2 days ago
Where are children more vulnerable to poverty in the EU?
In 2024, 19.5 million children in the EU were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to the latest Eurostat figures.
Between 2023 and 2024, the percentage of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU slightly decreased from 24.8% to 24.2%.
At the country level, Bulgaria reported the highest rates in 2024, at 35.1%, followed by Spain at 34.6% and Romania at 33.8%.
By contrast, Slovenia (11.8%), Cyprus (14.8%) and the Czech Republic (15.4%) recorded the lowest figures.
Italy was the only EU country that did not experience any change, remaining steady at 27.1%.
"Welfare state institutions play a major role in protecting children from poverty," said Alba Lanau Sánchez, a researcher from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. "Countries with robust social protection systems tend to have lower child poverty rates."
The risk of poverty or social exclusion was also higher for children than for adults in 2024.
Children in the EU were at a higher risk of poverty or social exclusion (24.2%) compared with adults (20.3%), resulting in a difference of 3.9 percentage points.
Across the EU countries, 20 of them experienced a higher risk among children, with the largest differences recorded in Spain (10.5%), Malta and Romania (both 7.3%) and France (7.2%).
Children whose parents attained a higher education level were less likely to be at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
In 2024, 61.2% of children in the EU living with parents who had at most lower secondary education were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
For those with parents who attained tertiary education, the proportion was 11.0%.
This resulted in a risk gap of 50.2 percentage points based on parents' education levels.
At the national level, the gap was above 50% in 16 EU countries.
The lowest gaps were observed in Denmark, Portugal and Estonia, while the largest differences were recorded in Romania, Czechia and Bulgaria.
Despite Spain having a higher GDP than Bulgaria or Romania, the country's tax-benefit system is often pointed out as one of the main reasons for its high child poverty rates, according to researchers.
In 2021, Spain spent just 1.3% of its GDP on family policies, compared to the OECD average of 2.3%.
"Direct financial support to families was particularly modest," said Lanau Sánchez. "Child-contingent cash benefits schemes in Spain have traditionally provided support to higher deciles through tax relief, which poorer households cannot benefit from, but little or no support went to low-income households."
Spain has also introduced the Minimum Living Income (IMV) in 2021 and the Child Support Supplement in 2022, reaching 502,310 households, according to Spain's Social Security.
However, it remains unclear how much these programs have improved living conditions for families with children.
"Current critiques highlight the IMV shortcomings, including administrative barriers (resulting in high non-take-up rates), legal restrictions on access affecting certain groups, such as young people, the homeless, undocumented and recently arrived migrants, and limited potential coverage for low-income but not severely poor households," said Lanau Sánchez.
"However, we lack in-depth academic research on how the IMV has more thoroughly transformed the social protection system, ultimately crowding out other forms of support, like regional minimum income schemes," she concluded.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, social media has seen a spike in misinformation and videos purporting to show footage of Moscow's war — when the images in reality originate from video games.
For instance, videos allegedly showing Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb — which was carried out by Ukraine's Security Service on 1 June — have been shared widely online.
EuroVerify reviewed a series of these clips, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views across social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook and YouTube.
Although at first glance they could appear to show scenes of war — such as missiles, drones, and infrastructure being bombarded — the clips do not have any clear signs which certify their authenticity.
By conducting a reverse image search, EuroVerify found that a number of clips claiming to show Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb have in fact been misleadingly captioned and taken out of context — in reality, they match gaming videos posted by a YouTube channel called UWC.
The channel's biography states that "all videos on the channel are a simulation of combat operations in the game Arma 3. We are against this terrible war and we want a peaceful sky over the heads of Ukrainians."
Despite this mention, the channel — like many other similar gaming channels — posts videos which bare misleading titles such as "Ukrainian most massive drone raid destroys two largest Russian factories 1,000 km from borders" and "Daring Ukrainian FPV drone swarm raid destroys 40 Russian nuclear bombers: Tu-95, Tu-160, Tu-22M".
The gaming developer studio Bohemia Interactive, which created Arma 3, separately reviewed videos sent by EuroVerify, which have been posted across social media platforms, and confirmed that they were made using a "modded" version of Arma 3.
Video game "modding" is a popular activity for gamers, where they customise a game's features or visuals on their own or with the help of third-party plugins and other materials.
Bohemia Interactive, like many other video game developers, has come out against its products being used as 'war propaganda'.
While video game footage has consistently been taken out of context in relation to Russia's war in Ukraine, this is also the case for other wars and conflicts — as video game recordings have also been presented as footage of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as the recent tensions between India and Pakistan on social media.
Determining whether footage is real can be a very complex task, which has even led certain media outlets to air video game clips on TV.
In November 2022, Romanian channel Antena 3 broadcast an old Arma 3 video, which it alleged showed fighting in Ukraine, additionally asking a former defence minister and a former intelligence chief to comment on the images as if they were authentic.
