Spain: Unicef, crisis has a child's face

According to a report published in Madrid today, more than 2.2% of Spain's minors are living below the poverty level. This is almost 205,000 more children than in 2010, data from the latest Unicef report on the effects of the economic slowdown on children shows. Children are the group worst affected by the recession, taking over from the group of over 65-year-olds the UN organisation says. Children have become the social group at greatest risk of poverty due to the increase in the number of families in precarious financial conditions. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of households all of whose adult members were unemployed grew by 120% in Spain, and Unicef has shown how the impact of the crisis is more severe for those families with minors to support than for childless households. ''For the first time in Spain, poverty has the face of a child,'' the Director of Unicef in Spain, Paloma Escudero, said when presenting the report. Figures show how 13.7% of minors live in households with a high level of poverty, i.e. with incomes under 10,983 euros per annum and with two children to support. This is the highest figure for any country in the 15 member nations of the Euro zone, and only Romania and Bulgaria are worse off in the European Union. (ANSAmed).