More children are growing up in low income families

In 2014, some 12% of children in the Netherlands were growing up in a household where the income was considered to be too low for every day necessities, the national statistics office CBS said on Monday.

The number of poor families has been rising since 2010. Of the 421,000 children living in a poor household, 131,000 have been in that situation for four years or more, the CBS said.

The CBS itself does not use the term poverty, because it is a subjective term, and bases its calculations on the composition of the household. A family of two adults and two children are considered low income if they have less than €1,920 net per month to spend.

Some 66% of low income families cannot afford a holiday of at least one week a year, 51% cannot buy new clothes and 32% cannot pay for the children to join a sports club or have music lessons, the CBS said.

One-third of children with a non-western background are growing up in a low income family. Children in Zuid-Holland province, particularly Rotterdam, are more likely to be poor (one in seven), compared with just under one in 10 in Utrecht.