Introduction “The persistence of child poverty in rich countries undermines both equality of opportunity and commonality of values. It therefore confronts the industrialized world with a test both of its ideals and of its capacity to resolve many of its most intractable social problems.” These words began the first Innocenti Report Card, published in 2000. Sadly, they remain largely true today – 23 years and 17 Report Cards later. As this report will show, progress has been made. Poland, Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania have achieved remarkable reductions in child poverty in recent years. Outside Europe, the Republic of Korea, Canada and Japan have made the most progress. This report discusses what can be learned from these successes. On the other hand, in many countries, child poverty rates are static. In others, such as the United Kingdom, Iceland, France, Switzerland and Norway, many more children lived in poor households in 2021 than a decade earlier at the end of the 2008–2010 recession. Across 40 of the world’s richest countries,1 over 69 million children are living in income poverty. Poverty is a blight on their childhoods, and the consequences of being poor last a lifetime. Children in poor households have much reduced chances of completing a good education.2 In some countries, a person born in a deprived area is likely to live 8–9 years fewer than a person born in a wealthy area.3 Tackling child poverty is therefore a matter of basic rights and of justice. The goal of this report is not only to review the status of child poverty in countries that are members of the OECD and/or the EU and the progress made in tackling it over the past decade, but also to consider what more needs to be done in the future. Levels of child poverty depend greatly on the effectiveness of government actions. An important lesson from the 2008– 2010 recession was that the right types of poverty reduction policies can shield children from the harmful effects of crises.4 The report picks up from the last Report Card to focus on child poverty, published in 2014, which analysed the impacts of that recession. It painted a contrasting picture. Some countries witnessed substantial reductions in child poverty between 2008 and 2012, while others saw substantial increases. Some countries – Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg and Spain – had lost 10 years or more of progress in reducing child poverty. Much has happened since 2012. The years following the recession were a period of stable economic growth in the group of countries in this report. This was an opportunity to tackle child poverty which, as we will show, some countries took while others did not. Since 2020, the global outlook has become increasingly challenging and uncertain. A review of the status of child poverty in some of the world’s richest nations is therefore timely. 5 Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth Innocenti Report Card 18