 2019, indicating approximately three years of lost progress (figure 2).

Results for 2022
The nowcast estimates for 2022 indicate children remain disproportionately affected by extreme poverty, with 15.9 percent of children living in extremely poor households compared to 6.6 percent of adults (table 1).Furthermore, the share of the extreme poor who are children is continuing to increase.In 2022, children comprised 52.5 percent of the extreme poor, up from 47.3 in 2013.Age groups: As seen in prior analysis, extreme poverty rates are highest for the youngest children.In 2022, 18.3 percent (99 million) of all children below five years live in extremely poor households (table 2).
In addition, the average poverty gap at the $2.15 PPP line of children younger than 18 years is greater (5.1 percent) than that that of adults (1.9 percent).In other words, children live further away from the poverty line than do adults, they are in more severe poverty, and the youngest age group of children are most likely to be living in severe poverty.Higher poverty lines: The higher $3.65 and $6.85 poverty lines are considered more relevant to middleincome countries, $6,85 is the average of the national poverty lines of upper-middle income countries and $3.65 the average for lower-middle income countries.The nowcasted child poverty rates in 2022 at these lines are 41.2 percent (829 million children) for the $3.65 line and 68 percent (1.43 billion children) at the $6.85 line (table 3).Exploring trends in shares, extreme child poverty is increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa.In 2013 of those children in extreme poverty, 54.8 percent were in Sub-Saharan Africa and by 2022 the share was up to 71.1 percent.Consequently, the share of children in extreme poverty has decreased in all other regions, besides Latin America where the share has remained constant at around 3 percent and in the Middle East and North Africa which has increased its share of those children in extreme poverty, from 0.9 percent to 3.7 percent (appendix table 5).
At the higher international poverty lines of $3.65 and $6.85, there are large numbers of children in poverty residing in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.However, at the $6.85 line, often referred to as the upper middle income poverty line, we see significant absolute numbers of children living in poverty in the Europe and Central Asia region (24.3 million children), the Latin America and Caribbean region (64.5 million children), and 68.2 million children in the Middle East and North Africa region (table 3).When examining child poverty trends by region according to the higher poverty line of 2017 PPP $3.65, a significant reduction is seen in East Asia and the Pacific region, largely driven by a reduction in China.The same applies to South Asia, including significant reduction in India.The reductions are less pronounced in other regions, and the Middle East and North Africa region is the only region with an increase in child poverty based on PPP $3.65 between 2013 and 2022.
At the higher poverty line of 2017 PPP $6.85, the poverty reduction follows a similar pattern as that for $3.65 for all regions, although poverty at this higher line increased in Europe and Central Asia between 2017 and 2022 (appendix table 9).
When zooming in on selected countries, the largest numbers of children in extreme poverty reside in middle income countries, while Madagascar, Burundi, South Sudan, and Malawi have the highest percentage of children living in extreme poverty, at 86.8 percent, 79.1 percent, 77.7 and 75.3 percent, respectively (see appendix tables 30 and 31).Conflict and fragility: Extreme child poverty is more prevalent in fragile and conflict prone settings.7 Around 38.6 percent of children (164.7 million) who live in countries affected by conflict and fragility live in extremely poor households, compared to 10.1 percent of children in non-fragile states (168.7 million) (see appendix table 13).
Economies by income: In absolute numbers, most children living in extreme poverty live in middle income countries, 179.4 million children (14.9 percent in lower middle and 2.2 percent in upper middle income in extreme poverty) -including 52.2 million children in India (11.5 percent) and 40 million children in Nigeria (37.9 percent) living in extremely poor households (table 4).Further results on the extent of child poverty disaggregated by location, household size, and characteristics of the household head such as gender, education, and industry of work, show the following for 2022 (see appendix tables 16 to 30): • 25.7 percent of children (243.5 million) living in households with 6 or more members live in extreme poverty, versus 4.8 percent of children (2.2 million) living in households with one or two members.Similarly, the extreme poverty rate for members in households with no children is 6.6 percent versus the 15.9 percent in households with children.• 22.3 percent of children (276.4 million) living in rural settings live in extreme poverty, versus 6.5 percent of children (53.9 million) in urban settings.It is well documented that deep inequities exist within urban settings with pockets of extreme poverty, in informal settlements.This warrants further analysis of the data, to explore intra-urban child poverty disparities.• There are significant differences in extreme child poverty rates based on education of the head of household, 32.6 percent of children (94.7 million) living in households where the head of household has no education, live in extreme poverty, versus 3.6 percent of children (6.3 million) in households where the head has tertiary education.• Likewise, there are significant differences based on the industry of work of the head of household, 30.8 percent of children (80.8 million) living in households where the head of household works in agriculture live in extreme poverty -and they comprise 71 percent of all children living in extreme poverty.• Contrary to the results of 2017, where children living in female headed households were more likely to be living in extreme poverty, the 2022 nowcasting shows the opposite, 20.4 percent of children living in male headed households are living in extreme poverty, versus 16.6 percent of children in female headed households.There are four key explanations for this shift, namely 1.New surveys included from several countries in the Africa region which included different consumption measurement questionnaires; 2. The updated extreme poverty line ($2.15), resulted in significantly different results in child poverty rates based on sex of head of household in a number of countries; 3. The 2022 nowcasted analysis does not include information on sex of head of household for India (the 2018 survey dataset from India did not include this information), whereas the analysis in 2017 did include this information (based on a 2011 survey dataset for India); and 4. For the 2017 dataset for Nigeria all households were coded as being female headed, significantly skewing the results.This highlights the challenge of relying on self-reported headship to understand gender differences in poverty, as it can hide important differences in the types of households in which individuals live.
There are further household characteristics that provide critical information for influencing policies and programs, not least child poverty based on disability status, as well as more nuanced analysis to tease out gender differences -but unfortunately this is not possible at this time using data from the global harmonized database.

