Poverty is a severe and constant constraint shaping how children live, learn and grow. Millions of children around the world miss out on their childhood as a result of poverty.
Poverty deprives them of the capabilities needed to survive, develop and thrive. They are more likely to become malnourished, get sick, less likely to complete school, and more vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, violence, discrimination.
Antora, 20, and her baby Rupa, three months old, live in a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Antora is excited to be a mother, she can’t stop kissing tiny Rupa. “The best things about my baby are her smile, her cuddles and the sounds she has started to make - she’s really trying to talk” she says, but Rupa is suffering from malnutrition and Antora can see her getting smaller. Born weighing 3kg, she now weighs less than 2kg and is continuing to lose weight. Antora can’t breastfeed because she hasn’t got enough nutrition in her body to produce milk. She hasn’t got any money to buy food because her husband isn’t earning enough - he earns between $1 and $2 US a day pulling a rickshaw. Because of a lack of food, Antora has lost her appetite now and can only manage the occasional bit of rice with some salt.
Lochebe, two, is malnourished and eats porridge at a Save the Children supported Inpatient Therapeutic Feeding Centre in South Sudan.
Rahow, two, eats from a packet of high-nutrient peanut paste that he received from Save the Children.
Djamilou, 21 months-old, being monitored by a nurse at Save the Children’s clinic for severely malnourished children in Niger. He was admitted to the clinic weighing just 5.1kg. "This year has been a truly bad year. It’s really difficult to find enough food to feed the children. Our store is empty. We eat – maybe two times a week."
Chofatou, 11 months, at the Save the Children supported stabilization clinic in Niger. These in-patient clinics are for extreme cases of malnutrition and cases with additional complications. Mothers staying in the clinics while their child is being treated are provided with food.
Hunger
Poverty is the principal reason so many people around the world are hungry. People living in poverty cannot afford nutritious food for their families. This makes them weaker and less able to earn money.
Hunger can have life-long consequences. Children who are chronically malnourished, or ‘stunted’, don’t just fail to thrive physically; they also fall behind in developing cognitive skills.
Millions of children face the everyday challenge of not knowing where their next meal is coming from—a situation that is exacerbated by persistent poverty, rising food prices, the effects of climate change and a growing gap between rich and poor.
The first 1000 days of a child's life from conception to two years are crucial for a child's physical and mental development. Children who are malnourished in the womb and during the first two years of life are often permanently mentally and physically damaged.
Families set up camp next to a railway line in Delhi while they look for work. In India, nearly two million children under five die each year from preventable diseases.
Fabrice, 6, at a stabilisation centre in Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nemata, 4, at her home in Burkina Faso. Nemata's family has lived on this land for generations, but the drought has meant there is no longer enough to eat.
Child mortality
The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from pregnancy to the age two, are critical. A balanced diet can protect children from the mental and physical effects of malnutrition.
Over a third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries are linked to malnutrition.1
Hunger and malnutrition are the number one risk to health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Deprived of the right nutrition, hungry children are especially vulnerable and become too weak to fight off disease and may die from common infections like measles and diarrhoea.
Boosting Literacy
Almost 800 million people around the world can’t read or write. Illiteracy means they are trapped in a cycle of poverty with limited opportunities for employment.
For poor children, a good education is the key to changing their lives and their futures. It can mean they have access to better jobs, lead richer lives and fulfill their potential. If all students left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty.4
Although many governments have eliminated the biggest obstacle to enrollment by abolishing school fees, other financial barriers such as uniforms, food, travel costs and exam fees still prevent the poorest, most disadvantaged children from going to school.
3 UNESCO (2015) “Adult and Youth Literacy”
4 UNESCO (2011) “Education Counts Towards the Millennium Development Goals”
Zahara used to collect water from a pond 15 kilometres away.
Water and sanitation
Unclean water and a lack of basic sanitation are undermining efforts to end extreme poverty. It is estimated that every $1 spent on water and sanitation generates $4 in increased economic opportunity.6 Universal access to water and sanitation would result in an estimated $32 billion in economic benefits per year globally from reductions in health care costs and increased productivity from reduced illness. 7
A lack of reliable, clean water access also has deep socio-economic impacts. Women are more than twice as likely as men to be responsible for water collection. On average, women and girls in developing countries walk six kilometres each day to collect water8 – time which could be spent in school or at work. More than half of the girls who drop out of primary school in sub-Saharan Africa do so because of a lack of separate toilets and easy access to safe water.9
5 UNICEF and WHO (2015) "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water"
6 WHO (2012) “Global costs and benefits of drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to reach the MDG target and universal coverage”
7 Ibid.
8 UN Human Rights Commission (2010) “The Right to Water”
9 The ONE Campaign "Water and Sanitation"
Building a better life
Supporting sustainable agricultural practice is twice as effective in reducing poverty as supporting growth in any other sector. We are working with partners to invest in local communities by sharing skills, technology, farming knowledge and other agricultural resources to help families take charge of their futures. By adopting productive, sustainable and resilient crop and livestock production practices, parents can improve their economic wellbeing, helping to eliminate child poverty so that their children can face the future with hope.
Supporting parents is key to fighting poverty. By improving the knowledge and skills within a community, jobs are created, providing more stable sources of income and giving people more access to health, education and opportunities to create a better life for children and their families.
We share a vision
A world where all children have the chance to grow up free from poverty, deprivation and exclusion.
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