Children at risk of poverty

It is now 33 years since the United Nations (UN) established the International Day for the Eradication of
Poverty. The objective of the international day’s 2025 edition, to be marked on 17 October, is to ‘end social
and institutional maltreatment by ensuring respect and effective support for families’. In recent decades,
there has been marked progress in reducing poverty worldwide. Nevertheless, the number of people living
in poverty remains very high, even in the EU, in particular among children. In 2024, 93.3 million people in
the EU-27 were living in households at risk of poverty or social exclusion (i.e. 21.0 % of the EU-27 population,
according to Eurostat). With an at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate of 24.2 % for the EU-27, children
were at greater risk in 2024 than adults.