Conclusion
This paper is the result of a collaboration between the World Bank and UNICEF to estimate the global and regional magnitude of child poverty between 2013 and 2019 and specifically includes nowcasts of extreme child poverty for 2020 -2022, to help monitor progress towards SDG 1.1.1.The analysis shows that these policy portfolios need to consider both the common and distinct vulnerabilities and deprivations of children living in fragile and conflict prone settings, children in large households, younger children, children in rural settings, children in households where the head has no or little education -as these are more likely than other children to be living in extreme poor households.In addition, the focus needs to be on the large concentration of children living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, where a staggering 40 percent of children live in extreme poverty.And while 45 percent of extremely poor children live in low-income countries; half of all extremely poor children live in lower middle-Income countries.As a result, the design of effective policy portfolios needs to take into consideration too that context matters.For example, technical capacity, financial resources, political consensus, and perceptions, attitudes, and social norms might greatly differ across countries where child poverty reduction policies and programs are applied.
Ultimately, further research and analysis are warranted to understand the diverse policy portfolios countries need to adopt to address child poverty, including further analyzing the trends in child poverty reduction and the policies and programs that are making the biggest impact -and how these can be brought to scale to reach the SDGs of ending extreme child poverty.

Appendix Tables
Appendix Note the national child poverty rates according to the different international poverty lines are for international comparison only.National monetary child poverty rates should be based on national poverty lines, not international.This exercise builds on a similar one conducted in 2020 to examine child poverty using the GMD (Silwal,  Engilbertsdottir, Cuesta, Newhouse and Stewart, 2020).The analysis contains records from 10.4 million individuals from 147 countries, taken from the 2022 spring version of the GMD with 2019 as a base year.
The GMD is a collection of globally harmonized household survey data compiled by the Data for Goals group of the World Bank's Poverty and Equity Global Practice.Further details on the background of the GMD are given in Castañeda et al. (2016).A unique feature of the GMD is that the welfare aggregates are the same as those used to compute the poverty estimates published by PovcalNet and the World Development Indicators.These aggregates are based on household per capita income or consumption, depending on the specific concept that is used to measure national poverty in any given country.
For the effects of this exercise, the rescaling of welfare was performed using the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) which contains data on poverty headcounts for each year (2013-2018).For 2020-2022, the data was provided by the Poverty and Shared Prosperity team.A rescaling of the weights was done using the UNDESA population estimates from 2013-2021.In other words, the number of children is estimated by applying the proportion of people that are children in the relevant survey to the total UNDESA national population projections for each country.This could lead to discrepancies with UNDESA estimates of the number of children in a country.For the 2022 estimates, UNDESA population prospects were used.
Poverty estimates for 2020, 2021 and 2022 are "nowcasted"-that is, gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates have been used to forecast household incomes, assuming all households experience equal consumption growth in percentage terms.
Trends from 2013 to 2018 are all based on back casted projections rather than repeated survey data.These are based on distributional neutral growth assumptions applied to one survey per country rather than changes observed in repeated cross-sections.

Figure 3 :Figure 4 :
Figure 3: World map -children living in extreme poverty at PPP $2.15 poverty line (extreme poverty)

Table 1 :
Share of children of those living in extreme poverty (PPP $2.15), versus adults

Table 2 :
Extreme poverty (PPP $2.15) in 2022, by age groups Regional differences: The geographic distribution of children living in extreme poor households shows that Sub-Saharan Africa continues to have both the highest rates of children living in extreme poverty at 40 percent in 2022, and the largest share of the world's extreme poor children (71.1 percent)-table 3 and figures 3-5.South Asia has a rate of 9.7 percent of children living in extreme poverty in 2022 (62 million), and accounts for 18.6 percent of the world's extremely poor children.Nearly 90 percent of extremely poor children in the world reside in either Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia.

Table 4 :
Children in extreme poverty (PPP $2.15) by income group With a staggering 333 million children living in extreme poverty in 2022, addressing the structural root causes that affect children living in extreme poverty is imperative.A key step towards that is to monitor and understand which children and their families are being left behind, what are their characteristics and where do they live, and why existing policy interventions are not effective in curbing child poverty for countries to develop the appropriate policy portfolios to address and end extreme child poverty for good.
The trend analysis suggests that in the absence of COVID-19, we would have expected a reduction of 79.7 million children in extreme poverty between 2013 and 2022; but our estimates suggest a reduction of only 49.2 million children, due to pandemic disruptions.The extreme child poverty nowcasted estimate in 2022 (15.9 percent) is on par with the child poverty rate in 2019, indicating approximately three years of lost progress.