Child poverty rates rise in rich countries.

FLORENCE, ITALY -- Child poverty in 17 of 24 OECD countries increased in the 1990's, including Canada and the United States and is expected to rise again because of current social policies in many countries. With a small amount of increased social spending directed towards children, many OECD countries could reduce child poverty below 10 per cent, says a recently released report from UNICEF.

Poverty in this report is measured as one-half or less the median income of families.

Some countries actually reduced child poverty rates to less than 3 per cent. These include Denmark and Finland with Norway being the only country where child poverty rates are described as being "very low and continuing to fall." Countries at the other end of the scale include the U.S. and Mexico whose poverty rates for children rose to 20 per cent, while Canada also continues to sit in the bottom half of the child poverty scale.

In its sixth report card, called Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005, which was prepared by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, the agency stressed that it was obvious from the 1990's data that higher government spending on family and social benefits "is clearly associated with lower child poverty rates."

More importantly, it says that the variations in child poverty levels between Nordic countries, with rates at 5 per cent and lower, and other countries with high rates, such as Mexico; Canada, the U.S. and Italy, demonstrate that "there is nothing inevitable or immutable about child poverty levels."

Instead, these variations "reflect the different national policies interacting with social changes and market forces," such as a shift in government spending, whereby "in some countries, the net result of current policies may be to support early retirement over investing in children," and even though many countries increased social spending, it was mainly targeted towards pensions and health care.

As well, in addition to market forces, such as the 1990's economic recession, greater introduction of technology, the migration of low-skilled, low-wage jobs, and the trend towards privatization and globalization, government policy changes to welfare rules, which affect accessibility and the value of the benefits, have also influenced "the positioning and effectiveness of the safety net by which governments seek to prevent children from the worst of poverty."

The report also warned that child poverty rates will not decrease unless governments are willing to set policy targets to reduce child poverty along with establishing agreed definitions and measures of child poverty, and points to Canada, as an example of a county that has failed on both counts, saying that Canadian "children are still waiting," for the government to fulfill its promise to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000 and to officially recognize methods and measurements of poverty, such as Market Basket Measure.