Spain's Children Face the EU's Highest Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion

Higher than the adult rate in eighteen Member States, lower in nine

The at-risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion measure applied to the under-eighteens gives 24.3% across the EU in 2025. The same measure applied to the whole population gives 20.9%.

Children in Europe are more likely to be poor than Europeans in general, by 3.4 percentage points. That figure is an average of two opposite patterns: the child rate stands above the general rate in eighteen Member States and below it in nine. Where it is below, the distance runs from 0.1 points in Finland to 7.1 in Latvia, and Croatia sits 5.0 points clear in the same direction. Each of those distances is derived by subtraction from the two published rates.

Spain at the top

Spain records 33.8%, the highest child poverty risk in the Union.

That position is the finding, because Spain is not the poorest Member State. Bulgaria at 33.1% and Romania at 32.4% follow it, and both have substantially lower national incomes: Bulgaria's GDP per capita is 68 on the EU index against Spain's 92.

A country with a third more output per head than Bulgaria records a marginally higher share of children at risk. Whatever produces that outcome, it is not the general level of Spanish prosperity.

Spain is also where the two rates are furthest apart: 33.8% for children against 25.7% for the population as a whole, a distance of 8.1 points where the EU's is 3.4. The Spanish general rate is itself the fifth highest in the Union, and the child rate stands further above it than anywhere else.

Greece follows at 29.6%, France at 27.5% and Italy at 27.1% — placing three of the Union's four largest economies above the EU figure.

Where children do best

Slovenia records 12.5%, the Netherlands 12.7%, Cyprus 14.0% and Denmark 14.8%.

Slovenia is the strongest performer in the Union on this measure and it also records the lowest overcrowding among eastern Member States and one of the lowest NEET rates. On indicators concerning young people specifically, Slovenia performs consistently better than its income would predict.

What the composite conceals

This is the same three-part composite used for the general population: low income relative to the national median, severe material deprivation, or very low household work intensity. A child is counted if any one applies.

Because children do not have incomes of their own, all three conditions are properties of the household they live in. Child poverty in this framework is household poverty observed through the children in it, and a country can reduce it either by raising household incomes or by changing which households have children.