BRUSSELS — Anyone who can’t manage it knows how hard it is to eat regularly every day and turn on the heat or air conditioning when they need it. The risk of poverty affects 19.9 million children and young people in Europe. Eurostat conducted a survey on minors in financial difficulties and found the following data: By the end of 2023, a quarter of children under 18 (24.8%) At risk of poverty. One more thing left”is relatively stable compared to 2022″, points out Eurostat Disseminate data that shows the problem has not been solved.
At the level of the Member States, Romania (39%), Spain (34.5%) and Bulgaria (33.9%) are the countries with the highest proportion of minors facing financial difficulties. They are followed by Greece (28.1%) and Italy (27.1%). Translated into absolute numbers, these indices are equivalent to nearly 20 million people across the entire European Union, but it is the changes in ranking that are most important. The main economies of the euro area are also the countries with the largest number of children at risk of poverty, namely France and Germany (both with just over 3.5 million children under 18), Spain (2.7 million) and Italy (2.5 million).
However, there is one encouraging comparison. Taking the figures for 2022 and 2023 together, Eurostat records a small decline of around 0.1 percentage points, which suggests a small improvement in economic conditions. 100,000 people. Minors have escaped poverty risk in more than a yearThe fact is that in Italy 189,000 fewer children at risk of povertyOn the contrary, there were increases in Spain (+164k) and Portugal (+40k). If you take this into account, this is a small sign of improvement. However, the number of young and very young people in distress increased between 2021 and 2022..