A recent study by Eurofound revealed that Poland has significantly improved in tackling child deprivation. 

In a decade, Poland has turned from one of Europe’s countries with a high child deprivation rate (30.3% in 2009) to the second EU country after the Netherlands, with the lowest such rate among all the member states. 

Although most countries saw a decline in deprivation among children, seven recorded an increase, especially Greece (by 12.4 percentage points). Poland’s improvement of 24.1 percentage points between 2009 and 2020 was the third largest in the EU, behind Latvia (27.3) and Bulgaria (27.4). 

Eurofound explains Poland’s improvement in the field of tackling child poverty through the social policies introduced by the ruling Law and Justice party in 2016. These include the 500+ child benefit scheme, which was expanded to include more children in 2019. 

Other data from Eurofound’s report also revealed a significant decrease in child poverty in Poland in recent years. The Polish branch of the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) noted that in 2015, around 900,000 children were living in extreme poverty, which decreased to 410,000 by 2020.

Images: Pixabay

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen