One in nine children at risk of growing up in poverty

In 2008, 385 thousand Dutch minors were at risk of growing up in poverty. This means that 11.5 percent of children below 18 years of age grow up in families with incomes that do not exceed 120 percent of the social minimum.

Children from single-parent families are at greater risk of growing up in poverty than children living in two-parent families. In 2008, for example, half of underage children from single-parent families ran the risk of being exposed to poverty (incomes that do not exceed 120 percent of the social minimum), as against only 5.6 percent of children growing up in two-parent families. This is partly due to the fact that in single-parent families there is only one income provider. Single-parent families also more often depend on social security and other benefits than two-parent families.

Altogether, 155 thousand underage children in the risk category were living in a state of relative poverty for a period of four years or more. The percentage of children from single-parent families living in relative poverty is much higher than for children from two-parent families, i.e. 27 and 2.3 percent respectively.

Underage children at risk of growing up in poverty, 2008*

Doreen Ewalds and Wim Bos