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Increased number of poor children in Norway: report

Xinhua, March 30, 2017 Adjust font size:

A recent report has shown that 136,000 children in Norway, or 12.2 percent, live in families where more than half of the total income comes from community support, newspaper Aftenposten reported Thursday.

According to the report by the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir), those children who grow up in families with least resources are mostly exposed to experiencing difficult situations in life.

Almost 40 percent of all the children from families with low income are children of single parents.

From the period 1997-1999 until 2013-2015, there was an increase among children who grew up in families with persistent low income, from 4.1 percent to 10 percent. If this trend continues, 15 percent of all children in Norway will live in poverty in 2030.

"We see that the families that are in the low income layer are also more exposed to many other problems, at home, at school and with health. Child protection services are not sufficient to discover all of this. Here it is necessary to work on a broader front," said Bufdir director Mari Trommald.

"The most important single factor to come out of poverty later in life is that child masters own school life. That is why the schools need to pay attention to children that are at high risk to drop out," Trommald added.

Trommald also emphasized that the "happy" country Norway, which has recently been called the happiest country by a UN survey, "is not experienced as such by everyone."

"There is also a talk about 'possible poverty.' Children in these families lose possibilities that others have. They do not have enough resources to participate in things, which is important for children. The municipalities have to set up free time activities without high fees, so that everyone can afford to participate," said Trommald.

Tone Flotten, leader of the Fafo Institute for Labor and Social Research and researcher in the field of welfare and poverty, said that there are several factors that can lead to increased poverty among families with children.

"They can be the number of citizens with immigrant background, big number of single parents and an industry structure that includes many low income jobs and small possibility for new ones," she said. Enditem