The World's Child Poverty Hotspots

Child poverty continues to be most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, as the region accounted for more than 70 percent of the world’s children in extreme poverty in 2022. A joint paper from the World Bank and UNICEF estimates that the share of children living on less than $2.15 per day stood at 40 percent in the region in 2022, which is four times as high as it is for South Asia, the region home to the second highest number of children in extremely poor households.

According to the paper, extreme child poverty is increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, as the share of affected children living in the region has increased from 55 percent in 2013 to 71 percent in 2022. This is due to the fact that other regions have seen faster improvements over the past decade compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. For example the share of children living in extreme poverty in South Asia has decreased from 22 to 10 percent between 2013 and 2022, whereas the child poverty rate only dropped from 45 to 40 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Within the region, differences in the prevalence of child poverty are quite substantial, however, with poverty rates ranging from above 70 percent in countries like Burundi, South Sudan and Somalia to less than 20 percent in countries like Mali, Côte d'Ivoire and Botswana.

Several factors contribute to the high prevalence of child poverty in Africa, including ongoing economic challenges, political instability and the impact of armed conflicts in many countries. High birth rates, coupled with insufficient healthcare, education and social services, exacerbate the situation, leaving many families unable to meet their children's basic needs.