Inequalities in child poverty While child poverty is both a product and a manifestation of deep-seated economic inequalities within societies, it is also well established that children from certain groups and living in certain contexts are much more likely to experience poverty than others. Such variations in child poverty risks within countries are invisible in cross-national comparisons of averages. Within Report Card countries there is ample evidence of the high levels of poverty experienced by children in specific minority groups, including children affected by migration, children with disabilities and children who come from racial or ethnic minorities. Households with a migration background Within the EU there are large and persistent differences in child income poverty rates for children with parents having citizenship within and outside the country where they live (Figure 7). A child with a parent with citizenship outside the country was 2.4 times as likely to be living in relative income poverty as a child with parent(s) who are citizens of the country. The gap between poverty in the two groups has increased from around 19 percentage points in 2012 to around 22 percentage points in 2021. Figure 7. Child poverty rates by citizenship of parent(s), EU 45 Child income poverty (%) 40 37.3 39.7 40.1 38.7 41.3 39.3 35.8 35 Sources: See Technical Appendix 37.3 38.3 37.2 15.8 16.0 15.6 30 25 20 15 18.7 19.0 19.0 19.0 17.2 16.8 15.9 10 Citizenship of parent(s) 5 0 Reporting countries Other countries 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Roma children A review of living conditions of Roma children in Europe highlighted two recent studies that demonstrate the high risk of child poverty among this group.19 The second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (MIDIS II) found that 80 per cent of Roma children in eight European countries were living below the income poverty threshold in 2016. More recently, the European Agency for Fundamental Rights reported that more than one in two (54 per cent) of Roma and Traveller children surveyed in 2021 lived in severe material deprivation, compared with the EU average of around 7 per cent in 2020. 19 19 Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth Innocenti Report Card 18