Leading Minds - Coronavirus and Children - Support for Families

Warnings from new analysis by UNICEF* and Save the children, show economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic could push up to 86 million more children into household poverty by the end of 2020, an increase of 15 per cent.

In the rush to ‘flatten the curve’ against the pandemic, another curve has spiked, and the worst is yet to come. The impact of the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic and related containment policies has led to a double blow for children and families. Getting the right social protection schemes in place has never mattered as much as it does today. Studies show that the total number of children living below the national poverty line in low- and middle-income countries could reach 672 million by year-end. Nearly two-thirds of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Countries across Europe and Central Asia could see the most significant increase, up to 44 per cent across the region. Latin America and the Caribbean could see a 22 per cent increase.

On Thursday 4 June at 15:00 CET | 09:00 EST UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti launches the third installment of the Leading Minds Online webinar series ‘What the Experts Say - Coronavirus and Children: Support for Families

The webcast looks at how stimulus packages measure up and and ask our expert panelists: In the rush to protect lives from the virus, who is protecting livelihoods, how?

What does history tell us about previous global emergencies and fiscal crises for the present? Indeed, is the very future of social protection itself under threat as well as we hurtle towards an inevitable depression/ recession?